The Constitution of the United States has failed
This is not fine.
What kind of nation allows the loser of a national election to become president — and then does it again 16 years later?
What kind of nation retains an electoral process that was originally designed to inflate the influence of slaveholders?
What kind of nation permits its Congress to write a time bomb into law that periodically forces rival factions into a game of chicken that could wreck the world economy?
What kind of nation fights a civil war over the question of whether people of African descent are people or property, and then looks the other way when the loser ignores the resolution of that war? What kind of nation waits until 1965 to guarantee black people’s right to vote?
Americans speak of our Constitution as if it were a religious text. To label a law “unconstitutional” is not simply to say that it violates some procedural rule or legal technicality, it is to label it fundamentally unAmerican. To do so is to question the values of any lawmaker despicable enough to support such a law, and to suggest that those values are at odds with who we are as a nation.
But our Constitution has not served us nearly as well as we would have been served by other systems adopted by our peer nations. Nor has it lived up to the expectations of its drafters.
Now, our country is facing a man of superlative ignorance. A racist. An admitted sexual assaulter of women. A man poised to violate the Constitution the very instant he takes the oath of office. A man who openly encouraged Russia’s efforts to usher him into the White House. A man who owes his election to the underhanded efforts of deep state actors within our nation’s internal police agency. A man who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. And the Constitution has placed this man in the White House.
The Constitution gave Donald Trump command of the world’s most powerful military and an nuclear arsenal that can eradicate all life on Earth. It let him name a racist as our nation’s top enforcer of its laws. It let him use his office to sell hotel rooms to foreign diplomats. The Electoral College has voted. Trump will be our next president. This is what the Constitution hath wrought.
It did this because our Constitution remains the product of a compromise with moral monsters who believed that human beings could be owned as property. It did this because our Constitution offers no guarantee, or even much in the way of likelihood, that the men and women elected to lead the country will share the preferences of the nation as a whole. It did this because our Constitution fosters voter ignorance. It did this because our Constitution can be gamed — and was gamed quite successfully by the Republican Party.
The price of peace
There are competing theories for why America has an Electoral College. One, offered by Alexander Hamilton in an advocacy document written to persuade the nation to support its new Constitution, is that it would allow “men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to” the presidency to determine who should hold that crucial job.
Another theory, which Hamilton did not include in his sales pitch for the Constitution, is that the Electoral College was part of the price northerners had to pay in order to form a union with states whose entire economic model depended on slavery.
Regardless of which theory you prefer, it is undeniable that the Electoral College now serves the second goal of giving a leg up to racists far better than it serves the first. In 2016, the electors themselves are almost entirely obscurities — party activists who are typically selected more for their willingness to cast a vote for their party’s candidate than for their ability to analyse the qualities best adapted to the presidency. Even if they’d wanted to elect someone other than Donald Trump as the president, they lack the stature necessary to quell unrest that would likely ensue.
What the Electoral College has done is steal the presidency from the woman who won it, and given it to a man who openly campaigned on racism and nativism. It’s the sort of outcome that would make many of the Founding Fathers smile — the ones who demanded a terrible price as the cost of Union.
To be sure, there were good men at the Philadelphia convention that drafted the original Constitution. There were men who, as Gouverner Morris said in a speech to the convention, saw slavery as a “nefarious institution” and “the curse of heaven on the States where it prevailed.” There were also delegates from large states who stood for the very simple proposition that a vote from Virginia should count exactly the same amount as a vote from Delaware.
Yet these good men traded away their convictions. The new Constitution explicitly protected slavery. It allowed slave states to count each slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of calculating representation in the House and the Electoral College, even though those slaves could not vote. And it created the Senate, an anti-democratic body which today counts each person in Wyoming as 67 times more important than each person in California.
The good men in Philadelphia agreed to these terms in service of a singular goal: peace through Union. As Yale’s Akhil Amar explains, the Articles of Confederation, the loose alliance of states that preceded the Constitution, conceived of the United States as “an alliance, a multilateral treaty of sovereign nation-states.” Pennsylvania was as much a separate a sovereign nation from Virginia as Russia is today separate from China. The Articles largely bound these nations into a pact of mutual commerce and defense.
Nevertheless, the framers were well-versed in European history. They knew of the frequent warfare which plagued that continent, and they came to see Union as the best defense against a similar fate. As Amar describes their concerns, “each nation-state might well raise an army, ostensibly to protect itself against Indians or Europeans, but also perhaps to awe its neighbors. America would then recreate continental Europe — borders, armies, dictators, chains, and all.”
The threat from such armies, moreover, was twofold. As Hamilton warned, these armies could themselves be turned against the people, becoming “engines of despotism” that would lead the states in a “progressive direction toward monarchy.” Standing armies were a threat, not just to rival states, but to the people of their home states.
More than two centuries later, the Founding Fathers’ belief that their Constitution would keep America from keeping a standing army is quaint. The United States has the most powerful military in the world, in addition to a network of federal police, intelligence agencies, and an entire cabinet department devoted to internal security. Perhaps these institutions will balk if Trump orders them to impose the kind of tyranny Hamilton feared, but the Constitution sure did not stop them from being built.
It also didn’t save us from war among the states. The early history of the United States was an uneasy peace broken by regional conflicts and near-misses — the Nullification Crisis, Bleeding Kansas, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. And then the war came, a four year conflict that killed between 2 and 3 percent of the nation’s entire population.
Our Founding Fathers traded away democracy. They traded away the fundamental principle that every American’s vote is equal. They traded away every person’s inalienable right to freedom. And they’d traded it away for nothing.
Three generations of lost rights
If you go to the American South today, and you speak to a black person over the age of 50, you are most likely speaking to someone who was born into an apartheid state. If you speak to someone over the age of 70, that person probably had their voting rights stolen from them by a white supremacist regime.
This is not ancient history. These are flesh and blood Americans who live and work among us. America became a liberal democracy in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Free and fair elections, at least at the nationwide level, are not something we have all that much experience with.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the Civil War was won, the victors demanded a new covenant. They wrote slavery out of our Constitution. They wrote freedmen’s right to vote into the Constitution. And, in the most sweeping and radical change that has ever been written into the Constitution, they completely reworked the balance of power between the states and the people.
The Fourteenth Amendment declared, for the first time in American history, that everyone born in the United States is a citizen and that every citizen enjoys certain rights solely because they are an American (without this amendment, states were free to violate the Bill of Rights). It provided that no one can be stripped of their liberty without appropriate legal process, and it insisted on equal treatment along racial lines.
Yet, for much of the next century, the South gleefully ignored these guarantees. “Black codes” relegated freedmen to a status that was often difficult to distinguish from actual slavery. Black men were arrested for minor or even fabricated offenses, then rented out to whites as cheap labor. Jim Crow segregated African Americans and stripped them of their vote. And if anyone dared to question white supremacy, they were quieted by terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which often worked in close coordination with the state.
There are many villains in this saga. The resilience of white supremacist government in the South occurred because the Supreme Court largely sat on its hands, often explicitly embracing the South’s most odious practices. It happened because the rest of the nation lost its nerve, abandoning Reconstruction for a peace built from the bones of black Americans. It happened because of immoral men willing to use murder as a tool of political control. But white supremacy also thrived because of the Founding Fathers.
Remember that compromise? The one that gave Alabama exactly the same number of senators as New York? It also prevented Congress from enacting a single civil rights law from 1875 until 1957.
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was one of Congress’ final serious attempts to reconstruct the South. Enacted just over a year before Rutherford B. Hayes sold out black America in order to secure his presidency, the Act banned racial discrimination by “inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement.” It survived eight years before it was struck by the Supreme Court.
Though new civil rights legislation sometimes passed the House — five such bills did so in the 12 years following World War II — none of this legislation survived contact with the Senate. The same Senate malapportionment that, for many years, gave slave states parity with free states in Congress’ upper house, despite the fact that the free population in the North significantly exceeded that of the South, now gave the Jim Crow states a far louder voice in the Senate than their population warranted.
That thumb on the scale, combined with the filibuster, was enough to keep civil rights bills from becoming law.
Nearly six decades after the Senate finally ended its blockade of all civil rights laws, malapportionment continues to advantage conservatives and stymie progressives. To give just one example, the 54 senators who make up the current Republican majority (and who effectively kept the Supreme Court in Republican hands by preventing Chief Judge Merrick Garland from being confirmed to fill its vacant seat) represent fewer than 150 million people. The 46 senators in the Democratic majority, meanwhile, represent more than 170 million.
What’s more, according to the group FairVote, “the 46 Democratic caucus members in the 114th Congress received a total of 67.8 million votes in winning their seats, while the 54 Republican caucus members received 47.1 million votes.”
The ungovernable nation
Even setting aside the undemocratic Senate, the United States is an outlier among our peer democracies because of the unusual number of roadblocks our Constitution places before any bill that seeks to become law.
America’s separation of powers, which typically requires consensus among the president, two houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court — not to mention the cooperation of congressional leaders and committee chairs who have outsized power to hold up legislation — is generally taught to schoolchildren as if it were divine wisdom delivered to the Founding Fathers at Mt. Sinai. But it is a highly unusual system, in no small part because so many democracies that adopted similar models failed.
In his seminal essay “The Perils of Presidentialism,” the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz warned about the danger inherent in a constitutional system, like the one in the United States, which elects the nation’s chief executive separately from its legislature. In such a system, it is easy for two irreconcilable factions to each gain control of at least one veto point that enables them to halt the legislative process. Moreover, because both sides “derive their power from the votes of the people in a free competition among well-defined alternatives,” there’s no “democratic principle” that can be cited to break such an impasse.
As one Republican lawmaker defended his party’s actions in the lead up to the 2013 government shutdown, “I too won an election. You want me to just disregard all of my voters and all of the promises that I made and how I got elected?” The shutdown happened because both our Democratic president and our Republican House had an equal claim to democratic legitimacy.
The shutdown is an unhappy memory, but it is hardly the worse case scenario for what can happen if the president and the legislature face a unsolvable disagreement. It is “no accident,” Linz recalled of other nations that have faced such an impasse, “that in some such situations in the past, the armed forces were often tempted to intervene as a mediating power.”
The United States, fortunately, did not reach the point where Obama and former House Speaker John Boenher (R) needed to start counting their loyalists among the nation’s generals and admirals. But there’s still plenty of evidence of the issues that Linz is referencing in U.S. government.
Our stagnant, imperfect democracy leaves many problems — crumbling infrastructure, a job market that still has not fully recovered from the recession — unaddressed or underaddressed. It also denies voters much of the feedback that they need in order to cast their ballots wisely.
A likely reason why Republicans felt hornswoggled when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law is that they had good reason to believe that such a thing wasn’t possible. After all, every Democratic president since Harry Truman (as well as Republican Richard Nixon) promised a universal health plan. Yet, for more than six decades, they failed. Failed health care reform plans were as American as baseball and capitalism. It’s hard to blame Obama’s opponents for thinking they were safe from the horrors of affordable health care for the less fortunate.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s fiscal proposals, which include deep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, a plan to charge seniors up to 40 percent more for inferior health coverage, and big tax cuts for the highest earners, are unpopular with the general public, unpopular with Republicans, and unpopular even with most Republican donors. Pretty much the only people who like these proposals are rich Republican donors.
And yet, somehow, the American people just elected a Republican Congress that is poised to enact these unpopular proposals and a president (albeit not with anything close to a majority vote) who is likely to sign them into law. How can this be? Why did so many voters condemn themselves to policies that they hate?
Vox’s Sarah Kliff offers one explanation for this dichotomy. In a recent trip to a Kentucky town that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, despite the fact that many of its residents depend upon Obamacare for health coverage, she heard a frequent refrain. In Kliff’s words, these voters “just couldn’t fathom the idea that this new coverage would be taken away from them.”
In one of the most heartbreaking interviews in Kliff’s piece, a voter whose husband is waiting for a liver transplant was able to get health insurance for her family thanks to Obamacare. Yet she told Kliff that she backed Trump because “I guess I thought that, you know, he would not do this, he would not take health insurance away knowing it would affect so many people’s lives.”
In 2012, a Democratic super PAC convened a focus group to assess whether Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s support for the GOP’s fiscal proposals could be used against him. Yet the focus group’s reactions to these proposals resembled the conversations Kliff had with Trump voters in Kentucky. When the super PAC “informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan — and thus championed ‘ending Medicare as we know it’ — while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.”
The Constitution of the United States, in other words, built a nation where elections frequently don’t have significant consequences. In doing so, it lulled many voters into a false sense of security. It taught them not to believe politicians’ promises because, chances are, those promises won’t be implemented anyway.
And then, when a party actually does bring about sweeping radical change, the same voters seem flabbergasted that the government they elected actually did what it said it would do.
The risk of permanence
One good thing that can be said about unified Republican control of Congress and the White House is that it is likely to break this cycle. If Republicans succeed in repealing Obamacare, replacing Medicare with a voucher program, slashing Medicaid, cutting Social Security benefits by 20–50 percent, and using the savings to put more money in the wealthiest Americans’ pockets, then it will be hard to pretend that elections don’t matter. Or that voters shouldn’t pay attention to a party’s ideas before they cast a ballot for its candidates.
But the biggest danger arising from unified Republican government isn’t that it will enact bad policies that might be repealed later. It is that the GOP will use its moment at the apex of power to ensure that it can never be displaced from this position.
In many ways, this process began long before Donald Trump even declared his candidacy. Over the last several years, voter suppression laws thrived in Republican-led states. Meanwhile, these laws — many of which are unconstitutional — have survived judicial review thanks to a GOP-dominated Supreme Court that even went so far as to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.
There are also strong arguments that partisan gerrymandering violates either the First Amendment’s protections against viewpoint discrimination, or the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. Yet Republicans on the Supreme Court also thwarted efforts to combat such gerrymandering in court. These decisions, combined with geographic factors that advantage Republicans, prevent Democrats from enacting legislation even when they win. In 2012, for example, Democratic House candidates won nearly 1.4 million more votes than Republicans. Yet the GOP kept control of the House.
There are many good things in our Constitution. But they don’t mean very much if the Supreme Court is unwilling to enforce them.
Once Trump adds another Republican justice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Court’s first orders of business will probably be a long-pending dispute that seeks to hobble public sector unions’ ability to fund themselves — it is highly likely that Trump’s nominee will provide the fifth vote to inflict this wound on unions. That not only means lower wages for government workers in the long run, but also means Democrats will lose much of the political infrastructure that these unions provide.
And enabling voter suppression while carving up unions is really only a small part of the damage a truly partisan Supreme Court could inflict upon democratic governance. In the worse case scenario, a Supreme Court stacked with Trump justices could recreate the early twentieth century, when minimum wage laws, child labor laws, and much of the New Deal were blocked by an ideological Court that did not feel especially constrained by the text of the Constitution.
Despite all the obstacles laid by voter suppression and similar tactics, Democrats could claw their way back into congressional majorities and the White House — only to discover that their efforts to roll back Trump era legislation will be struck down by Republicans on the Supreme Court.
Learning the wrong lessons
If America holds a free and fair election in 2020, and if that election places a Democrat back in the White House, there’s a danger that liberals will learn the wrong lessons from four years of Donald Trump.
To be sure, some of the right lessons are obvious and unlikely to be missed. The Electoral College, for example, is a pathology that will have few informed defenders outside of the party that has twice seen its losing candidate declared the winner.
But conservatives also spent much of the last century spinning a fairly consistent narrative about what’s wrong with the American system of government. In their mythology, the problem with the United States is that it is too democratic. That it is too easy for the federal government to enact new programs and regulations. And that the way to save America is to erect barriers that make it harder for elected officials in Washington to govern.
This narrative is likely to have some appeal to liberals reeling from four years of Trump. The idea that Obamacare, or Medicare, or Social Security, could have been saved if only there’d been more veto points in our system will be appealing. We are likely to see just how bad things can get if government is able to move quickly.
If Brexit does prove to be a calamity, British voters will at least know who to blame.
But liberals will shoot themselves in the foot if they succumb to the appeal of a left-libertarian alliance whose sole goal is to keep future Presidents Trump from doing too much, too quickly. In the short term, they are likely to freeze government in the weakened state that four years of Donald Trump will produce. In the long term, such a single-minded alliance would exacerbate the constitutional defects that brought America to the point we find ourselves in today.
Today, as President-elect Donald Trump waits to take the oath of office, the nation of Great Britain faces a similar crisis. The Brexit campaign, which appealed to much of the same racism and nationalism that drove Trump’s campaign, is victorious. A web of alliances that helped end centuries of warfare within Europe is now at risk. British workers are expected to “make £38 less a week than their E.U. counterparts by the year 2030 once the country leaves the E.U.”
The British parliamentary system, which typically places a single party in charge of the entire government, did not prevent these outcomes. But if Brexit does prove to be a calamity, British voters will at least know who to blame. It was a Tory prime minister who allowed the Brexit vote, and a Tory government will manage the nation’s transition out of the European Union.
There can be no doubt in London that elections have consequences. And no further doubt about who foisted these consequences upon the British people.
And, if Tory candidates campaign on a plan to dismantle their nation’s universal health care system, British voters will know damn well that they better believe that these candidates will actually do it.
They won’t vote, as so many Americans did, to dismantle our social safety net by accident.
Source
Showing posts with label U.S. Supreme Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U.S. Supreme Court. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Don't let Obama put a liberal on the Supreme Court
From Freedom Works:
In 2009, a million of you marched on Washington to protect the Constitution from Obama and the progressives. Since then millions of you have signed petitions, made phone calls, sent emails, and even donated money to protect this sacred document. But believe me when I tell you, if Obama gets another liberal justice onto the Supreme Court, NONE OF IT WILL MATTER.
That’s how important this fight for the Supreme Court is, the soul of the country is what’s at stake here. Everything that you have fought for, everything you have built, will be wiped out if we lose this fight. That’s how powerful the Supreme Court is, that’s the damage another liberal on the Court can do. And that’s why FreedomWorks is doing everything we can to stop that from happening. But we can’t do it by ourselves, we need your support. That’s why I’m asking you to donate just $5 to our Supreme Court Defense Fund today.
I know you hate being asked to donate money. And believe me, I hate asking. But your donations are what make it possible for us to keep on fighting to protect the Constitution from the left. And if we lose this fight, well, I don’t to even want think about it.
But that’s not going to happen. In fact, I’ll spend every last dime we have before I let that happen, because I know I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t do everything I possibly can to save this country from decades of liberal judicial activism. And if you want to help me do it, please donate just $5 right now.
I’m laying it all on the line, I’ve shown you my hand. And I’m begging you, don’t let Obama win. Right now, we are winning this fight. But if we stop fighting, we will lose the Supreme Court for decades to come. So please chip in just $5 to help us protect everything we’ve fought so hard to accomplish.
I’m counting on you please don’t let me down.
For Freedom,
Adam Brandon
President & CEO, FreedomWorks
In 2009, a million of you marched on Washington to protect the Constitution from Obama and the progressives. Since then millions of you have signed petitions, made phone calls, sent emails, and even donated money to protect this sacred document. But believe me when I tell you, if Obama gets another liberal justice onto the Supreme Court, NONE OF IT WILL MATTER.
That’s how important this fight for the Supreme Court is, the soul of the country is what’s at stake here. Everything that you have fought for, everything you have built, will be wiped out if we lose this fight. That’s how powerful the Supreme Court is, that’s the damage another liberal on the Court can do. And that’s why FreedomWorks is doing everything we can to stop that from happening. But we can’t do it by ourselves, we need your support. That’s why I’m asking you to donate just $5 to our Supreme Court Defense Fund today.
I know you hate being asked to donate money. And believe me, I hate asking. But your donations are what make it possible for us to keep on fighting to protect the Constitution from the left. And if we lose this fight, well, I don’t to even want think about it.
But that’s not going to happen. In fact, I’ll spend every last dime we have before I let that happen, because I know I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t do everything I possibly can to save this country from decades of liberal judicial activism. And if you want to help me do it, please donate just $5 right now.
I’m laying it all on the line, I’ve shown you my hand. And I’m begging you, don’t let Obama win. Right now, we are winning this fight. But if we stop fighting, we will lose the Supreme Court for decades to come. So please chip in just $5 to help us protect everything we’ve fought so hard to accomplish.
I’m counting on you please don’t let me down.
For Freedom,
Adam Brandon
President & CEO, FreedomWorks
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Tell these Senators not to cave into Obama's demands
From Freedom Works:
You deserve to have a voice in selecting Justice Scalia’s successor to the Supreme Court. But some in Washington don’t want that to happen. They’d rather let Obama ram his nominee through the Senate, just to score cheap political points with the liberal media. This is wrong, and it’s up to you to stop them. Call these moderate senators today at 201-571-1178 and tell them to oppose any Supreme Court hearings or confirmation until next year.
We know that Obama’s doing everything he can to force these weak-kneed senators into giving him what he wants. He’s even got his friends in the liberal media and Hollywood pressuring them. And if you don’t fight back, they will cave! That’s why I’m asking you to call these senators at 201-571-1178 and tell them to oppose any Supreme Court confirmation while Obama is in office.
Let’s keep freedom working on the Supreme Court.
For Freedom,
Adam Brandon
President & CEO, FreedomWorks
You deserve to have a voice in selecting Justice Scalia’s successor to the Supreme Court. But some in Washington don’t want that to happen. They’d rather let Obama ram his nominee through the Senate, just to score cheap political points with the liberal media. This is wrong, and it’s up to you to stop them. Call these moderate senators today at 201-571-1178 and tell them to oppose any Supreme Court hearings or confirmation until next year.
We know that Obama’s doing everything he can to force these weak-kneed senators into giving him what he wants. He’s even got his friends in the liberal media and Hollywood pressuring them. And if you don’t fight back, they will cave! That’s why I’m asking you to call these senators at 201-571-1178 and tell them to oppose any Supreme Court confirmation while Obama is in office.
Let’s keep freedom working on the Supreme Court.
For Freedom,
Adam Brandon
President & CEO, FreedomWorks
Monday, February 22, 2016
Remind Senate Republicans to block Obama's SCOTUS nomination
From Freedom Works:
Last Monday, I asked you to tell Mitch McConnell to keep his promise and block any Supreme Court nominee while Obama is in office. And boy did you ever. You’ve helped drive over 15,000 emails to McConnell’s office in just 7 days! But now we’re starting to see some of the entrenched establishment Republicans turn tail and run to side with Harry Reid and the Democrats. This is wrong and we must stop Senate Republicans from surrendering before it’s too late. Help us fight back with a contribution of $5 right now.
Having the ability to keep Obama’s liberal nominee out of the Supreme Court is critical to our country’s freedom. That’s why FreedomWorks is preparing to launch a massive grassroots campaign to make sure Senate Republicans don’t cave to Harry Reid and the Democrats. We know some of these spineless Senators can’t be trusted, and that’s why we’ve got to hit them with everything we’ve got. But if we’re going to make this campaign successful, we need your help. We need to raise $150,000 in the next 48 hours, but we won’t meet our goal unless we have your support. That’s why I’m asking you to chip in $5 right now.
If Obama gets away with his Supreme Court scheme, we could be saying hello to Justice Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch. And that means we’d lose every major case heard by the Court for decades to come. The Constitution would be ripped to shreds, our freedoms would vanish, and there would be nothing you could do to stop them.
If Obama gets another liberal on the Court, his “fundamental transformation” of America will be complete. And he’s using his friends in DC and in the media to bully these Senate Republicans into caving to his demands. That’s why we’ve got to keep the pressure on these senators. FreedomWorks is prepared to see this through until Obama’s out of office. But we won’t be able to do it without your support. Can we count on you to help us meet our goal? Donate $5 right now to help us keep the fight alive and stop the Supreme Court from turning into a den of radical liberalism.
Freedom only works if you’re willing to fight for it. And now is that time.
For Freedom,
Adam Brandon
President & CEO, FreedomWorks
Last Monday, I asked you to tell Mitch McConnell to keep his promise and block any Supreme Court nominee while Obama is in office. And boy did you ever. You’ve helped drive over 15,000 emails to McConnell’s office in just 7 days! But now we’re starting to see some of the entrenched establishment Republicans turn tail and run to side with Harry Reid and the Democrats. This is wrong and we must stop Senate Republicans from surrendering before it’s too late. Help us fight back with a contribution of $5 right now.
Having the ability to keep Obama’s liberal nominee out of the Supreme Court is critical to our country’s freedom. That’s why FreedomWorks is preparing to launch a massive grassroots campaign to make sure Senate Republicans don’t cave to Harry Reid and the Democrats. We know some of these spineless Senators can’t be trusted, and that’s why we’ve got to hit them with everything we’ve got. But if we’re going to make this campaign successful, we need your help. We need to raise $150,000 in the next 48 hours, but we won’t meet our goal unless we have your support. That’s why I’m asking you to chip in $5 right now.
If Obama gets away with his Supreme Court scheme, we could be saying hello to Justice Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch. And that means we’d lose every major case heard by the Court for decades to come. The Constitution would be ripped to shreds, our freedoms would vanish, and there would be nothing you could do to stop them.
If Obama gets another liberal on the Court, his “fundamental transformation” of America will be complete. And he’s using his friends in DC and in the media to bully these Senate Republicans into caving to his demands. That’s why we’ve got to keep the pressure on these senators. FreedomWorks is prepared to see this through until Obama’s out of office. But we won’t be able to do it without your support. Can we count on you to help us meet our goal? Donate $5 right now to help us keep the fight alive and stop the Supreme Court from turning into a den of radical liberalism.
Freedom only works if you’re willing to fight for it. And now is that time.
For Freedom,
Adam Brandon
President & CEO, FreedomWorks
Friday, November 20, 2015
Rand Paul on the issues including eminent domain
Did Rand Paul just say that Trump favors eminent domain? Yes he did because that is what Donald Trump said:
Trump says that eminent domain is a good thing and it is never abused? Who is he bullshitting? Check this out:
Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
Eminent domain Hawaiian style:
John Stossel addresses eminent domain:
Friday, October 30, 2015
End union violence
From The National Right To Work Committee:
Armed with phony protest signs attached to baseball bats along with other "concealed" makeshift weapons, more than 500 International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) militants stormed the port in Longview, Washington.
Slashing tires, breaking windows, cutting the brake lines of fully loaded railway cars, dumping shipments of grain into the dirt, the ILWU mob slowly made their way to a group of six port security guards determined to stop their march.
Outnumbered, the guards were quickly forced to retreat into their guard shack where they were held hostage until the police were finally able to restore order.
If any other common criminals were to destroy property and hold people hostage, they would be put behind bars where they belong.
Yet, not one of these union thugs was arrested!
But the shocking thing is: Stories like this one, even though they don’t make national news, are repeated again and again.
That’s why I hope you will immediately sign the petition I've created to your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
I'll give you the link below, but first I want you to know how important it is you join this fight today.
You see, you and I have an opportunity to ultimately put an end to this kind of union violence.
The fact is, for nearly 40 years union bosses and their enforcers have committed thousands of reported incidents of violence, extortion, vandalism and even murder -- and untold thousands more that go unreported.
And in virtually every case, these vicious acts of violence and intimidation have gone unpunished.
That’s because of the Supreme Court’s infamous 1973 Enmons decision which granted union bosses immunity from prosecution under federal law for acts of violence and vandalism orchestrated in the so-called "pursuit of legitimate union objectives."
This outrageous loophole in federal law has effectively tied the hands of law enforcement and has permitted union bosses and their handpicked "enforcers" to use any means necessary to achieve their often violent goals.
It is no secret that union bosses are all too happy to use violence and terror to achieve their number one goal: Corral more working men and women into forced-dues-paying ranks.
So will you sign this petition to your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in favor of the Freedom from Union Violence Act (S. 62)?
In the Longview case, at least no one was shot.
Unfortunately, John King, the owner of a mid-size Toledo electrical contracting business, wasn’t so lucky when he was shot by a union thug in the dead of night.
You see, Mr. King’s business had been a regular target for a union boss takeover by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).
They nearly succeeded, that is until the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the IBEW’s certification after it was shown that the union bosses lied to King’s employees, promising them electrician jobs on union sites if they voted the union into his company.
At that point, the IBEW’s "corporate campaign" of harassment, vandalism and death threats returned with a vengeance.
King, along with his employees, was the regular target of union militants who would routinely slash the tires of their cars and throw rocks through the company’s windows.
As King put it: "It was nothing to have to regularly buy a new set of tires . . . the ice pick was the weapon of choice."
Then things turned uglier when the IBEW militants turned their attention not to King’s company, but this time to his home.
Late one night while getting ready for bed, King noticed the motion lights turn on in his driveway.
When he went out to investigate, he was confronted by a union thug who had just finished spray painting the word "SCAB" across King’s SUV and was set to puncture his tires.
When King yelled, the man didn’t say a word. Instead he stood up, and without hesitation pulled out a gun and shot King.
Fortunately, Mr. King lived. Others have not been so lucky.
That’s why I hope you will join our effort to make sure union bosses are held accountable for the acts of violence they commit.
But to do this, your help is crucial.
The fact is, union violence reflects Big Labor’s coercive approach to organizing. Instead of relying on persuasion, union officials have routinely resorted to threats and compulsion to add to their dues-paying ranks.
Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO’s president, is a case in point.
When asked about union violence, Mr. Trumka coldly replied: "I’m saying if you strike a match and put your finger in it, you’re likely to get burned."
You see, Big Labor bosses think a chunk of every workers’ paycheck is rightfully theirs -- and history proves they’ll do almost anything to get it.
That’s why the Freedom from Union Violence Act (S. 62) should be a top priority in Congress.
And I hope you'll sign this petition right away insisting your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell take this issue seriously.
With your help, your Committee plans to . . .
***Mobilize hundreds of thousands of Americans, through mail, email and by phone, to put pressure on their Senators to cosponsor and seek roll-call votes on the Freedom from Union Violence Act.
***Run hard-hitting internet, radio, T.V. and newspaper ads, which we plan to run in the home states of swing Senators -- calling on them by name to support the Freedom from Union Violence Act.
***Personally brief hundreds of influential nationally syndicated columnists, editorial writers and talk show hosts to shine a spotlight on the outrage of union violence and build pressure on Congress to hold a vote.
***Hold accountable any politician who votes against the Freedom from Union Violence Act -- not just at the time of the vote but all the way to their next election.
So, as a first step, I hope you will sign this petition to your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Next, I hope I can count on you to chip in $10 or $20 to help the National Right to Work Committee pay for and, just as importantly, expand this critical program.
Your action today will go a long way in pushing Congress to take a stand and put an end to this outrage.
And then, in next year’s Election, voters across the country will know which of their politicians acted to end union violence and which of them still have blood on their hands.
So, please, sign this petition today.
And, if at all possible, chip in $10 or $20 to the National Right to Work Committee, so we can mobilize the grassroots army needed to finally close this Big Labor loophole of violence.
With your help, we’ll ultimately end Big Labor’s government- sanctioned reign of terror once and for all.
Sincerely,
Mark Mix
P.S. Today we have the opportunity to finally close the loophole in federal law and bring union bosses under the same laws that protect us from other brutal thugs and criminals.
So, please, sign this petition demanding your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cosponsor and seek roll-call votes on the Freedom from Union Violence Act (S. 62).
And, if at all possible, chip in $10, $20 or whatever you can afford to the National Right to Work Committee today.
Armed with phony protest signs attached to baseball bats along with other "concealed" makeshift weapons, more than 500 International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) militants stormed the port in Longview, Washington.
Slashing tires, breaking windows, cutting the brake lines of fully loaded railway cars, dumping shipments of grain into the dirt, the ILWU mob slowly made their way to a group of six port security guards determined to stop their march.
Outnumbered, the guards were quickly forced to retreat into their guard shack where they were held hostage until the police were finally able to restore order.
If any other common criminals were to destroy property and hold people hostage, they would be put behind bars where they belong.
Yet, not one of these union thugs was arrested!
But the shocking thing is: Stories like this one, even though they don’t make national news, are repeated again and again.
That’s why I hope you will immediately sign the petition I've created to your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
I'll give you the link below, but first I want you to know how important it is you join this fight today.
You see, you and I have an opportunity to ultimately put an end to this kind of union violence.
The fact is, for nearly 40 years union bosses and their enforcers have committed thousands of reported incidents of violence, extortion, vandalism and even murder -- and untold thousands more that go unreported.
And in virtually every case, these vicious acts of violence and intimidation have gone unpunished.
That’s because of the Supreme Court’s infamous 1973 Enmons decision which granted union bosses immunity from prosecution under federal law for acts of violence and vandalism orchestrated in the so-called "pursuit of legitimate union objectives."
This outrageous loophole in federal law has effectively tied the hands of law enforcement and has permitted union bosses and their handpicked "enforcers" to use any means necessary to achieve their often violent goals.
It is no secret that union bosses are all too happy to use violence and terror to achieve their number one goal: Corral more working men and women into forced-dues-paying ranks.
So will you sign this petition to your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in favor of the Freedom from Union Violence Act (S. 62)?
In the Longview case, at least no one was shot.
Unfortunately, John King, the owner of a mid-size Toledo electrical contracting business, wasn’t so lucky when he was shot by a union thug in the dead of night.
You see, Mr. King’s business had been a regular target for a union boss takeover by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).
They nearly succeeded, that is until the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the IBEW’s certification after it was shown that the union bosses lied to King’s employees, promising them electrician jobs on union sites if they voted the union into his company.
At that point, the IBEW’s "corporate campaign" of harassment, vandalism and death threats returned with a vengeance.
King, along with his employees, was the regular target of union militants who would routinely slash the tires of their cars and throw rocks through the company’s windows.
As King put it: "It was nothing to have to regularly buy a new set of tires . . . the ice pick was the weapon of choice."
Then things turned uglier when the IBEW militants turned their attention not to King’s company, but this time to his home.
Late one night while getting ready for bed, King noticed the motion lights turn on in his driveway.
When he went out to investigate, he was confronted by a union thug who had just finished spray painting the word "SCAB" across King’s SUV and was set to puncture his tires.
When King yelled, the man didn’t say a word. Instead he stood up, and without hesitation pulled out a gun and shot King.
Fortunately, Mr. King lived. Others have not been so lucky.
That’s why I hope you will join our effort to make sure union bosses are held accountable for the acts of violence they commit.
But to do this, your help is crucial.
The fact is, union violence reflects Big Labor’s coercive approach to organizing. Instead of relying on persuasion, union officials have routinely resorted to threats and compulsion to add to their dues-paying ranks.
Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO’s president, is a case in point.
When asked about union violence, Mr. Trumka coldly replied: "I’m saying if you strike a match and put your finger in it, you’re likely to get burned."
You see, Big Labor bosses think a chunk of every workers’ paycheck is rightfully theirs -- and history proves they’ll do almost anything to get it.
That’s why the Freedom from Union Violence Act (S. 62) should be a top priority in Congress.
And I hope you'll sign this petition right away insisting your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell take this issue seriously.
With your help, your Committee plans to . . .
***Mobilize hundreds of thousands of Americans, through mail, email and by phone, to put pressure on their Senators to cosponsor and seek roll-call votes on the Freedom from Union Violence Act.
***Run hard-hitting internet, radio, T.V. and newspaper ads, which we plan to run in the home states of swing Senators -- calling on them by name to support the Freedom from Union Violence Act.
***Personally brief hundreds of influential nationally syndicated columnists, editorial writers and talk show hosts to shine a spotlight on the outrage of union violence and build pressure on Congress to hold a vote.
***Hold accountable any politician who votes against the Freedom from Union Violence Act -- not just at the time of the vote but all the way to their next election.
So, as a first step, I hope you will sign this petition to your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Next, I hope I can count on you to chip in $10 or $20 to help the National Right to Work Committee pay for and, just as importantly, expand this critical program.
Your action today will go a long way in pushing Congress to take a stand and put an end to this outrage.
And then, in next year’s Election, voters across the country will know which of their politicians acted to end union violence and which of them still have blood on their hands.
So, please, sign this petition today.
And, if at all possible, chip in $10 or $20 to the National Right to Work Committee, so we can mobilize the grassroots army needed to finally close this Big Labor loophole of violence.
With your help, we’ll ultimately end Big Labor’s government- sanctioned reign of terror once and for all.
Sincerely,
Mark Mix
P.S. Today we have the opportunity to finally close the loophole in federal law and bring union bosses under the same laws that protect us from other brutal thugs and criminals.
So, please, sign this petition demanding your U.S. Senators and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cosponsor and seek roll-call votes on the Freedom from Union Violence Act (S. 62).
And, if at all possible, chip in $10, $20 or whatever you can afford to the National Right to Work Committee today.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Support H.R. 1968 to defend Real Marriage
From Public Advocate:
The Supreme Court just struck down Real Marriage.
I can't say I'm surprised.
The Supreme Court Justices – controlled by the radical Homosexual Lobby - have now ruled 5-4 that homosexuals can be "married" anywhere in the United States, even if their state protects Real Marriage.
This is hardly the end of the fight for Real Marriage.
The radical Homosexual Lobby thinks Public Advocate and thousands of other pro-Family activists will just give up and quit.
But I will never stop fighting for Real Marriage.
In fact, we have an opportunity to strike back against the Supreme Court.
That's because Representative Steve King (R-IA) filed a bill to shred the Supreme Court's power to destroy Real Marriage.
King's "Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act" (H.R. 1968) will remove marriage from federal court jurisdiction and ban any federal funding used to enforce court orders against Real Marriage.
And Public Advocate has made this bill our top priority in Congress.
I've worked long hours to prepare a battle plan to fight back against the Supreme Court, but I need to know if I can still count on supporters like you.
That's why I'm hoping – after you sign your petition – you'll prayerfully consider supporting Public Advocate by chipping in $10 or $25 immediately.
Thousands of pro-Family Americans are outraged at this blatant display of radical judicial activism.
But I'm afraid if they don't know about this bill and Public Advocate's plan to fight for Real Marriage by passing the "Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act," they'll just give up and quietly quit.
And that's what the radical Homosexual Lobby – led by billionaire homosexual activist Tim Gill wants us to do.
But as long as I'm President of Public Advocate, I'll never quit on pro-Family Americans like you.
That's why it's important Public Advocate identifies and informs every pro-Family American that this is not the end of Real Marriage.
So after you sign Public Advocate's "Rein in the Supreme Court" petition to your representative, will you please consider chipping in $10 or $25 immediately to help Public Advocate be their voice in Congress?
This comes at a time when Public Advocate's funds are tied up defending Religious Liberty in all 50 states against the deep pockets of the radical Homosexual Lobby.
And if Public Advocate doesn't act promptly, we'll miss this opportunity to strike back against the Supreme Court.
That's why your contribution of $10 or $25 is so important.
It will help Public Advocate launch thousands of internet ads, reaching every pro-Family American outraged by this, and encouraging them to sign their online petitions so I can deliver them to Congress.
But if we don't have the funds to reach them I'll show up to Congress only to be ridiculed by radical Homosexual Lobbyists, who are using this ruling to springboard their next attack.
Members of Congress think pro-Family Americans like us will just quit after this Supreme Court ruling.
Now – more than ever – Public Advocate needs your support to fight back against the radical Homosexual Lobby.
So please, after you sign your petition, please consider chipping in $10 or $25 immediately to help Public Advocate be their voice in Congress.
We have no time to lose.
Thank you.
For the Family,
HON. EUGENE DELGAUDIO
President, Public Advocate of the United States
P.S. Once again, bad news is coming out of the Supreme Court. Their latest ruling just made homosexual "marriage" the law of the land.
But fortunately, the battle is just beginning as Representative Steve King (R-IA) is fighting back by filing the "Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act" (H.R. 1968) seeking to strip the Supreme Court's authority over marriage.
In order to move this bill through Congress, Public Advocate is counting on supporters to strike back immediately to help turn up the heat on Congress.
That's why after you sign the "Rein in the Supreme Court" petition, I'm counting on you to please consider chipping in $10 or $25 to help Public Advocate reach thousands of outraged pro-Family Americans.
The Supreme Court just struck down Real Marriage.
I can't say I'm surprised.
The Supreme Court Justices – controlled by the radical Homosexual Lobby - have now ruled 5-4 that homosexuals can be "married" anywhere in the United States, even if their state protects Real Marriage.
This is hardly the end of the fight for Real Marriage.
The radical Homosexual Lobby thinks Public Advocate and thousands of other pro-Family activists will just give up and quit.
But I will never stop fighting for Real Marriage.
In fact, we have an opportunity to strike back against the Supreme Court.
That's because Representative Steve King (R-IA) filed a bill to shred the Supreme Court's power to destroy Real Marriage.
King's "Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act" (H.R. 1968) will remove marriage from federal court jurisdiction and ban any federal funding used to enforce court orders against Real Marriage.
And Public Advocate has made this bill our top priority in Congress.
I've worked long hours to prepare a battle plan to fight back against the Supreme Court, but I need to know if I can still count on supporters like you.
That's why I'm hoping – after you sign your petition – you'll prayerfully consider supporting Public Advocate by chipping in $10 or $25 immediately.
Thousands of pro-Family Americans are outraged at this blatant display of radical judicial activism.
But I'm afraid if they don't know about this bill and Public Advocate's plan to fight for Real Marriage by passing the "Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act," they'll just give up and quietly quit.
And that's what the radical Homosexual Lobby – led by billionaire homosexual activist Tim Gill wants us to do.
But as long as I'm President of Public Advocate, I'll never quit on pro-Family Americans like you.
That's why it's important Public Advocate identifies and informs every pro-Family American that this is not the end of Real Marriage.
So after you sign Public Advocate's "Rein in the Supreme Court" petition to your representative, will you please consider chipping in $10 or $25 immediately to help Public Advocate be their voice in Congress?
This comes at a time when Public Advocate's funds are tied up defending Religious Liberty in all 50 states against the deep pockets of the radical Homosexual Lobby.
And if Public Advocate doesn't act promptly, we'll miss this opportunity to strike back against the Supreme Court.
That's why your contribution of $10 or $25 is so important.
It will help Public Advocate launch thousands of internet ads, reaching every pro-Family American outraged by this, and encouraging them to sign their online petitions so I can deliver them to Congress.
But if we don't have the funds to reach them I'll show up to Congress only to be ridiculed by radical Homosexual Lobbyists, who are using this ruling to springboard their next attack.
Members of Congress think pro-Family Americans like us will just quit after this Supreme Court ruling.
Now – more than ever – Public Advocate needs your support to fight back against the radical Homosexual Lobby.
So please, after you sign your petition, please consider chipping in $10 or $25 immediately to help Public Advocate be their voice in Congress.
We have no time to lose.
Thank you.
For the Family,
HON. EUGENE DELGAUDIO
President, Public Advocate of the United States
P.S. Once again, bad news is coming out of the Supreme Court. Their latest ruling just made homosexual "marriage" the law of the land.
But fortunately, the battle is just beginning as Representative Steve King (R-IA) is fighting back by filing the "Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act" (H.R. 1968) seeking to strip the Supreme Court's authority over marriage.
In order to move this bill through Congress, Public Advocate is counting on supporters to strike back immediately to help turn up the heat on Congress.
That's why after you sign the "Rein in the Supreme Court" petition, I'm counting on you to please consider chipping in $10 or $25 to help Public Advocate reach thousands of outraged pro-Family Americans.
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