"Say It Ain't So Joe, Say It Ain't So"

Now that all the hard data is in, I find myself in a distinctly curious position for a hard-core progressive.  Like a latter day Alice, I have stumbled through the looking glass where everything is topsy-turvy. Unlike Alice, I have not been consuming any psychotropic drugs, nor have I seen any talking rabbits or door mice.  So I must conclude that I have arrived at my latest conclusion in a reasonable state of sanity, at least by my minimalist standards. So here goes! After no small amount of thought I find myself in agreement with the Tea Party crowd in concluding that the lion's share of blame for the Panic of 2008 belongs to the federal government. OK, wait.  Before you decide to call 9-1-1 in fear that I have totally lost my sense of reality, please read on for my explanation.

First, however, I must explain why I am placing less blame on corporate America as would be the appropriate response for a true liberal. More than any other sector of our society, the behavior of the business community is always clearly predictable.  Privately held businesses usually have two overriding goals: to maximize their profits and to grow to a point where they can become publicly held corporations.  Publicly held businesses (like those listed on the NYSE) have one goal: to increase the share-holder value of their common stock.  Looking back at the behavior of both the industrial and financial sectors of our economy in the run-up to the Crash, these facts make the behavior of the entire business sector totally understandable.  Ethics, morality, product quality, safety, and even national citizenship, always come in behind the primary responsibility of every CEO, which is to increase profits and drive up the price of the stock.  Thus, businesses performed exactly as they should have, and they performed exactly as they did in the weeks and months preceding every economic down-turn in American history.  And to drive home the point even more forcefully, after all the public hand-wringing and mea culpas in the theatrical Congressional hearings into the causes of the Crash, corporate America quickly returned to its pre 2008 behaviors. Corporations are not you and me, they don't care about people, they are solely focused on profitability, or they quickly cease being corporations. Just because five of nine Supreme Court Justices personified corporations in the Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, does not alter the fact that businesses are not living entities.

Without a doubt, the financial sector of our economy, in a binge of unbridled avarice, must shoulder some of the blame for the hardships visited on the bulk of the American people.  But so what?  Does anyone really believe there is such a thing as business ethics?  If so, just look at  the history of every industrialized nation and the misery that unregulated businesses rained down on their fellow citizens. That is what they do.  Everything else is cosmetic window dressing for wishful and often naive  consumers. Does anyone really believe that banks like us? Auto companies care more about our safety than their bottom line? Insurance companies are just like a good neighbor? Oil companies care about the environment? There is such a thing as "clean coal?" Need I go on?

At the turn of the 20th century here in the United States, the  people had finally had enough of laissez-faire capitalism and demanded reforms from their governments.  In 1904, progressive Republicans (now there is a catchy phrase, but that is what they were), and later progressive Democrats were swept into office and corporate American was called to task. One regulatory bill after another raced through the Congress and each was quickly signed into law by Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson.  By 1916, middle class Americans had consumer, environmental, and financial protection laws that were so successful, most are still with us today. And at every turn, big business screeched and howled that the American way of life was doomed.  Does anyone besides the Congressional Paul family really want to go back to a world of no food and drug safety, no minimum wages, no child labor laws, no forty hour work-week, no workplace safety, and no consumer safety laws?

So why, you may ask am I blaming government for the economic crisis we now find ourselves struggling to get through? Sorry Tea Partiers, but it is not because our economy is over-regulated. Instead, the great miscalculation of our national government, going back to the Reagan era, was in its failure to remember the lessons of our history.  Our economy may work best for the top one percent of us when it is entirely unregulated, but for all the rest of us that is a recipe for disaster. From 1980 until the crash of '08, both Democrats and Republicans bought into the Wall Street blather that an unregulated financial services market is really good for America. The resulting collapse stands alone as proof that that argument is as bankrupt today as it was in the Panics 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907, and the mega-crash of 1929. The rest of us have always prospered when government was there to limit the greed of our economic Brahmans, and we have always suffered when those limits have been removed.

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives made a big deal in the first week of January about having a public reading of the US Constitution.  Even though they selected out parts they found problematic (all references to slavery in the first seven articles), it would have served them well to have actually listened to the words they did recite.  The Framers of the pinnacle of our entire legal system prefaced its text with a bold series of promises, collectively called The Preamble.  All Americans were told that they could expect to be safe from all enemies, foreign and domestic.  We were told that political liberty was being established for all of us upon the ratification of the document.  And, we were told that under the Constitution, the new government would "promote the general welfare."  There is no mention of the welfare of a select few being secured at the expense of everyone else. The general welfare means just that.  Henceforth, the government of the United States was tasked to make certain that all of us might prosper, and thus we came to expect a minimum and reasonable standard of living for ourselves and for those who came after us. For over two hundred and twenty years, our society has been a work in progress where each generation of Americans was a little better off than the previous one.  Should we now begin to move in the opposite direction? Or should we demand that our government lives up to the promises of the Founding Fathers who stated that the blessings, freedoms, and commitments within the Constitution would be there "for ourselves and our posterity?"

Second Amendment Problems

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  That my friends, is the complete text of the 2nd Amendment.  Far too many latter day buckaroos have no idea that the right to be armed is contingent upon maintaining state militias.  Back in the 1790s, the citizens of our newly established republic were deeply concerned about security against the British, who had yet to live up to the terms of the Treaty of Paris, especially in their promise to abandon forts along the western frontier.  Further, the British were still inciting Native Americans in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys to make war on the American whites settling beyond the Appalachians.  Since there was no way that the all but bankrupt states could afford to muster official state militias back then (maybe now again too), private citizens would be called on to form ad hoc militia units to defend their communities against these threats.  At the time, cap and ball muskets were state of the art weapons and the Second Amendment guaranteed that the states would have a ready supply of "volunteers" if the need arose.

Fast-forward 200 years and we see that all Fifty states have well-armed and well-trained state militias, now called National Guard units.  They are afforded state of the art military weapons and are called upon to defend both state and country as the need arises.  Thus, the "original intent" of the 2nd Amendment, for all you so-called originalists out there, has been satisfied without the need for every citizen to be at the ready for a sneak attack from those dastardly Brits, or the local Indian Casino.  One would think that the text of the 2nd Amendment would be about as relevant today as is the 3rd Amendment.  Give that one a read and you will see what I mean.  But no, the gun lobby of the NRA and firearms manufacturers, along with their paranoid toadies in Congress have simply edited out the first, and primary clause of the 2nd Amendment.  Think not?  Then show up at a gun show and ask the people shopping for the latest sniper scopes (mostly white men) to quote the entirety of their most hallowed text.

The reason for this is actually quite simple.  Do you remember the charitable organization called the March of Dimes?  Sure you do, it was originally formed to raise money to fight the deadly disease Infantile Paralysis more commonly known as Polio.  Thanks to their efforts, and lots of school kids gathering all those dimes, Jonas Salk and his research staff developed a vaccine to protect us all from this scourge.  In the words of George W. Bush, "Mission Accomplished" (in this case those words were actually true).  So what happened to the March of Dimes?  Did they disband?  No.  Too many highly paid fund administrators needed to keep this cash cow alive, so they just re-invented themselves.  And to their credit, they found an ailment much less likely to yield a cure, Birth Defects. Some fifty-six years after polio went down, the March of Dimes is still a driving force in the private charity industry and a great many people make a very fine living managing all those dimes (even though they no longer collect "dimes" from little kids.

So too, the advocates of a well-armed civilian population (fire arm manufacturers, gun retailers, gun lobbies, toady Congressmen, and not too few gun nuts) have re-invented the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.  Today many of the latter day militia wanna-bes have convinced themselves that they are the only bulwark preventing our 221 year-old Republic (counting from the ratification of the Constitution) from rapidly devolving into a tyranny.  That alone should be grounds for preventing these delusional patriots from ever being able own lethal weapons. And, thanks to the heretofore mentioned gun promoters, these same people are convinced that they are all in eminent danger of being assaulted or killed by vicious gangs of roving criminals.  Forget the fact that violent crime in this country has been declining for quite some time (see FBI website for actual stats), more and more deadly weapons are being purchased now than at any time in American history. Perhaps the most alarming fact to emerge in the aftermath of the Tucson shooting was the record sale of multiple round pistol magazines by people who actually believe their personal liberty may be in jeopardy.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if a proliferation in gun ownership actually resulted in a safer society? Were that the case I would have purchased an AK-47 years ago.  But a look around our planet at the countries with the most guns free-floating among their respective civilian populations reveals just the opposite. And now with states like Arizona and Tennessee removing most restrictions on carrying and concealing, it must be incredibly reassuring to know that the loud mouth next to you at a ballgame or in a bar can add bullets to his alcohol induced bravado.

That Pesky Old Document!

Prodded by the so-called "originalist" Tea Party Republicans, newly seated Speaker, Republican John Boehner of Ohio, called for a "complete" oral reading of the US Constitution, as the first official act of the 112th Congress.  So, with great theatrical fanfare, members of both parties marched up to the lectern and read a portion of our hallowed document.  Other than as a publicity stunt, there does not seem to be any real substantive reason for this display.  However, some importance may be gleaned from those elements of the Constitution that were purposely edited out by the Republican leadership.  Any references to slavery, like the infamous three-fifths compromise in Article One and the fugitive slave clause of Article Four were missing. This seems a bit hypocritical to me, especially since the reading was demanded by people who claim that the legality of the Constitution is only valid within the context of its "original intent."

If in fact originalism is a legal premise, and most constitutional scholars seem to think that it is not, then anything included after the "original" ratification of 1789 would be invalid. Or are they claiming that this philosophical legalese does not begin to apply until after the Bill of Rights was ratified?  Then does that mean that women may not vote, slavery is again legal, US Senators may not be directly elected, only white male property owners have fully franchised civil rights, presidential terms may not be limited, and (one I am sure the Tea Party crowd and the super rich would love) a graduated income tax is illegal?  One must ask, with out really expecting an answer, just when does "original intent" kick in?

On the other hand, the very authors of the US Constitution, so heralded by the political right, actually built-in some mechanisms that totally invalidate the idea of an interpretation of the Constitution being fixed in time. Remember those parts that the Republicans did not want read on the floor of Congress?  Those and many others have disappeared over time because the Founding Fathers added Article Five to the sacred text.  In case you missed the reading, Article Five establishes the processes for amending the document.  And, oh yeah, everything in the Constitution may be amended away.  Further, at the end of Article One, Section Eight, these same American patriots added the so-called "Elastic Clause."  This little gem says that Congress can do whatever it deems "necessary and proper" to insure that the enumerated powers listed earlier in Section Eight be carried out.  It seems that even the Founding Fathers were not originalists, or they would have written a much more inflexible body of national law.

Without the application of too much intellectual depth, it is pretty clear that the Tea Party and ultra conservative wing of the Republican Party are not really interested divining the intent of Washington, Madison, Hamilton, et al, but in doing their own bit of "revisionism" to make the Constitution fit their narrow political agenda. Or maybe they really are interested in buying and selling people again, and insuring that only white male property owners can vote.

Off Center, Born Again!

As you can see, I have decided to re-start "Off Center (A Periodic Rant)."  I hope that all of you who were followers of my commentaries will come back again as both readers and contributors.  For the past few months I have been consumed with the intellectual and emotional process of making my decision to retire from my teaching job.  Further, it has taken a great deal of intellectual energy to keep my classes fresh and challenging for this, my last batch of high school seniors.  At some later date, most assuredly after I have been away from the day to day grind of teaching, I will use this space to reflect on my career.  But for now I am going to pick-up where I left off in offering some more progressive reflections on the issues facing our society.

I have been both fascinated and saddened by all that has transpired in the wake of the senseless shootings in Tucson.  Without a doubt, these killings were an example of an all too familiar horror story of contemporary America.  A young man, slipping further and further into a hellish madness, systematically isolating himself from all that is nurturing and supportive in his community, finally unleashing his raving demons, embarks upon a bloody killing spree that stuns the entire country.  And, like before, there is an impulsive rush to explain, understand, appoint blame, and even politicize, before all the facts are in.  From the wacky fringes of the blogosphere and talk radio, to the hyper partisan pundits of twenty-four hour cable  television news, to the calmer voices of the mainstream traditional media outlets, everyone has offered a take that above all else, justifies and promotes their own particular political and social agendas.

If you have been following my entries over the past two years, then there is no need for me to de-code these events from the perspective of a committed progressive Democrat.  On the other hand, a look at those elements of this tragedy that are not subject to a potentially biased interpretation of the facts, may serve to shed some light on the all too familiar circumstances that contributed to so much bloodshed.

First, there can be little doubt that Jared Loughner was a deeply troubled young man on a collision course with a violent end.  The evidence of his decaying sense of reality has been exhaustively documented.  And yet, under Arizona state law, and the laws of more than thirty other states, he was perfectly within his rights to purchase, with incredible ease, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol with a number of thirty-one round extended ammunition magazines.  The state of Arizona has a rigorous background check and  licensing process for almost every conceivable human activity, including for those wishing to cut hair and manicure nails, but it sees nothing wrong with a Mogadishu-like approach to gun ownership. All partisan rhetoric aside, why are so many of our states so willing to make the acquisition of these horrific instruments so incredibly easy?

Secondly, the mayors of Philadelphia and Newark New Jersey were interviewed shortly after the tragedy in Tucson and they were adamant about how little attention is being paid to the gun violence in America's large cities.  Without a doubt most of that violence is perpetrated by people who own their guns illegally, but the vast majority of their guns were legally manufactured in this country.  Gun manufacturers know that a percentage of their product will never be sold legally, but they continue to produce them in ever greater quantities.  Somewhere between leaving the Smith and Wesson, Colt, and Remington factories and arriving on our streets, a legal entity is making a fortune selling guns to all comers.  But because of the strangle hold that the gun lobby has on our state and national legislatures, nothing is done to interdict this lucrative trade, nor to stem the production of so many more guns than could ever be sold through legitimate commercial businesses.  No matter how far out one's interpretation of the Second Amendment may be  no one could possibly argue this system of runaway firearm proliferation is  what the Framers of our Bill of Rights had in mind.

Next, I honestly have no problem with law abiding citizens who feel the need for a source of home protection in being able to purchase a gun.  But this idea of demanding the right to openly carry a loaded weapon out among the rest of us is selfishly unsafe and downright bizarre.  If nothing else, Jared Loughner proved that one can wreak unspeakable carnage in a matter of seconds, once he had pulled his weapon from beneath his sweatshirt .  And it is pure fantasy to believe that some gun toting citizen could have reacted decisively and quickly enough to save any lives.  It takes law enforcement officers and our military years of rigorous training to learn how to most effectively use their weapons, and even they make their share of tragic mistakes.  So what now, we all pull out our guns and open fire and all our bullets magically find the appropriate targets?  That is juvenile fantasy at best and a gross violation of civic responsibility at its worst.  Yet that is what many gun advocates are now promoting. Incredibly, some on the far right in Congress have called for members to begin packing heat on the House and Senate floor.  That could make for some interesting outcomes during heated debates. Are these people that crazy?  What are they thinking?  Just in case a person in the gallery wants me dead I will quickly spin, draw my pistol with lightning like reflexes, and then get off a spectacular shot putting down an evil doer one hundred feet away.

Finally, the very least we should do is reinstate the Brady Bill ban on all assault weapons, magazines, and ammunition from our society, with the exception of our military and our law enforcement personnel.  Military-style assault weapons have one purpose and one purpose only and that is to kill as many people as possible in the briefest period of time.  As all the rest of the civilized world is moving further away from the kind of violence that these instruments of death create, we seem hell bent on plunging into headlong into the abyss.  And to those of you who are so paranoid that you believe that your M-16 is the only thing protecting you from a tyrannical American government, then I would suggest two things.  One, you are way too delusional to be entrusted with such powerful weapons in the first place, and two, you aren't really much of a patriot after all if you are convinced that our democracy is little more than a sham waiting for the first opportunity to enslave you.  May I suggest you take your guns and conspiratorial beliefs to a place where they might actually be applied. . . Somalia, The Sudan, North Korea, Iran, or Burma. Now those people could really use someone like you.