Oct 11, 2019 | Politics
From Kavanaugh calls out racism on first day of new Supreme Court term — Quartz:
The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on the constitutionality of a Louisiana law that allows criminal convictions based on jury verdicts that aren’t unanimous.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out that the Louisiana law had racist roots. He noted that there were two “practical reasons” to overrule the precedent the state relied on. One was unfairness to defendants who may well have a constitutional right to a unanimous jury, and the other was the law’s apparently racist intent. “The rule in question here is rooted in a—in racism, you know, rooted in a desire, apparently, to diminish the voices of black jurors,” the justice told the state’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Murrill. “Why aren’t those two things enough to overrule… unfairness to defendants and rooted in racism?” he asked Murrill. She replied that the law was not “fundamentally unfair.” But Kavanaugh didn’t look convinced.
Although the conservative justice seems a somewhat unlikely champion of minorities, he recently also authored the majority opinion in a case reversing a quadruple murder conviction based on a racist jury selection process and is actually steeped in the topic. The opinion was an eloquent condemnation of racism.
Kavanaugh’s unexpected question was just one sign that, as ever, it will be impossible to predict where the justices fall on any issue until they reveal their decisions.
Kavanaugh only “seems a somewhat unlikely champion of minorities” to actual collectivists, toxic “feminists” and “reverse” racists who claim to speak for minorities.
Oct 8, 2019 | Politics
Speech by Davy Crockett (House of Representatives 1827 -1831, and 1833 -1835) in regards giving government relief to the widow of a Naval officer:
Mr. Speaker—I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him. This government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the War of 1812 precisely the same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor; but if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity.Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much of our own money as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.
Comments Hal Gordon, a former speechwriter at Reagan White House in “Drain the Swamp”? Davy Crockett Did It With a Speech | Vital Speeches:
When Crockett sat down, the bill was dead. He had shamed it to death. Furthermore, according to [his biographer and friend Edward] Ellis, not a single member of Congress offered to join him in contributing a week’s pay for the relief of poor widow, about whose plight so many of them had waxed eloquent when they thought they were going to be spending the taxpayers’ money rather than their own.At that time, the records of the House did not include transcripts of speeches made on the floor. So some historians have questioned the authenticity of Crockett’s speech. But Crockett is known to have opposed a similar bill in 1828, and the speech certainly sounds like him.So does the observation that Ellis says Crockett made to him in private afterwards:
There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a week’s pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men—men who think nothing of spending a week’s pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased—a debt which could not be paid by money—and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it.
Oct 7, 2019 | Philosophy, Politics
From Yang2020 – Andrew Yang for President:- Create a Department of the Attention Economy that focuses specifically on smartphones, social media, gaming and chat apps and how to responsibly design and use them, including age restrictions and guidelines.
- Create a “best practices” design philosophy for the industry to minimize the antisocial impacts of these technologies on children who are using them….
Sounds pretty innocuous (and unnecessary as the market is far better at doing these things than a tax-payer subsidized committee of political appointees), until we get to the last point:- Direct the Department to investigate the regulation of certain companies and apps. Many of these companies essentially function as public utilities and news sources – we used to regulate broadcast networks, newspapers and phone companies. We need to do the same thing to Facebook, Twitter, Snap and other companies now that they are the primary ways people both receive information and communicate with each other.
So the New York Times, WaPo and WSJ are like the phone company? So much for the first amendment. And don’t get too successful at what you do — or if you are a “certain” company on Yang’s crap list, you will become a “public utility” and lose your rights under Yang style “public interest” censorship. Yang’s “Human-Centered Capitalism” sounds a lot of like old fashioned fascism mixed with socialist-style welfare schemes.Who is the public interest? “C’est Moi!” says Fuhrer Yang.For those “Yang Gang’ers” who welcome federal censorship under a Yang Presidency, ask yourself if you would like the President to have such powers under a Trump government?(Yang has removed from his site his previous call for a Federal Censor or “News Ombudsman” who will provide “penalties for persistent and destructive misstatements that undermine public discourse.”) 