Dems reaping what they sowed

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BTS
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Dems reaping what they sowed

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Because of a law Massachusetts lawmakers passed when Senator John F. Kerry ran for president in 2004, when they sought to blunt the effect of a possible Senate appointment by then-Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, there is no appointment process to replace a vacancy in a US Senate seat. Instead, like only two other states, Oregon and Wisconsin, a special election would be held within several months to fill a seat, so, they passed a law to provide that such vacancies would remain unfilled until a special election could be held in safely Democratic Massachusetts and today they paid.



Well they got that election they wanted tonite.......



Looks like MA gov next:

Deval Patrick tanks in new poll - BostonHerald.com
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Dems reaping what they sowed

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It seems the only legitimate way of dealing with a vacant seat. It's the way we do things here.

Occasionally, and if the vacancy is due to death, the member's surviving spouse is elected until the end of the term as a mark of respect.

Senator LeMieux said:“Scott Brown’s victory demonstrates the average American does not approve of the slew of big government solutions coming out of Washington". That suggests to me that average Americans have failed so far to recognize their own best interest in the face of relentless television pressure toward the patriotic knee-jerk.
Nullius in verba ... ☎||||||||||| ... To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left.
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Dems reaping what they sowed

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Perhaps Obama will get the message to just forget about the middle and govern from the left. Middle ground no longer exists in American politics. How can democrats expect the left to support them when they crumble to the right constantly!

Obama ought to fire his entire economic team and his Chief of staff and install some true liberals and get about the business of governing.

The senate should just give into the house, adopt its bill, change the rules to a simple majority and get true health care reform done.

Then again, we can go through another few years of hard lessons from the right, get into a few more wars, put a few million more on the food lines and get really sick of this garbage before we understand that the right loves ideology, not people.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,”

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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by hoppy »

BTS;1283602 wrote: Because of a law Massachusetts lawmakers passed when Senator John F. Kerry ran for president in 2004, when they sought to blunt the effect of a possible Senate appointment by then-Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, there is no appointment process to replace a vacancy in a US Senate seat. Instead, like only two other states, Oregon and Wisconsin, a special election would be held within several months to fill a seat, so, they passed a law to provide that such vacancies would remain unfilled until a special election could be held in safely Democratic Massachusetts and today they paid.



Well they got that election they wanted tonite.......



Looks like MA gov next:

Deval Patrick tanks in new poll - BostonHerald.com


:yh_rotfl
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Dems reaping what they sowed

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Ahso!;1283718 wrote: Perhaps Obama will get the message to just forget about the middle and govern from the left. Middle ground no longer exists in American politics. How can democrats expect the left to support them when they crumble to the right constantly!



Obama ought to fire his entire economic team and his Chief of staff and install some true liberals and get about the business of governing.



The senate should just give into the house, adopt its bill, change the rules to a simple majority and get true health care reform done.



Then again, we can go through another few years of hard lessons from the right, get into a few more wars, put a few million more on the food lines and get really sick of this garbage before we understand that the right loves ideology, not people.


I hope he does too instead of trying to hide his real agenda.........., "turning us into a third world communist country ran by boot-jack thugs." Obama's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein comes to mind when I think "BOOT-JACK THUG". But then again, I suppose he is your man for the job. By reading your views I believe that he floats your boat quite well.........



Ah-Yes I hope Barry shows his TRUE colors .



Here read this about Sunstein:



Stealth Propaganda
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Ahso!
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by Ahso! »

BTS;1283854 wrote: I hope he does too instead of trying to hide his real agenda.........., "turning us into a third world communist country ran by boot-jack thugs." Obama's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein comes to mind when I think "BOOT-JACK THUG". But then again, I suppose he is your man for the job. By reading your views I believe that he floats your boat quite well.........



Ah-Yes I hope Barry shows his TRUE colors .



Here read this about Sunstein:



Stealth PropagandaNot quite. My guy was Kucinich.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,”

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Dems reaping what they sowed

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spot;1283620 wrote: It seems the only legitimate way of dealing with a vacant seat. It's the way we do things here.



Occasionally, and if the vacancy is due to death, the member's surviving spouse is elected until the end of the term as a mark of respect.



Senator LeMieux said:“Scott Brown’s victory demonstrates the average American does not approve of the slew of big government solutions coming out of Washington". That suggests to me that average Americans have failed so far to recognize their own best interest in the face of relentless television pressure toward the patriotic knee-jerk.


I agree about a special election.

What I don't comprehend is your statement:



spot:

"That suggests to me that average Americans have failed so far to recognize their own best interest in the face of relentless television pressure toward the patriotic knee-jerk."



What is your point?



What is in the average Americans best interest?

Maybe it is:

10.2% unemployment rates?

Back room sweetheart deals?

Special interests running the show?

Demonizing capitalists?

Lying to the people?

Bailing out wall street the picking and choosing which ones you aim to harm or help.



Ah yes the poor ol average American is having a hard tyme seeing the TRUE picture of what would be in their best interest....:driving:
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Dems reaping what they sowed

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BTS;1283869 wrote: I agree about a special election.

What I don't comprehend is your statement:



spot:

"That suggests to me that average Americans have failed so far to recognize their own best interest in the face of relentless television pressure toward the patriotic knee-jerk."



What is your point?



What is in the average Americans best interest?

Maybe it is:

10.2% unemployment rates?

Back room sweetheart deals?

Special interests running the show?

Demonizing capitalists?

Lying to the people?

Bailing out wall street the picking and choosing which ones you aim to harm or help.



Ah yes the poor ol average American is having a hard tyme seeing the TRUE picture of what would be in their best interest....:driving:But all of that is now in the past. I agree it was a horrible 2000 to 2009. It takes a while for the affects to dissipate.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,”

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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by spot »

BTS;1283869 wrote: What I don't comprehend is your statement:



spot:

"That suggests to me that average Americans have failed so far to recognize their own best interest in the face of relentless television pressure toward the patriotic knee-jerk."



What is your point?

An equitable division of the national resources. Once every single citizen has the necessities of his life guaranteed to him simply by reason of his existence I've no problem with the rich skimming off the excess.

Given that the average American isn't in that position yet, my point is that they should gain control of a party capable of voting those conditions into existence and keeping them there. I don't mind which they choose, Republican is as good as Democrat to my way of thinking.
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spot;1283921 wrote: An equitable division of the national resources. Once every single citizen has the necessities of his life guaranteed to him simply by reason of his existence I've no problem with the rich skimming off the excess.



Given that the average American isn't in that position yet, my point is that they should gain control of a party capable of voting those conditions into existence and keeping them there. I don't mind which they choose, Republican is as good as Democrat to my way of thinking.




So where is all this guaranteed, here in the land of the free (necessities of his life)?

Is it in our constitution? If so show us all.

I think you have us confused with another country.



"Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" Yes......



Guaranteed Jobs, Guaranteed Health-care, Guaranteed necessities of his life ........NOT!!

Maybe you were thinking of Venezuela, who's goverment we seem to melding to lately.
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by spot »

I didn't say it was guaranteed, I said it was desirable. Once the have-not American majority throws off the shackles of patriotic propaganda and realizes its own best interest, the democratic principle will put them in a position to implement the changes. Why would it be guaranteed? Of course it isn't guaranteed. It's a political option once the majority finally stands up and decides to rule.
Nullius in verba ... ☎||||||||||| ... To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left.
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by Ahso! »

I'll do a BTS.

``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.''

The commitment to promote the general welfare of all persons, as opposed to protecting the interests of a narrow section or class of the population, encapsulates what is most unique about the United States of America--that it is the only modern nation-state republic founded on this principle.

Lyndon LaRouche has identified the principle of the general welfare as the only legitimate basis for the authority of government. A useful summary may be found, for example, in LaRouche's article, ``Will the U.S.A. keep its sovereignty?'' published in the November 19, 1999 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

LaRouche emphasizes that our United States republic ``came into existence as direct heir of those anti-oligarchichal, anti-Roman, Platonic principles of natural law'' which were first affirmed in the founding of the first nation-state republics during the late 15th Century: France under Louis XI, and England under Henry VII. LaRouche describes the source of this law as ``a combination of the Classical Greek, republican heritage, with those doctrines, respecting the universal notion of human individuality, which were promulgated by Jesus Christ and his Apostles, notably the Epistles of the Apostle Paul.''

Out of this, came the central principle upon which ``the authority, powers, and responsibilities of the sovereign nation-state republic were premised ... the notion of `general welfare,' or commonwealth.'

``The authority of the sovereign state lies solely in its indispensable role in promoting the general welfare of all persons, as Genesis I, and the Christian apostolic mission define all persons, as made equally in the image of the Creator of the Universe, and thus equally subjects of the obligation to promote the welfare of both the living and their posterity,'' LaRouche wrote, adding that, ``Only sovereign government has the means to promote the conditions of the general welfare respecting all of the people and all of the land-area, both for the living and future generations,'' and that thus, the existence of such sovereign nation-state republics is shown to be ``the morally required condition of mankind.''

This stands in opposition to those forms of oligarchical rule, in which the government is the private property of a ruling oligarchy, either a feudalistic, landed oligarchy, or a financier oligarchy of the sort that the British monarchy represents today. In such cases, governments exist to preserve the power and wealth of such oligarchies, and not to promote the general welfare of all citizens.

From the original colonizations of the Americas, those two outlooks have been in conflict; they are perhaps best expressed in the contrast between the Massachusetts Bay Colony of the Winthrops and Mathers, versus the Carolina colonies, whose constitution, written by John Locke, created a hereditary nobility, and ensured the primacy of property, including slave property.

What we shall do here, is to trace how the General Welfare clause became such a crucial element of the Constitution, looking back, both to the early colonial period, and then examining what the concept meant to the Founding Fathers (notably Alexander Hamilton), and others who shaped the political and economic life of the republic in the early 18th Century. Finally, we shall see the triumph of the Hamiltonian notion of the general welfare during the fight over President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s.

Today, that commitment has been largely abandoned, both among ``New Democrats'' of the Al Gore type, and among the dominant grouping among Republicans, whose radical free-market policies stand in the utmost contrast to the Lincolnesque principles on which the Republican Party was once based.



The Federal Constitution

The importance given to the General Welfare clause by the Framers is demonstrated by the fact that it appears, not once, but twice, in the United States Constitution--first in the Preamble, as a statement of the purpose of the Constitution, and then again in Article I, Section 8, which sets forth the substantive powers of Congress.

The clause was taken over from the Articles of Confederation, the preliminary Constitution of the new United States, during the period of the Revolution, until the adoption and ratification of the Constitution of 1787. The Articles of Confederation declared in Article III (the equivalent of a Preamble) that:

``The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare....''

The Framers of the United States Constitution repeated the General Welfare clause in Article I, Section 8, for the purpose of giving it some teeth, by ensuring that Congress could raise and expend funds for the general welfare. This corrected a near-fatal defect in the Articles of Confederation: the Articles incorporated the concept of the general welfare, but failed to provide for its implementation.

How did this provision for the general welfare get into the Articles of Confederation? It was proposed by Benjamin Franklin to the Second Continental Congress in 1775. But to see why Franklin considered it to be so important, we have to go back almost a century and a half earlier, to John Winthrop and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The battle for a continental republic, based upon the notion of the general welfare, is properly dated from the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Winthrop sought a republic, where human beings would be more highly valued than land, and in which the earth would be improved for the benefit of its citizens.

In a 1629 treatise, Winthrop decried the degeneration of England, and called for the establishment of a republic in the New World:

``This land [England] grows weary of her inhabitants, so as man who is the most precious of all creatures is here more vile & base than the earth we tread upon, and of less price among us, than a horse or a sheep.... [W]e use the authority of the law to hinder the increase of people ..., servants & neighbors (especially if they be poor) are counted the greatest burden which if things were right it would be the chiefest earthly blessing....

``The whole earth is the Lord's garden & he hath given it to the sons of men, with a general condition, Gen: 1.28. Increase and multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it, which was again renewed to Noah. The end is double, moral and natural, that man might enjoy the fruits of the earth and God might have his due glory from the creature. Why then should we stand here striving for places of habitation ... and in the meantime suffer a whole Continent, as fruitful and convenient for the use of man, to lie waste without any improvement.''[fn1]

In 1637, Winthrop wrote that ``the essential forme* of a common weale or body politic such as this is,'' should be: ``The consent of a certain company of people, to cohabitate together, under one government for their mutual safety and welfare.''

Foreshadowed here is the commitment to the ``common defense and the general welfare,'' enshrined in the Preamble to the new Constitution of the United States, drafted exactly 150 years later.

Winthrop explained: ``The wellfare of the whole is not to be put to apparent hazard for the advantage of any particular members''--a very precise repudiation of an oligarchal form of society.[fn2]

The first effort to unite the colonies was the formation of the New England Confederation in 1643. Its constitution, the ``Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England,'' were later cited by Franklin when he drafted the proposed ``Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union'' in 1775.

In the 1643 Articles, the equivalent of a preamble, or statement of purpose, read:

``The said United Colonies for themselves and their posterities do jointly and severally enter into a firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity for offense and defense, mutual advice and succor upon all just occasions both for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the Gospel and for their own mutual safety and welfare.''

Presaging Alexander Hamilton's proposals of 150 years later, in 1640 the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony voted for subsidies for textile manufacturing, and other subsidies designed to promote manufactures. The General Court also provided for the construction of an iron mill with blast furnaces, and rolling and slitting mills. (It could only export goods after the colony's needs were met--a measure we will come across again in Hamilton's proposals.) In 1647, the Saugus Iron Works was established, the first automated, integrated industrial complex in the New World.



Benjamin Franklin's `Junto'

Benjamin Franklin personifies the continuity from the Puritan Commonwealth in Massachusetts to the American Revolution, through his work in the Pennsylvania colony.

And Franklin, arguably more than anyone else in our history, embodies the promotion of the general welfare: witness his creation of the Junto, his founding of the American Philosophical Society, his promotion of public works, etc., in Philadelphia.

Franklin was born into a Puritan family in Boston in 1706. Early on, he became a protégé of Cotton Mather, and he declared Mather's 1710 An Essay Upon the Good as the book which had influenced him more than any other. In 1714, Mather had proposed the creation of a bank to promote economic recovery and to create a solid system of credit.

In 1727, Franklin issued his proposal for the ``Junto'' in Philadelphia, as a ``club for mutual improvement.'' The idea was expanded with the 1744 creation of the American Philosophical Society, which grew out of Franklin's ``Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge Among the British Plantations in North America.''

{Useful} knowledge is the key to Franklin's proposal, for its purpose was to promote the general welfare through the development of what we would today call science and technology. Thus, there were always to be, among the members of the Society in Philadelphia, ``a physician, a botanist, a mathematician, a chemist, a mechanician, a geographer, and a general natural philosopher.''

The members were to meet at least once a month, and correspond among themselves as well as with members in other colonies, concerning horticulture, mines and minerals, useful improvements in mathematics and chemistry, labor-saving mechanical inventions, all new arts and manufactures, surveys, maps and charts, animal husbandry, and ``all philosophical experiments that let light into the nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter, and multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life.''

Similar notions were included in his proposal for the creation of an Academy in Philadelphia, which grew into the University of Pennsylvania--modelled on Göttingen University in Germany. As Franklin said in his proposal, a good education for youth is ``the surest foundation of the happiness both of private families and of commonwealths.'' The object was to produce men ``qualified to serve the public with honor to themselves and their country.''

Franklin's proposal readily calls to mind an earlier proposal by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ``On the Establishment of a Society in Germany for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences,'' written in 1671.[fn3] In this wonderful essay, Leibniz argues that ``charity ... is nothing other than that love of the public good and universal harmony,'' and that men should let themselves be used ``as instruments for the glory of God and, what is the same thing, for the common good, and for the nourishment, ease of labor, comfort, instruction, and enlightenment of their fellow man, for discovery, research, and improvement of creatures....''

Those to whom God has given reason and power together, he demonstrates, can use these in three ways for the glory of God, with good words (i.e., orators and priests), with good thoughts (i.e., those who make new discoveries of nature), or with good works (through public affairs or politics). The latter, Leibniz contends, is the most perfect way to seek the glory of God, and to honor Him, by offering themselves as an instrument to do good for society.

``These are the ones who apply the discovered wonders of nature and art to medicine, to mechanics, to the comfort of life, to materials for work and sustenance for the poor, to keeping people from idleness and vice, to the operation of justice, and to reward and punishment, to the preservation of the common peace, to the increase and welfare of the fatherland, to the elimination of times of shortage, disease, and war ... and to the happiness of the human race....''

Leibniz then suggests that among the most efficient means of carrying out such activities directed for the common good, is the creation of a society or an academy through which useful knowledge can be shared and promoted.

One cannot but notice the coincidence of the objectives sought by this great philosopher, with those outlined in the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States.



Leibniz versus Mandeville

It is worth our while, at this point, to explore a bit further, the links between the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania colonies, and the Leibniz networks in Europe, and to also touch upon an hitherto unexplored facet of the combat between these networks and one of the foremost adversaries of the general welfare--the progenitor of the radical free-marketeers, Bernard Mandeville.

As Graham Lowry's book, How the Nation was Won[fn4] demonstrates, William Penn's agent James Logan was a correspondent of Leibniz, and Logan recruited Germans to emigrate to Pennsylvania through the Leibniz networks in Germany, particularly through Dr. Hermann August Francke of Halle. Francke, himself a correspondent of Cotton Mather and a collaborator of Leibniz, organized the German emigration to New York and Pennsylvania starting in 1709; that Pennsylvania migration spilled into Western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia as well.

Francke was a professor of Greek and Oriental languages at Halle, and was also a theologian and a pastor, and he built up the famed Halle Stiftung--the Halle Institutions--consisting of schools, the Orphan House, eventually an Oriental Institute, and so on. Francke also was key in organizing the faculty at Göttingen University--Germany's leading scientific center--which Franklin later visited, in 1766, and used as a model for the University of Pennsylvania.

Francke carried on an extensive correspondence with Cotton Mather in New England, which Francke's son Gotthilf later continued with Cotton's uncle, Samuel Mather. The principal subjects of Francke's correspondence with Mather, and of his correspondence generally, were missions and charity-schools--the latter serving to educate and uplift the children of the poor.

Francke's correspondence with Cotton Mather continued from 1709 to 1724. Francke's letter of Dec. 19, 1714, The longest letter which is translated is Francke's letter of Dec. 19, 1714, which was reprinted in the third edition of his Pietas Hallensis, which became the basis of Mather's ``Nuncia bona e terra longinqua'' (``Good News from a Distant Land'') of 1715, contains a detailed description of the institutions at Halle and their growth, including the Oriental Institute.

Francke became a powerful influence upon Mather, as reflected in many of Mather's writings. Mather's Bonifacius, An Essay Upon the Good--which had a great influence on Franklin--was in large part based upon Francke's descriptions of the Halle Institutions.

Looking at this correspondence, it is clear what Bernard Mandeville--the evil godfather of today's free-market fanatics--was attacking in his 1723 ``Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools.'' Francke, in fact, had set up the Halle Institutions, including its charity school, in direct opposition to the English model of the poor houses--which were work houses, poor houses, and penal institutions, all combined in one.

Graham Lowry has shown that Mandeville was a key figure in the satanic Hell-Fire Club which was deployed against the Mathers and republicanism; and in 1724, young Ben Franklin was deployed to London on an intelligence-gathering mission, as part of which he met Mandeville.

The two overriding themes of Mandeville's writings are: (1) that selfishness and licentiousness are not evil but are a social good (``private vice equals public virtue''), and (2) that it is not only wasteful, but it is counterproductive and harmful, to attempt to educate or improve the lower classes.

Whereas later writers of the anti-general welfare school tried to present the same views in somewhat more respectable trappings, Mandeville openly put forward his bestial, satanist views in the most explicit fashion. His best-known work is The Fable of the Bees, which was first published as a poem in 1705, with the title, ``The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turn'd Honest.'' In 1714 it was published as The Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Publick Benefits followed by a commentary, ``An Inquiry in the Origin of Moral Virtue.'' Another edition was published in 1723, along with the evil ``Essay on Charity and Charity Schools.'' Still another edition came in 1728-29.

Mandeville attacked the charity-schools as a waste of time and worse, for as he said, the longer boys continue in this easy sort of life of learning, ``the more unfit they'll be when grown up for downwright Labour.''

``Going to school is idleness as compared to working,'' Mandeville wrote; and he insisted that the wealth of a nation depended on the maintenance of a large class of miserable and impoverished laborers to do society's drudge work. Any effort to educate them or improve their situation, would only make them less willing to work for a pittance, or to enlist in the military.

The contrast to the idea of the general welfare could not be more stark:

``It is impossible that a Society can long subsist, and suffer many of its members to live in idleness, and enjoy all the ease and pleasure they can invent, without having at the same time great multitudes of people that to make good this defect will condescend to be quite the reverse, and by use and patience inure their bodies to work for others and themselves besides.''

Mandeville's writings were instrumental in the workhouse ``reforms'' of 1722, which set up the ``privatization'' of the previously-public workhouses, under which entire families were forced to leave their homes and live--separately--in the workhouses in order to obtain relief.

Mandeville's fundamental contention, which endeared him to the likes of Adam Smith, and ``Austrian School'' (now ``Chicago School'') founders Friedrich von Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises, was that any attempt at a ``grand design'' or an effort to plan men's actions for the common good, is folly.

As he argued in The Fable of the Bees, man, like the industrious bee, performs selfish actions ``in the small''--which lead to the greatest good in the ``large'':

``Thus every part was full of vice,

yet the whole mass a paradise.

``...their crimes conspired to make them great.

``...the worst of all the multitude,

did something for the common good.''

Von Mises, in his book Theory and History, adopts Mandeville's bestial view, stating that during the Enlightenment, eminent philosophers stopped ``brooding about the hidden purpose of Providence in directing the course of events,'' and began to look at things from the standpoint of acting men, rather than from the standpoint of plans ascribed to God or nature. This is best illustrated by Adam Smith, says von Mises, but to understand Smith, ``we must first refer to Mandeville.''

``The older ethical systems were almost unanimous in the condemnation of self-interest,'' von Mises wrote. ``Referring to the Sermon on the Mount, they exalted self-denial and indifference with regard to treasures which moth and rust corrupt, and branded self-interest as a reprehensible vice. Bernard de Mandeville in his Fable of the Bees, tried to discredit this doctrine. He pointed out that self-interest and the desire for material well-being, commonly stigmatized as vices, are in fact the incentives whose operation makes for welfare, prosperity, and civilization.''

``Adam Smith adopted this idea,'' von Mises declares.

Indeed, some 60 years later, the writings of Alexander Hamilton would explicitly repudiate Adam Smith's defense of free trade and the ``invisible hand,'' just as the Francke-Mather correspondence represented the Christian counterposition to the radical egoism of Mandeville's equation of ``private vices'' with ``public virtues.''



Articles of Confederation

On June 21, 1775, Franklin submitted to the Continental Congress a draft of ``Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union.''[fn5] The first draft stated in Article II:

``The said United Colonies hereby severally enter into a firm League of Friendship with each other, binding on themselves and their Posterity, for their common Defense [and Offense], against their Enemies for the Security of their Liberties and Propertys, the Safety of their Persons and Familes, and their [common and] mutual and general Welfare.''

Article IV proposed the annual election by each Colony of Delegates to a ``General Congress.''

Article V laid out the powers and duties of the General Congress, including that: ``The Congress shall also make [and propose] such general [Regulations] Ordnances as tho' necessary to the General Welfare, particular Assemblies [from their local Circum-] cannot be competent to;'' and it mentions our general Commerce, the general Currency, Posts, the armed Forces, and officers, civil and military, of the general Confederation.

Article VI said that ``All charges of Wars, and all other general Expenses, to be incurr'd for the common Welfare, shall be defray'd out of a common Treasury....'' but to be supplied by each Colony. [Brackets indicate words crossed out in the hand-written original--ed.]

Herein lay one of the greatest weaknesses of the Confederation--that it could legislate and spend for the general welfare, but it did not have the power to directly raise money for the general welfare, instead being reliant upon the good will of the states.

Action on Franklin's draft was among the items of unfinished business when the Second Continental Congress adjourned in December 1775.

On June 7, 1776, the third session of the Continental Congress adopted a resolution containing an early and brief version of the Declaration of Independence, and at the same time, resolved that a plan of Confederation should be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies. On June 11, a committee was appointed to prepare the Articles. On July 12, the committee brought in a draft, which retained the clause pertaining to the ``mutual and general Welfare.''

But Franklin's Article V, the broad grant of power to the Congress to provide for the General Welfare, was no longer in the draft. The new draft provided that the Confederation could raise naval forces and make requisitions for land forces, but that it could not impose taxes or duties unless nine colonies assented.

Further changes were made during the next two years. The final Articles of Confederation were submitted to the various states for ratification in November 1777. A committee drafted a circular letter to accompany the draft Articles, which said that although it would be difficult to accomodate the opinions and wishes of so many different states, that ``this is proposed, as the best, which could be adopted to the circumstances of all.''

Many objections were raised, and many amendments proposed. They were all rejected, for fear that the Articles would never be ratified. In June 1778, a copy, engrossed for ratification, was prepared; it was ratified by every state but Delaware and Maryland. Delaware ratified in 1779, and Maryland on March 1, 1781--at which point the instrument finally took effect--only seven months before Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown.

The Articles were the best that could be done under the revolutionary circumstances of 1775-77, but their weakness had become so apparent during the Revolution--the ragged, freezing, and starving Army at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78 was the most painful expression of this--that moves were soon underway to amend them, or create a new instrument, which led to the convening the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

That was, without question, one of the most remarkable assemblages ever known to mankind; unfortunately for us today, its deliberations were conducted in secret, and we have only fragmentary notes of what took place.



The Constitutional Convention

At the beginning of the deliberations in Philadephia at the end of May 1787, the Virginia Plan was presented by Gov. Edmund Randolph, which provided for a national government, but under the guise of amending the Articles of Confederation. The first resolution submitted by Randolph, was that the Articles ``ought to be so corrected & enlarged as to accomplish the objects proposed by their institution; namely, `common defence, security of liberty, and general welfare.'|''[fn5]

Much of the early debate in the Convention revolved around the legislative branches and representation. Speaker after speaker argued that the British system could not be our example. James Wilson of Pennsylvania, for example, is reported to have argued: ``The British Government cannot be our model. We have no materials for a similar one. Our manners, our laws, the abolition of entails and of primogeniture, the whole genius of the people, are opposed to it.''

And George Mason of Virginia, for example, in arguing for the election of the larger branch of the legislature by the people, said that the new system had to provide for the rights of every class of the people, that the Framers should ``provide no less carefully for the rights and happiness of the lowest than of the highest order of citizens.''

One of the more lengthy reported speeches in this vein was delivered by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, who noted that there were in the United States ``fewer distinctions of fortune & less of rank, than among the inhabitants of any other nation.'' While there was much talk about the British Constitution, Pinckney contended that the ``most distinguishing feature'' of the British Government is ``the balance between the Crown & the people'' which cannot be part of the new Constitution the the United States. In fact, he argued, ``the people of the United States are more equal in their circumstances than the people of any other Country.''

Pinckney pointed out that the people of the United States were very different from those of any state in either the modern world, or the ancient world. ``Our true situation,'' Pinckney declares, ``appears to me to be this.--a new extensive Country containing within itself the materials for forming a Government capable of extending to its citizens all the blessings of civil & religious liberty--capable of making them happy at home. That is the great end of Republican Establishments.''

From time to time, the Convention came close to breaking down in petty squabbles over narrow interests, and the more far-sighted leaders had to remind the participants of their historic responsibility to create a system to serve the {general} interests.

In sentiments later to be echoed by Chief Justice John Marshall, James Madison had to remind the members of the Convention that they were engaged in ``framing a system which we wish to last for ages.'' Hamilton ``concurred with Mr. Madison in thinking we were now to decide for ever the fate of Republican Government; and that if we did not give to that form due stability and wisdom, it would be disgraced & lost among ourselves, disgraced & lost to mankind for ever.''

Franklin at one point urged the assembly to pray and seek divine guidance, lest they succeed no better than did ``the Builders of Babel ... divided by our little partial local interests.'' If we failed, Franklin urged, ``mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.''

During one of the many contentious debates between representative of the smaller and larger states, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania beseeched the assemblage to consider the general or higher interest. Madison's notes describe Morris's speech:

``He [Morris] came here as a Representative of America; he flattered himself that he came here in some degree as a Representative of the whole human race; for the whole human race will be affected by the proceedings of this Convention. He wished gentlemen to extend their views beyond the present moment of time; beyond the narrow limits of place from which they derive their political origin. If he were to believe some things which he had heard, he should suppose that we were assembled to truck and bargain for our particular States.... He wished our ideas to be enlarged to the true interests of man, instead of being circumscribed within the narrow compass of a particular Spot.''

It wasn't until July 17, after the contentious issues of the legislature and representation were either resolved or set aside, that the Convention came back to the question of the powers of Congress. Roger Sherman, a Puritan from Connecticut, wanted the legislature to have the power to make laws binding on the people of the United States in all areas concerning the general interests or general welfare of the Union.

On July 26, the various resolutions adopted by the Convention were referred to the Committee on Detail, which was charged with developing a comprehensive draft. However, the draft which was reported out of the Committee on August 6 did not contain the General Welfare clause, either in the Preamble, or under the powers of Congress.

Because of disagreements over whether to give a general grant of powers to Congress, the Committee on Detail instead had produced a listing of enumerated powers. Sherman offered a resolution providing for a general grant of power, which was one of the provisions which went again to the Committee on Detail; on August 22, that Committee recommended that Congress be given the power ``to provide, as may become necessary, from time to time, for the well managing and securing the common property and general interests and welfare of the United States in such manner as shall not interfere with the governments of individual states....''

Drawing on the Virginia Plan and also Sherman's motion, this ``general welfare'' clause then went to the Committee on Unfinished Parts, on August 31. That Committee moved the ``general welfare'' clause to the first clause, thus providing that the legislature could lay taxes, duties and impost ``to pay the debts and provide for the common defence & general welfare, of the U.S.''

An illuminating anecdote provides a window into the discussion: Charles McHenry of Maryland suggested the inclusion of a power to enable the legislature to erect piers for the protection of shipping and as an aid to navigation. Gouverneur Morris advised McHenry that this could be done under the General Welfare clause.

The almost-final draft, probably written by Gouverneur Morris, restored the General Welfare clause to the Preamble (following the style of the Articles of Confederation), and repeated it in Article I, Section 8--where it remained.



The `General Welfare' Clause

From the time of the drafting of the Constitution up to the present day, the General Welfare clause has been the subject of fierce disputes, with the side of the Founders taken by the ``nationalist'' faction which supported a strong government with adequate powers to promote economic expansion and industrial growth.

We see these battles raging over the ``American System'' measures of internal improvements, tariffs, etc. during the early 19th Century and the Civil War; we see it in elimination of the General Welfare clause in the 1861 Confederate Constitution (see box), and we see it prominently in the 20th Century in the fight over the New Deal. The conflict over the general welfare--absolutely fundamental as to the nature of our Republic--is still simmering today.

To examine how the concept of the General Welfare was understood by the dominant tendency among the Founding Fathers, the Framers of the Constitution, and leading jurists such as John Marshall and Joseph Story, shows the foolishness of those self-styled modern-day ``conservatives'' who babble about the ``original intent'' of the Constitution, as if it had been written by Adam Smith or Friedrich von Hayek.

The definitive exposition of the General Welfare clause was in Hamilton's ``Report on Manufactures,'' issued in December 1791.

However, as early as February 1791, Hamilton had treated the subject of the general welfare in his ``Opinion on the Constitutionality of the National Bank''--written after Washington's Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, and his Attorney General Edmund Randolph, had both declared the creation of a national bank unconstitutional.

In his ``Opinion on the Bank,'' Hamilton argued that the powers of the national government ``ought to be construed liberally, in advancement of the public good,'' and that they must be defined by ``the nature and objects of government itself.''

Hamilton noted that Jefferson had argued, in opposing the bank, that Congress can only levy taxes to pay the debts, or to provide for the welfare of the Union. But this is no argument against a national bank, Hamilton says. ``It is true that they [Congress] cannot without breach of trust, lay taxes for any other purpose than the general welfare, but so neither can any other government. The welfare of the community is the only legitimate end for which money can be raised on the community.''

The only restriction, Hamilton continues, is that money thus raised, cannot be applied for any merely local purpose. ``The constitutional {test} of a right application must always be, whether it be for a purpose of {general} or {local} nature. If the former, there can be no want of constitutional power.... Whatever relates to the general order of the finances, to the general interests of trade etc., being general objects are constitutional ones for {the application} of {money}.'' (emphasis in original)

This is further elaborated in the ``Report on Manufactures,'' in which Hamilton declares that the general interests of Learning, of Agriculture, of Manufactures, and of Commerce, are all within the purview of the General Welfare.

Hamilton argued that the wealth, the independence, and the security of the nation are all connected to the prosperity of manufactures. As opposed to the free traders of the time--or what we would call the ``globalizers'' today--Hamilton contended that: ``Every nation ... ought to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of {Subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defence.}''

``The possession of these is necessary to the perfection of the body politic; to the safety as well as to the welfare of the society .... The extreme embarrassments of the United States during the late War, from an incapacity of supplying themselves, are still matters of keen recollection,'' Hamilton wrote, urging that this was the next great work to be accomplished, lest the United States again face the same situation in a future war.

Hamilton also strenuously disputed the false but popular notion that ``though the promoting of manufactures may be the interest of a part of the Union, it is contrary to that of another part,'' particularly as that argument was made with respect to the northern and southern regions of the Union. In fact, Hamilton argued, manufacturing is in the {general} interest of the entire nation, and ``the {aggregate} prosperity of manufactures, and the {aggregate} prosperity of Agriculture are inimately connected.'' (emphasis in original)

Hamilton also addressed the issue of cognition and its relation to the national wealth: ``To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted.... Every new scene which is opened to the busy nature of man to rouse and exert itself, is the addition of a new energy to the general stock of effort.''

Hamilton proposed aggressive measures to promote domestic manufacturing, including tariffs, the maintenance of monopolies, the prohibition of some imports, the prohibition of exports of certain raw materials necessary for domestic manufacturing, pecuniary bounties and premiums, a system of regulation of standards and inspections; development of a payments system; and promotion of a system of transportation of goods. As to using public funds, he argued that there is no better purpose ``to which public money can be more beneficially applied than to the acquisition of a new and useful branch of industry; no Consideration more valuable than a permanent addition to the general stock of productive labor.''

Hamilton declared unequivocally that the Federal government had the right to promote manufactures under the General Welfare Clause of Article I, Section 8. The objects for which Congress can raise money, Hamilton explained, ``are no less comprehensive then the payment of the Public debts, and providing for the common defense and the general Welfare.''

He continued:

``The terms `general Welfare' were doubtless intended to signify more than was expressed or imported in those which Preceded; otherwise, numerous exigencies incident to the affairs of a nation would have been left without a provision. The phrase is as comprehensive as any that could have been used; because it was not fit that the constitutional authority of the Union to appropriate its revenues should have been restricted within narrower limit than the `General Welfare' and because this necessarily embraces a vast variety of particulars, which are susceptible neither of specification or of definition.''

Hamilton then says that it is left to the discretion of the legislature to determine what matters concern the general welfare, adding: ``And there seems to be no room for a doubt that whatever concerns the general interests of {Learning,} of {Agriculture,} of {Manufactures,} and of {Commerce,} are within the sphere of the national Councils, {as far as regards an application of money.} (emphasis in original)

In his Final Address to the Congress in 1796, George Washington endorsed Hamilton's view.

Washington noted that ``Congress have repeatedly, and not without success, directed their attention to the encouragement of Manufactures,'' and he argued that much more needed to be done, especially invoking the idea of the dangers of the country remaining dependent on foreign supply.

Washington also argued that, ``with reference to individual, or National Welfare, Agriculture is of primary importance,'' and he proposed the creation of institutions for promoting agriculture through ``premiums, and small pecuniary aids, to encourage and assist a spirit of discovery and improvement.''



Fight Over the American System

As Hamilton emphasized over and over again, the national government cannot promote the general welfare unless it has the power to do so. This was not a settled issue in the early years of the Republic--indeed, to some, it is still yet not a settled issue today.

It fell to John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835, to ensure that the Hamiltonian view was established as our fundamental law. Marshall's 1819 opinion in the case involving the National Bank, {McCulloch v. Maryland,} is a milestone for the confirmation of the national government's exercise of its power to promote the general welfare--and, it is also clear, to carry out its Manifest Destiny as a Continental Republic, ``from sea to shining sea.''

The background of the case was as follows. The second Bank of the United States was created in 1816, after the refusal of Congress to recharter the Bank on the eve of the War of 1812. But the bank was horribly mismanaged, and the Monroe administration pursued free trade and a veto of internal improvements. By the beginning of 1819, the Bank of the United States had collapsed, insolvencies and bankruptcy fraud were rampant, and the credit system and the economy as a whole were in utter chaos.

The case before the Supreme Court grew out of the attempts by the state of Maryland (among others) to tax the operations of the Bank. In his ruling reaffirming the power of Congress to establish a national bank--and repudiating the attempt of Maryland to destroy it--Marshall drew directly on Hamilton's arguments in the ``Opinion on the Constitutionality of the Bank.''

Marshall began in the logical place--the Preamble to the Constitution. Remarking on the conditions under the Confederation, Marshall wrote, the states themselves were competent to form the Confederation. ``But when, `In order to form a more perfect union,' it was deemed necessary to change this alliance in to an effective government, possessing great and sovereign powers, and acting directly upon the people; the necessity of referring it to the people, and of deriving its power directly from them, was felt and acknowledged by all.

``The government of the Union, then ... is emphatically and truly a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from then, its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.''

(If this has a familiar echo, it should. By some accounts, Abraham Lincoln's ``of the people, by the people, for the people'' is derived directly from Marshall's opinion in the bank case.)

Against the so-called ``strict constructionists,'' (or nominalists, we could call them), Marshall argued that the nature of a Constitution is such ``that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated,'' and that everything else flows from that. Otherwise, a constitution would contain such an immense amount of detail, that it would be nothing but a legal code, ``and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind.''

Thus, although we don't find the word ``bank'' or ``incorporation'' among the enumerated powers of government, he writes, we do ``find the great powers to lay and collect taxes; to borrow money; to regulate commerce; to declare and conduct war; and to raise and support armies and navies.''

The happiness and prosperity of the nation require not only that the general government has ample powers, but that it has ample means for their execution. ``Throughout this vast republic, from the St. Croix, to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, revenue is to be collected and expended, armies are to be marched, and supported.'' Are we to adopt a construction of the Constitution, he asks, that would make it impossible to transfer revenues from one part of the county to another?

(Interestingly, this expansive statement is delivered just at the time of the Onis Treaty, by John Quincy Adams with Spain, was part of Adams' ``Manifest Destiny'' plan for a U.S. Continental Republic.)

From there, Marshall develops the critical point: that the Constitution confers upon Congress all the powers ``necessary and proper'' to carry out its purposes.

The subject at issue, Marshall writes, ``is the execution of those great powers upon which the welfare of a nation essentially depends.'' Those who granted those powers, certainly intended to ensure their beneficial execution. ``This provision is made in a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.''

Finally, Marshall comes to his conclusion--which is so crucial for the exercise of the General Welfare clause:

``Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional....''[fn6]

Another authoritative source, for an understanding of how the General Welfare was understood in the first part of the 19th Century, is Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution, first published in 1833. Story was from Massachusetts, and originally opposed the Federalists, but he came to be John Marshall's strongest ally on the Supreme Court, and attempted as best he could to carry on Marshall's work after Marshall's death.

In his discussion of the Preamble, Story notes that the Preamble does not confer any substantive powers to the central government, but rather, it is a statement of intent and purpose, which can certainly be called upon in interpreting other elements of the Constitution. He then reviews the six objects spelled out in the Preamble.

In his discussion of promoting the general welfare, Story gives as examples: tariffs (which the states cannot do effectively), the collection, distribution and expenditure of revenue, and internal improvements, such as roads and canals which are much better undertaken by the general government, and the post office.

Story observes that the separate states cannot carry into being any great or comprehensive plan for the general welfare; agriculture, commerce, and manufactures may each have to give up something, but each will benefit from a general system, as they have already. An unlimited commerce between states, he asserts, is a blessing of almost inconceivable value; each then looks after the interests of all, rather than its own narrow territory.



FDR's `New Deal'

Strange as it may seem, it was not until 1936, that the Supreme Court based a ruling explicitly on the General Welfare clause. In the first such case, {U.S. v. Butler}, the Court invalidated the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), in a case challenging crop-reduction payments financed by a processing tax.

In May of 1935, the Supreme Court had struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act, and now it took aim at the AAA. Arguing before the high court, Soliciter General Stanley Reed urged that the General Welfare clause of Article I, Section 8 should be broadly construed to emcompass whatever was conducive to the national welfare. And Reed argued what seems obvious, that the agriculture crisis was a {national} crisis. But that was not so obvious to the Court, which held that agriculture was ``a purely local activity.''

The majority on the Court said that, yes, the General Welfare clause is a broad grant of power, but that the crop-reduction scheme was particular, not general, and that regulation of agriculture was outside the powers of Congress, as a power reserved to the states.

In a succession of rulings, the Supreme Court determined that agriculture, manufacturing, construction, coal mining, and almost any form of economic activity, were {local} and beyond the realm of Federal regulation, as were the wages and working conditions of those employed in those activities. It seemed for a short time that the Court was saying that the states {could} regulate such activities, but then the Supreme Court struck down a New York State minimum-wage law as also being unconstitutional.

This was the situation Roosevelt faced as he began his second term, and what led him to propose his scheme to ``pack the Court,'' to change its composition. He proposed this shortly after his Second Inaugural Address, delivered on January 20, 1937--the address best known for his exclamation that ``I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.''

FDR described the situation at the time of his first inauguration, four years earlier, and then recalled why the Constitution had been written and a strong Federal government established:

``We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable.... We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster....

``This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Constitutional Convention which made us a nation. At that Convention our forefathers found the way out of the chaos which followed the Revolutionary War; they created a strong government with powers of united action sufficient then and now to solve problems utterly beyond individual or local solution. A century and a half ago they established the Federal Government in order to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to the American people.

``Today we invoke those same powers of government to achieve the same objectives.''

Two weeks later, determined to find a way to overcome the obstructions placed in his path by the reactionary Justices who were blocking every effort of the Federal government to address the crisis, FDR proposed his plan to reform the Supreme Court.

Roosevelt took his case against the Supreme Court directly to the people, in a Fireside Chat on March 9. He warned there was a danger of another 1929, and said that national measures were necessary prevent this and to complete the recovery program, and that these were measures that only the national government could undertake.

FDR urged the people to re-read the Constitution, saying that, ``Like the Bible, it ought to be read again and again.''

``It is an easy document to understand when you remember that it was called into being because the Articles of Confederation under which the original thirteen states tried to operate after the Revolution, showed the need of a national government with power enough to handle national problems,''

the President told the nation.

``In its Preamble, the Constitution states that it was intended to form a more perfect Union and promote the general welfare,'' Roosevelt said, adding that the powers given to Congress could be best described as being ``all the powers needed to meet each and every problem which then had a national character and could not be met by merely local action.

``But the framers went further,'' FDR continued. ``Having in mind that in succeeding generations many other problems then undreamed of would become national problems, they gave to Congress the ample broad powers `to levy taxes ... and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.'|''

That was the underlying purpose of the patriots who wrote the Constitution, Roosevelt went on, ``to create a national government with national power, intended, as they said, `to form a more perfect union ... for ourselves and our posterity.'|''

But, said Roosevelt, this is now being thwarted by the courts, so to ``save our national Constitution from hardening of the judicial arteries,'' he presented his bold plan.



Hamilton Vindicated

As it turned out, Roosevelt's call to arms was sufficient to reverse the nation's course. In May of 1937, the Court issued two rulings on the same day affirming New Deal programs on the basis of the General Welfare clause. (``The switch in time that saved nine,'' it has been called.) First, the Court upheld the unemployment tax and compensation provisions of the Social Security Act, in deciding the case {Steward Machine Co. v. Davis}. Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo cited the magnitude of unemployment, noting that the states had been unable to give the requisite relief, and that the unemployment problem ``had become national in area and dimension.

``There was need of help from the nation if the people were not to starve,'' Cardozo wrote. ``It is too late today for the argument to be heard with tolerance that, in a crisis so extreme, the use of the moneys of the nation to relieve the unemployment and their dependents is a use for any purpose narrower than the promotion of the general welfare.'' At the same time, again citing the General Welfare clause, the Court upheld the old-age benefits provisions of the Social Security Act. In this case, {Helvering v. Davis,} Justice Cardozo expressly adopted the Hamiltonian view of the general welfare power, as opposed to that of Madison.

``The conception of the spending power advocated by Hamilton and strongly reinforced by Story has prevailed over that of Madison,'' Cardozo wrote. He said that in response to the nationwide calamity that began in 1929, Congress had enacted various measures conducive to the general welfare, including old-age benefits and unemployment compensation. Only a national, not a state, power can serve the interests of all, Cardozo declared.

Thus was proclaimed, a long-overdue vindication of the determination of the dominant group of the Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution, and of all those who had gone before, in the American colonies and in Europe, to create a republic based on the concept of the general welfare.

Notes

*All spelling, capitalization, and punctuation within quotes, is preserved from the original texts.

1. H. Graham Lowry, ``|`The Eyes of all People Are Upon Us,'|'' EIR, Jan. 28, 2000.

2. John Winthrop, ``A Declaration in Defense of an Order of Court Made in May 1637.''

3. Spannaus & White, The Political Economy of the American Revolution, Executive Intelligence Review, 2nd edition, 1996, p. 214.

4. H. Graham Lowry, How the Nation was Won, Executive Intelligence Review, 1988

5. All quotations are from Madison's notes, as reported in Winton Solberg, ed., The Federal Convention and the Formation of the Union of the American States, 1958.

6. The ``necessary and proper'' clause (sometimes called the ``elastic'' clause), and the General Welfare clause have always gone hand-in-hand. This was acknowledged, in modern times, in the landmark {Buckley v. Valeo} case in 1976, in which the Supreme Court upheld the public financing of Presidential elections on grounds of the General Welfare clause.

Harkening back to the key 1936-37 Supreme Court decisions which upheld New Deal legislation based on the General Welfare clause, the Supreme Court said in 1976 case that in passing the matching funds provision for presidential primaries, that ``Congress was legislating for the `general welfare'--to reduce the deleterious influence of large contributions on our political process, to facilitate communication by the candidates with the electorate, and to free candidates from the rigors of fundraising.''

In rebutting the arguments by the opponents of the campaign financing law, the Supreme Court said that the General Welfare clause is not a limitation on Congressional power, but: ``It is rather a grant of power, the scope of which is quite expansive, particularly in view of the enlargement of power by the Necessary and Proper Clause''--and here the Court cited Marshall's opinion in the bank case.

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What Is The "General Welfare"
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,”

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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by BTS »

spot;1283932 wrote: I didn't say it was guaranteed, I said it was desirable. Once the have-not American majority throws off the shackles of patriotic propaganda and realizes its own best interest, the democratic principle will put them in a position to implement the changes. Why would it be guaranteed? Of course it isn't guaranteed. It's a political option once the majority finally stands up and decides to rule.


Yah-Yah, if we lived in a Democracy you might be right....

But we are founded on a Republic....NOT a Democracy



This may help you see the difference:



Article IV Section 4 of the Constitution states:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion . . .



An Important Distinction: Democracy versus Republic
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by spot »

The democratic principle I alluded to is the electoral one which puts candidates into the House of Representatives and the Senate on the basis of majority vote.

If candidates put themselves forward to either the Democratic or Republican primaries of each State on a promise to accept this platform, and the majority of the electoral turnout supports their candidacy, it becomes a matter of record based on their performance in office as to whether they kept their promise. At subsequent elections, those who did will be re-elected and those who failed will be replaced by those who might. Eventually the platform will become the law of the land.

As Ahso demonstrated, it's an entirely constitutional aim.
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by yaaarrrgg »

BTS;1283954 wrote: Yah-Yah, if we lived in a Democracy you might be right....

But we are founded on a Republic....NOT a Democracy



This may help you see the difference:



Article IV Section 4 of the Constitution states:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion . . .



An Important Distinction: Democracy versus Republic


That's a bit oversimplified. Half the founders wanted a republic, half wanted a democracy. We have a hybrid of the two.

The difference is that Republics think people are too stupid to self-govern and so they try to consolidate powers on behalf of the plebeians. Modern Republicans don't really care about minorities ... they outright mock them. The GOP is pretty much an all white-Christian-male party if you haven't noticed. But grandstanding about the rights of minorities sounds good at least :)
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Dems reaping what they sowed

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yaaarrrgg;1283987 wrote: that's a bit oversimplified. Half the founders wanted a republic, half wanted a democracy. We have a hybrid of the two.

huh???

a hybrid:-2..... Maybe in the minds of a revisionist like you who would re-write history. A constitutional republic keeps checks and balances.

in our constitutional republic, executive, legislative, and judicial powers are separated into distinct branches and the will of the majority of the population is tempered by protections for individual rights so that no individual or group has absolute power.

i think the reason for the trip to the woodshed in mass. Was because they saw it as being out of balance. (see above)







the difference is that republics think people are too stupid to self-govern and so they try to consolidate powers on behalf of the plebeians.



sorry but i just gotta :yh_rotfl:yh_rotfl.........

who wants more gov. Control?









modern republicans don't really care about minorities ... They outright mock them. The gop is pretty much an all white-christian-male party if you haven't noticed. But grandstanding about the rights of minorities sounds good at least :)



so how are you supposed to care about minorities? By giving and giving to keep them suppressed and under your support as is the status quo from the dems or by saying we are on a level playing field and if you work and strive you have a chance in this country to make it but there are no guarantees.



i won't get into the civil right votes of the 60's and how the dems fought against it for years........... And years



fyi:



in the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes.

[see http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.html and 82.03.04: An analysis of the civil rights act of 1964: A legislated response to racial discrimination in the u. S. .]












:-6
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by yaaarrrgg »

BTS;1284009 wrote: :-6


Individual rights? Which individuals? You cleverly forget females and black people couldn't vote until recently.

Leaders from 1933 are dead now. I'm talking modern history. As for civil rights, did you know McCain opposed MLK day? As with most of the GOP? This isn't some quack, but the best the party had to offer.
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by BTS »

yaaarrrgg;1284013 wrote: Individual rights? Which individuals? You cleverly forget females and black people couldn't vote until recently.



Leaders from 1933 are dead now. I'm talking modern history. As for civil rights, did you know McCain opposed MLK day? As with most of the GOP? This isn't some quack, but the best the party had to offer.


It is soo sad you make me do this, post a 6 page reply (in 2 posts) but you asked for it.



I will give you a heads up, my 4th great uncle was John McCauly Palmer (my middle name is Palmer after my grandmother who was a Palmer).

SOO who is John MCCauly Palmer.... Good question.



Meet John McCauly Palmer one of the FIRST Republicans:







John McAuley Palmer (September 13, 1817 – September 25, 1900), was an Illinois resident, an American Civil War General who fought for the Union, the 15th Governor of Illinois, and presidential candidate of the National Democratic Party in the 1896 election on a platform to defend the gold standard, free trade, and limited government.

Palmer switched political parties throughout his life, starting out a Democrat. He became in turn an anti-Nebraska Democrat (against state sovereignty on slavery), a Republican, a Liberal Republican, returned to being a Democrat, then ended as a Bourbon Democrat. He said, "I had my own views. I was not a slave of any party," and added, "I thought for myself and [have] spoken my own words on all occasions."



Palmer was a member of the state constitutional convention of 1848. Between 1852 and 1855, he was a Democratic member of the Illinois Senate, but joined the Republican party upon its organization and became one of its leaders in Illinois.

He presided over the 1856 Illinois Republican Convention in Bloomington that founded the party in his home state. In 1859 he was the Republican candidate in a special election to a vacancy in the 36th Congress caused by the death of Thomas L. Harris, but he was defeated by John A. McClernand. He later became a Republican presidential elector in 1860, and was one of the leading people who got his friend Abraham Lincoln nominated for the presidency at the national convention in Chicago.

In 1861, he was appointed by Lincoln to be a delegate to the peace convention in Washington. It failed when no compromise could be reached









A Great American Hero





As the American Civil War wound down, Major General John Palmer, the military governor of Kentucky, found himself in position of enormous political, legal, and moral complexity. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had freed the slaves in the states that seceded from the Union. But Kentucky, a slave state, had never seceded. It had originally maintained its neutrality and then was invaded by the Confederacy, triggering a counter-invasion from the north and its subsequent military occupation: hence a military governor in a state which had a sitting governor and legislature. More importantly, even as Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Kentucky still owned slaves.

Slaves from all over Kentucky had run away from their “owners,” rightly sensing that the Age of American Servitude was drawing to an end. The fugitive slave laws remained in effect but Palmer and the Army refused to enforce them. This led to Army officers being prosecuted before state and local courts for the crime of obeying the orders of their superior officers. While popular sentiment in Kentucky was pro-union, state officials were pro-South in attitude – the real reason a military governor was needed.

As Palmer prepared for the ball in Lexington celebrating the North’s victory, word came to him that thousands of runaway slaves had gathered at the race track and were asking to see Palmer and petition for their freedom. Palmer went immediately, and his arrival in full dress uniform and riding a white charger created a sensation.

Palmer mounted the rostrum and later said it was his intention to explain that, since the national government would no longer enforce the Fugitive Slave laws, they were, “for all intents and purposes free.” The crowd heard “free” and exploded in celebration. It might have ended there, as a misunderstanding to be worked through later, but Palmer was so moved by the joy of the people in the race track that he raised his arms to gain their attention.

“As military governor of Kentucky, I FREE YOU!”

Of course, Palmer had no such authority, but he knew that once an act such as this was done, it could not easily be undone. He returned to his quarters, cabled Washington to inform Lincoln and Stanton of his actions, submitted his resignation, and began to pack.

A few hours later he received a telegraphic reply: The President would back his action to the full; the slaves of Kentucky were free. Palmer should unpack.

It was an extraordinary, unprecedented act by a genuinely extraordinary man





I told you this so I could tell you just what this man, Republicans and Lincoln did for this nation............

See next post:sneaky:
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by BTS »

The History of Republican Evil







The Republican Party was formed in 1854 specifically to oppose the Democrats, and for more than 150 years, they have done everything they could to block the Democrat agenda. In their abuses of power, they have even used threats and military violence to thwart the Democrat Party’s attempts to make this a progressive country. As you read the following Republican atrocities that span three centuries, imagine if you will, what a far different nation the United States would be had not the Republicans been around to block the Democrats’ efforts.



March 20, 1854

Opponents of Democrats’ pro-slavery policies meet in Ripon, Wisconsin to establish the Republican Party



May 30, 1854

Democrat President Franklin Pierce signs Democrats’ Kansas-Nebraska Act, expanding slavery into U.S. territories; opponents unite to form the Republican Party



June 16, 1854

Newspaper editor Horace Greeley calls on opponents of slavery to unite in the Republican Party



July 6, 1854

First state Republican Party officially organized in Jackson, Michigan, to oppose Democrats’ pro-slavery policies



February 11, 1856

Republican Montgomery Blair argues before U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of his client, the slave Dred Scott; later served in President Lincoln’s Cabinet



February 22, 1856

First national meeting of the Republican Party, in Pittsburgh, to coordinate opposition to Democrats’ pro-slavery policies



March 27, 1856

First meeting of Republican National Committee in Washington, DC to oppose Democrats’ pro-slavery policies



May 22, 1856

For denouncing Democrats’ pro-slavery policy, Republican U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) is beaten nearly to death on floor of Senate by U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks (D-SC), takes three years to recover



March 6, 1857

Republican Supreme Court Justice John McLean issues strenuous dissent from decision by 7 Democrats in infamous Dred Scott case that African-Americans had no rights “which any white man was bound to respect”



June 26, 1857

Abraham Lincoln declares Republican position that slavery is “cruelly wrong,” while Democrats “cultivate and excite hatred” for blacks



October 13, 1858

During Lincoln-Douglas debates, U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) states: “I do not regard the Negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever”; Douglas became Democratic Party’s 1860 presidential nominee



October 25, 1858

U.S. Senator William Seward (R-NY) describes Democratic Party as “inextricably committed to the designs of the slaveholders”; as President Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State, helped draft Emancipation Proclamation



June 4, 1860

Republican U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) delivers his classic address, The Barbarism of Slavery



April 7, 1862

President Lincoln concludes treaty with Britain for suppression of slave trade



April 16, 1862

President Lincoln signs bill abolishing slavery in District of Columbia; in Congress, 99% of Republicans vote yes, 83% of Democrats vote no



July 2, 1862

U.S. Rep. Justin Morrill (R-VT) wins passage of Land Grant Act, establishing colleges open to African-Americans, including such students as George Washington Carver



July 17, 1862

Over unanimous Democrat opposition, Republican Congress passes Confiscation Act stating that slaves of the Confederacy “shall be forever free”



August 19, 1862

Republican newspaper editor Horace Greeley writes Prayer of Twenty Millions, calling on President Lincoln to declare emancipation



August 25, 1862

President Abraham Lincoln authorizes enlistment of African-American soldiers in U.S. Army



September 22, 1862

Republican President Abraham Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation



January 1, 1863

Emancipation Proclamation, implementing the Republicans’ Confiscation Act of 1862, takes effect



February 9, 1864

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton deliver over 100,000 signatures to U.S. Senate supporting Republicans’ plans for constitutional amendment to ban slavery



June 15, 1864

Republican Congress votes equal pay for African-American troops serving in U.S. Army during Civil War



June 28, 1864

Republican majority in Congress repeals Fugitive Slave Acts



October 29, 1864

African-American abolitionist Sojourner Truth says of President Lincoln: “I never was treated by anyone with more kindness and cordiality than were shown to me by that great and good man”



January 31, 1865

13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. House with unanimous Republican support, intense Democrat opposition



March 3, 1865

Republican Congress establishes Freedmen’s Bureau to provide health care, education, and technical assistance to emancipated slaves



April 8, 1865

13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. Senate with 100% Republican support, 63% Democrat opposition



June 19, 1865

On “Juneteenth,” U.S. troops land in Galveston, TX to enforce ban on slavery that had been declared more than two years before by the Emancipation Proclamation



While researching Juneteenth, I found almost no mention of the troops under Union general Gordon Granger, who were sent to Galveston to ENFORCE the ban on slavery. History revisionists would have you believe that General Granger was a glorified messenger boy. But he was the Union general put in charge of Texas. When he read the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, he was also reading the riot act, and he rode ahead of enough troops to put down any resistance. The Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect two-and-a -half years earlier and the Civil War had been over for two months. It is absolutely unbelievable that Texas slaveholders -- or Texas slaves -- would have been totally ignorant of this. I mean, Texas isn't the name of another planet. They had telegraphs and newspapers and word of mouth. They didn't need a Union general to inform them of world events. A messenger who was sent to Texas to inform people of emancipation was killed. It is thought the plantation owners wanted their slaves for one more harvest.Astoundingly, the Democrats seem to have hijacked this day as their own. What follows is a statement that was posted on a Juneteenth Web site a few years ago.







Washington, D.C. - Democratic National Committee (DNC)Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued the following statement in commemoration of Juneteenth."This Saturday, Democrats across America will celebrate the anniversary of Juneteenth, the country's longest-running observance of the abolition of slavery."Juneteenth is a celebration of liberty, as we remember that day in 1865 when the news of emancipation finally reached the slaves of Galveston, Texas - two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. On that day, slavery was finally eradicated from our country's shores and a new sense of hope had been achieved for the entire nation."139 years after that historic day, the Democratic Party remains committed to fighting for equality in our schools, our workplaces, and in our neighborhoods to ensure an equal opportunity for all Americans."



Scuse me?? The Democratic Party remains committed to fighting for equality? When the did this happen? Wasn't it the Democratic Party that fought on the side of slavery? Wasn't it the Democratic Party that fought against EVERY attempt to institute equality in our schools, our workplaces and our neighborhoods, right through the 1964 Civil Rights Act? At what point in our history did the Democratic party -- the party of slavery, the party of segregation, the party of the Ku Klux Klan -- become this nation's champion of liberty?Talk about an Extreme Makeover! By the way, you won't find a statement from the head of the RNC on that site. Apparently, the Republican party had nothing to do with freeing the slaves.



November 22, 1865

Republicans denounce Democrat legislature of Mississippi for enacting “black codes,” which institutionalized racial discrimination



December 6, 1865

Republican Party’s 13th Amendment, banning slavery, is ratified



February 5, 1866

U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA) introduces legislation, successfully opposed by Democrat President Andrew Johnson, to implement “40 acres and a mule” relief by distributing land to former slaves



April 9, 1866

Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Johnson’s veto; Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring rights of citizenship on African-Americans, becomes law



April 19, 1866

Thousands assemble in Washington, DC to celebrate Republican Party’s abolition of slavery



May 10, 1866

U.S. House passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the laws to all citizens; 100% of Democrats vote no



June 8, 1866

U.S. Senate passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the law to all citizens; 94% of Republicans vote yes and 100% of Democrats vote no



July 16, 1866

Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of Freedman's Bureau Act, which protected former slaves from “black codes” denying their rights



July 28, 1866

Republican Congress authorizes formation of the Buffalo Soldiers, two regiments of African-American cavalrymen



July 30, 1866

Democrat-controlled City of New Orleans orders police to storm racially-integrated Republican meeting; raid kills 40 and wounds more than 150



January 8, 1867

Republicans override Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of law granting voting rights to African-Americans in D.C.



July 19, 1867

Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of legislation protecting voting rights of African-Americans



March 30, 1868

Republicans begin impeachment trial of Democrat President Andrew Johnson, who declared: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government of white men”



May 20, 1868

Republican National Convention marks debut of African-American politicians on national stage; two – Pinckney Pinchback and James Harris – attend as delegates, and several serve as presidential electors



September 3, 1868

25 African-Americans in Georgia legislature, all Republicans, expelled by Democrat majority; later reinstated by Republican Congress



September 12, 1868

Civil rights activist Tunis Campbell and all other African-Americans in Georgia Senate, every one a Republican, expelled by Democrat majority; would later be reinstated by Republican Congress



September 28, 1868

Democrats in Opelousas, Louisiana murder nearly 300 African-Americans who tried to prevent an assault against a Republican newspaper editor



October 7, 1868

Republicans denounce Democratic Party’s national campaign theme: “This is a white man’s country: Let white men rule”



October 22, 1868

While campaigning for re-election, Republican U.S. Rep. James Hinds (R-AR) is assassinated by Democrat terrorists who organized as the Ku Klux Klan



November 3, 1868

Republican Ulysses Grant defeats Democrat Horatio Seymour in presidential election; Seymour had denounced Emancipation Proclamation



December 10, 1869

Republican Gov. John Campbell of Wyoming Territory signs FIRST-in-nation law granting women right to vote and to hold public office



February 3, 1870

After passing House with 98% Republican support and 97% Democrat opposition, Republicans’ 15th Amendment is ratified, granting vote to all Americans regardless of race



May 19, 1870

African-American John Langston, law professor and future Republican Congressman from Virginia, delivers influential speech supporting President Ulysses Grant’s civil rights policies



May 31, 1870

President U.S. Grant signs Republicans’ Enforcement Act, providing stiff penalties for depriving any American’s civil rights



June 22, 1870

Republican Congress creates U.S. Department of Justice, to safeguard the civil rights of African-Americans against Democrats in the South



September 6, 1870

Women vote in Wyoming, in FIRST election after women’s suffrage signed into law by Republican Gov. John Campbell



February 28, 1871

Republican Congress passes Enforcement Act providing federal protection for African-American voters



March 22, 1871

Spartansburg Republican newspaper denounces Ku Klux Klan campaign to eradicate the Republican Party in South Carolina



April 20, 1871

Republican Congress enacts the Ku Klux Klan Act, outlawing Democratic Party-affiliated terrorist groups which oppressed African-Americans



October 10, 1871

Following warnings by Philadelphia Democrats against black voting, African-American Republican civil rights activist Octavius Catto murdered by Democratic Party operative; his military funeral was attended by thousands



October 18, 1871

After violence against Republicans in South Carolina, President Ulysses Grant deploys U.S. troops to combat Democrat terrorists who formed the Ku Klux Klan



November 18, 1872

Susan B. Anthony arrested for voting, after boasting to Elizabeth Cady Stanton that she voted for “the Republican ticket, straight”



January 17, 1874

Armed Democrats seize Texas state government, ending Republican efforts to racially integrate government



September 14, 1874

Democrat white supremacists seize Louisiana statehouse in attempt to overthrow racially-integrated administration of Republican Governor William Kellogg; 27 killed



March 1, 1875

Civil Rights Act of 1875, guaranteeing access to public accommodations without regard to race, signed by Republican President U.S. Grant; passed with 92% Republican support over 100% Democrat opposition



September 20, 1876

Former state Attorney General Robert Ingersoll (R-IL) tells veterans: “Every man that loved slavery better than liberty was a Democrat… I am a Republican because it is the only free party that ever existed”



January 10, 1878

U.S. Senator Aaron Sargent (R-CA) introduces Susan B. Anthony amendment for women’s suffrage; Democrat-controlled Senate defeated it 4 times before election of Republican House and Senate guaranteed its approval in 1919. Republicans foil Democratic efforts to keep women in the kitchen, where they belong



July 14, 1884

Republicans criticize Democratic Party’s nomination of racist U.S. Senator Thomas Hendricks (D-IN) for vice president; he had voted against the 13th Amendment banning slavery



August 30, 1890

Republican President Benjamin Harrison signs legislation by U.S. Senator Justin Morrill (R-VT) making African-Americans eligible for land-grant colleges in the South



June 7, 1892

In a FIRST for a major U.S. political party, two women – Theresa Jenkins and Cora Carleton – attend Republican National Convention in an official capacity, as alternate delegates



February 8, 1894

Democrat Congress and Democrat President Grover Cleveland join to repeal Republicans’ Enforcement Act, which had enabled African-Americans to vote



December 11, 1895

African-American Republican and former U.S. Rep. Thomas Miller (R-SC) denounces new state constitution written to disenfranchise African-Americans



May 18, 1896

Republican Justice John Marshall Harlan, dissenting from Supreme Court’s notorious Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” decision, declares: “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens”



December 31, 1898

Republican Theodore Roosevelt becomes Governor of New York; in 1900, he outlawed racial segregation in New York public schools



May 24, 1900

Republicans vote no in referendum for constitutional convention in Virginia, designed to create a new state constitution disenfranchising African-Americans



January 15, 1901

Republican Booker T. Washington protests Alabama Democratic Party’s refusal to permit voting by African-Americans



October 16, 1901

President Theodore Roosevelt invites Booker T. Washington to dine at White House, sparking protests by Democrats across the country



May 29, 1902

Virginia Democrats implement new state constitution, condemned by Republicans as illegal, reducing African-American voter registration by 86%



February 12, 1909

On 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, African-American Republicans and women’s suffragists Ida Wells and Mary Terrell co-found the NAACP



June 18, 1912

African-American Robert Church, founder of Lincoln Leagues to register black voters in Tennessee, attends 1912 Republican National Convention as delegate; eventually serves as delegate at 8 conventions



August 1, 1916

Republican presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes, former New York Governor and U.S. Supreme Court Justice, endorses women’s suffrage constitutional amendment; he would become Secretary of State and Chief Justice



May 21, 1919

Republican House passes constitutional amendment granting women the vote with 85% of Republicans in favor, but only 54% of Democrats; in Senate, 80% of Republicans would vote yes, but almost half of Democrats no



April 18, 1920

Minnesota’s FIRST-in-the-nation anti-lynching law, promoted by African-American Republican Nellie Francis, signed by Republican Gov. Jacob Preus



August 18, 1920

Republican-authored 19th Amendment, giving women the vote, becomes part of Constitution; 26 of the 36 states to ratify had Republican-controlled legislatures



January 26, 1922

House passes bill authored by U.S. Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-MO) making lynching a federal crime; Senate Democrats block it with filibuster



June 2, 1924

Republican President Calvin Coolidge signs bill passed by Republican Congress granting U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans



October 3, 1924

Republicans denounce three-time Democrat presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan for defending the Ku Klux Klan at 1924 Democratic National Convention



December 8, 1924

Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis argues in favor of “separate but equal”



June 12, 1929

First Lady Lou Hoover invites wife of U.S. Rep. Oscar De Priest (R-IL), an African-American, to tea at the White House, sparking protests by Democrats across the country



August 17, 1937

Republicans organize opposition to former Ku Klux Klansman and Democrat U.S. Senator Hugo Black, appointed to U.S. Supreme Court by FDR; his Klan background was hidden until after confirmation



June 24, 1940

Republican Party platform calls for integration of the armed forces; for the balance of his terms in office, FDR refuses to order it



October 20, 1942

60 prominent African-Americans issue Durham Manifesto, calling on southern Democrats to abolish their all-white primaries



April 3, 1944

U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Texas Democratic Party’s “whites only” primary election system



August 8, 1945

Republicans condemn Harry Truman's surprise use of the atomic bomb in Japan. The whining and criticism goes on for years. It begins two days after the Hiroshima bombing, when former Republican President Herbert Hoover writes to a friend that "[t]he use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."





February 18, 1946

Appointed by Republican President Calvin Coolidge, federal judge Paul McCormick ends segregation of Mexican-American children in California public schools



July 11, 1952

Republican Party platform condemns “duplicity and insincerity” of Democrats in racial matters



September 30, 1953

Earl Warren, California’s three-term Republican Governor and 1948 Republican vice presidential nominee, nominated to be Chief Justice; wrote landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education



December 8, 1953

Eisenhower administration Asst. Attorney General Lee Rankin argues for plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education



May 17, 1954

Chief Justice Earl Warren, three-term Republican Governor (CA) and Republican vice presidential nominee in 1948, wins unanimous support of Supreme Court for school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education



November 25, 1955

Eisenhower administration bans racial segregation of interstate bus travel



March 12, 1956

Ninety-seven Democrats in Congress condemn Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and pledge to continue segregation



June 5, 1956

Republican federal judge Frank Johnson rules in favor of Rosa Parks in decision striking down “blacks in the back of the bus” law



October 19, 1956

On campaign trail, Vice President Richard Nixon vows: “American boys and girls shall sit, side by side, at any school – public or private – with no regard paid to the color of their skin. Segregation, discrimination, and prejudice have no place in America”



November 6, 1956

African-American civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy vote for Republican Dwight Eisenhower for President



September 9, 1957

President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republican Party’s 1957 Civil Rights Act



September 24, 1957

Sparking criticism from Democrats such as Senators John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, President Dwight Eisenhower deploys the 82nd Airborne Division to Little Rock, AR to force Democrat Governor Orval Faubus to integrate public schools



June 23, 1958

President Dwight Eisenhower meets with Martin Luther King and other African-American leaders to discuss plans to advance civil rights



February 4, 1959

President Eisenhower informs Republican leaders of his plan to introduce 1960 Civil Rights Act, despite staunch opposition from many Democrats



May 6, 1960

President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republicans’ Civil Rights Act of 1960, overcoming 125-hour, around-the-clock filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats



July 27, 1960

At Republican National Convention, Vice President and eventual presidential nominee Richard Nixon insists on strong civil rights plank in platform



May 2, 1963

Republicans condemn Democrat sheriff of Birmingham, AL for arresting over 2,000 African-American schoolchildren marching for their civil rights



June 1, 1963

Democrat Governor George Wallace announces defiance of court order issued by Republican federal judge Frank Johnson to integrate University of Alabama



September 29, 1963

Gov. George Wallace (D-AL) defies order by U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson, appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, to integrate Tuskegee High School



June 9, 1964

Republicans condemn 14-hour filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act by U.S. Senator and former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd (D-WV), who still serves in the Senate



June 10, 1964

Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) criticizes Democrat filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act, calls on Democrats to stop opposing racial equality



The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced and approved by a staggering majority of Republicans in the Senate. The Act was opposed by most southern Democrat senators, several of whom were proud segregationists—one of them being Al Gore Sr. Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader from Illinois, to get the Act passed.



June 20, 1964

The Chicago Defender, renowned African-American newspaper, praises Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) for leading passage of 1964 Civil Rights Act



March 7, 1965

Police under the command of Democrat Governor George Wallace attack African-Americans demonstrating for voting rights in Selma, AL



March 21, 1965

Republican federal judge Frank Johnson authorizes Martin Luther King’s protest march from Selma to Montgomery, overruling Democrat Governor George Wallace



August 4, 1965

Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) overcomes Democrat attempts to block 1965 Voting Rights Act; 94% of Senate Republicans vote for landmark civil right legislation, while 27% of Democrats oppose



August 6, 1965

Voting Rights Act of 1965, abolishing literacy tests and other measures devised by Democrats to prevent African-Americans from voting, signed into law; higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats vote in favor



July 8, 1970

In special message to Congress, President Richard Nixon calls for reversal of policy of forced termination of Native American rights and benefits



September 17, 1971

Former Ku Klux Klan member and Democrat U.S. Senator Hugo Black (D-AL) retires from U.S. Supreme Court; appointed by FDR in 1937, he had defended Klansmen for racial murders



February 19, 1976

President Gerald Ford formally rescinds President Franklin Roosevelt’s notorious Executive Order authorizing internment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII



September 15, 1981

President Ronald Reagan establishes the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, to increase African-American participation in federal education programs



June 29, 1982

President Ronald Reagan signs 25-year extension of 1965 Voting Rights Act



August 10, 1988

President Ronald Reagan signs Civil Liberties Act of 1988, compensating Japanese-Americans for deprivation of civil rights and property during World War II internment ordered by FDR



November 21, 1991

President George H. W. Bush signs Civil Rights Act of 1991 to strengthen federal civil rights legislation



August 20, 1996

Bill authored by U.S. Rep. Susan Molinari (R-NY) to prohibit racial discrimination in adoptions, part of Republicans’ Contract With America, becomes law



April 26, 1999

Legislation authored by U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI) awarding Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks is transmitted to President



January 25, 2001

U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee declares school choice to be “Educational Emancipation”



March 19, 2003

Republican U.S. Representatives of Hispanic and Portuguese descent form Congressional Hispanic Conference



May 23, 2003

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) introduces bill to establish National Museum of African American History and Culture



February 26, 2004

Hispanic Republican U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-TX) condemns racist comments by U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL); she had called Asst. Secretary of State Roger Noriega and several Hispanic Congressmen “a bunch of white men...you all look alike to me”



* * *



There you have it. What a different country this would be, had not Republicans blocked the agenda of Democrats every step of the way. But this evil organization is far from through. Now, they want to give education vouchers to public school children, so kids of every race and class can attend private schools of their CHOICE. Where will we get our garbage collectors, dishwashers and ditch diggers if blacks, Hispanics and white trash have access to a good education? They are trying to stop undocumented immigration, meaning the cheapest labor Democrats have had since the days of slavery will be taken away. They are trying to end segregation and slavery all over again!



And in true Republican tradition, they just can't stop poking their nose into other people's business, trying to destroy a woman's right to choose. They are trying to crush the secret vision of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who once said, ""We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…"



Is there NO end to the freedoms these fascists will try to destroy?! No matter how many lies must be told, no matter how many schoolchildren must be mis-educated, no matter how many elections must be rigged, THE REPUBLICANS MUST BE STOPPED!
"If America Was A Tree, The Left Would Root For The Termites...Greg Gutfeld."
Ahso!
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by Ahso! »

Who is Henry A. Rhodes? BTW - BTS - your first link still doesn't work.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,”

Voltaire



I have only one thing to do and that's

Be the wave that I am and then

Sink back into the ocean

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yaaarrrgg
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by yaaarrrgg »

BTS, I agree that Democratic party used to be the more racist of the two. I already agreed with you on that. A lot changes in a hundred years though.

That you have to dig back so far (to the Civil War) doesn't speak highly about the recent accomplishments in the last 30 years. :)
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by BTS »

yaaarrrgg;1284206 wrote: BTS, I agree that Democratic party used to be the more racist of the two. I already agreed with you on that. A lot changes in a hundred years though.



That you have to dig back so far (to the Civil War) doesn't speak highly about the recent accomplishments in the last 30 years. :)


I did my homework ...........I think:-3

I went from Civil War time to about 2004.

1) Tell us all the GOOD things the Democrat party did for minorities in the last 10 years.

Is it really that easy to skip right on by the MOST crucial vote for minorities in the last 100 years. Nothing, either party did since comes close to the "Civil Rights Act".





"Modern Republicans don't really care about minorities ... they outright mock them. The GOP is pretty much an all white-Christian-male party if you haven't noticed."





2) When was the last time they "mocked em"?
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by spot »

BTS;1285628 wrote: [quote=yaaarrrgg]Modern Republicans don't really care about minorities ... they outright mock them. The GOP is pretty much an all white-Christian-male party if you haven't noticed.When was the last time they "mocked em"?


Ann Coulter January 13, 2010

'Clinton also called Obama to apologize, but ended up asking him to bring everybody some coffee'? You notice earlier where she puts quote marks round the extract from the book while implying it's actually a direct quote from President Clinton, too?

Or how about 'They used to be called "African-Americans for David Duke," but that was mostly a social thing. Now they're doing real political organizing'? 'Their motto: "We Will Be Heard - As Soon As I Get This Gentleman's Coffee'? 'Reid is denying reports that in 2007 he said to Obama: "You should run. You people are good at that."'? 'he also admired Hillary for her light skin and the fact that she only uses a Negro dialect when she wants to'?

'BREAKING NEWS: Hoping to curry favor with the African-American community, Sen. Reid was arrested late this afternoon after breaking into his own home'? 'UPDATE: Harry Reid has just apologized to the light-skinned people of Haiti for the 7.0 earthquake that hit them Tuesday afternoon'?
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by yaaarrrgg »

BTS,

I recall when MLK day passed, I heard Republicans referr to it as "N***** Day" and they said would work in protest if given the day off. The leaders don't use the same rhetoric, but give a wink-and-a-nod to the voters who do.

Sarah Palin spoke a lot about "real America" ... which sounds an awful lot like "white Christian America" to my ear. Why do you think the KKK almost always donates to the GOP?

Black people aren't the only minorities of course. The GOP has turned it sights on gay people, Muslims, atheists, and hispanics. Look at the party itself. Who did they elected as a new senator. Notice anything similar with the rest of the party?

White: check

Christian: check

Male: check

Heterosexual: check

On gay marriage: you'd think that the GOP would support individual rights of a minority, but of course they don't because they are fueled more by knee-jerk reactions and religious extremism than coherent principles.
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by BTS »

spot;1285633 wrote: Ann Coulter January 13, 2010



'Clinton also called Obama to apologize, but ended up asking him to bring everybody some coffee'? You notice earlier where she puts quote marks round the extract from the book while implying it's actually a direct quote from President Clinton, too?



Or how about 'They used to be called "African-Americans for David Duke," but that was mostly a social thing. Now they're doing real political organizing'? 'Their motto: "We Will Be Heard - As Soon As I Get This Gentleman's Coffee'? 'Reid is denying reports that in 2007 he said to Obama: "You should run. You people are good at that."'? 'he also admired Hillary for her light skin and the fact that she only uses a Negro dialect when she wants to'?







'BREAKING NEWS: Hoping to curry favor with the African-American community, Sen. Reid was arrested late this afternoon after breaking into his own home'? 'UPDATE: Harry Reid has just apologized to the light-skinned people of Haiti for the 7.0 earthquake that hit them Tuesday afternoon'?




KOOL...........You dug and dug and found a talking head :confused:. How can you relate that to policymakers when this thread is about our representatives. She is NOT my representative!!



But I did like ol Bill's take on Obama:yh_rotfl



Excerpt: Bill Clinton On Obama: 'A Few Years Ago, This Guy Would Have Been Getting Us Coffee'



Yes, the Dems know how to keep their minorities......suppressed:o
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by spot »

BTS;1285724 wrote: KOOL...........You dug and dug and found a talking head :confused:. How can you relate that to policymakers when this thread is about our representatives. She is NOT my representative!!


My apologies, I was misled by the reference to "Modern Republicans" in the post, I had no idea that meant representatives and nobody else. Ann Coulter is a definitive Modern Republican, I thought she'd fit the bill. It's why I went to her site and picked last week's drippings.
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by Saint_ »

"Dems reaping what they sowed" Wait a minute... weren't the NEOCONS in power for the last eight years?

This thread is an exercise in diversion, falsehood, and bald-faced lies. But at least the:wah: title made me laugh!
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Post by BTS »

yaaarrrgg;1285692 wrote: BTS,



I recall when MLK day passed, I heard Republicans referr to it as "N***** Day" and they said would work in protest if given the day off. The leaders don't use the same rhetoric, but give a wink-and-a-nod to the voters who do.



Sarah Palin spoke a lot about "real America" ... which sounds an awful lot like "white Christian America" to my ear. Why do you think the KKK almost always donates to the GOP?



Black people aren't the only minorities of course. The GOP has turned it sites on gay people, Muslims, atheists, and hispanics. Look at the party itself. Who did they elected as a new senator. Notice anything similar with the rest of the party?



White: check

Christian: check

Male: check

Heterosexual: check



On gay marriage: you'd think that the GOP would support individual rights of a minority, but of course they don't because they are fueled more by knee-jerk reactions and religious extremism than coherent principles.


Hmmm....:-3 Weird that ONLY repugs would mutter the "N" word after the enactment. Thanks for the history lesson yaaarrrgg, I would have gone to my grave believing that BOTH parties muttered that kind of talk..Didn't Johnson refer to Dr. King as "that Nigger preacher."



Did you know MLK was a Republican? Yah he was. Ever notice that most cities with Democrat control over the last 10 decades, STILL have poor, suppressed inner cities. Weird huh.....with all this talk about how the Dems do so much for the minorities.



But that is not the topic of my original post, is it?



For Ahso:

I tried my first link, it works just fine.

Who is Henry A. Rhodes?



I dunno? You tell me. Where are you getting it from?
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Post by Saint_ »

yaaarrrgg;1285692 wrote: Who did they elected as a new senator. Notice anything similar with the rest of the party?

White: check

Christian: check

Male: check

Heterosexual: check.


Well, if he's not an adulterer, then he actually doesn't fit the mold!:wah:
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Post by Ahso! »

BTS;1285731 wrote:

For Ahso:

I tried my first link, it works just fine.

Who is Henry A. Rhodes?



I dunno? You tell me. Where are you getting it from?Heres your second link:

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/un ... .04.x.html

the author is Henry A. Rhodes. Who is he. I can't find anything on him.

And heres your first link which comes up"Not Found" for me.

http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.html
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by BTS »

Saint_;1285730 wrote: "Dems reaping what they sowed" Wait a minute... weren't the NEOCONS in power for the last eight years?



This thread is an exercise in diversion, falsehood, and bald-faced lies. But at least the:wah: title made me laugh!


I think you need to check your history a bit. The Dems have had control of congress since Nov. 2006 (3 years) They have been in control of the White House for a year. How does that correlate to "The last eight years?"



So I am a "bald faced liar"....:-1:-1



Where are ALL these supposed lies?



About the title, do you even know why I used that? My point was (is) that in Mass. when Romney was gov. the Dems were afraid that John Kerry might become Pres. they changed the law to make sure that Romney could not appoint a conservative.



Any thoughts on that fact?





I'll say it again "Dems reaping what they sowed"
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Post by BTS »

Ahso!;1285735 wrote: Heres your second link:

82.03.04: An Analysis of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Legislated Response to Racial Discrimination in the U. S.

the author is Henry A. Rhodes. Who is he. I can't find anything on him.



And heres your first link which comes up"Not Found" for me.

http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.html




This is first link in original post:

Few are willing to even discuss succession - The Boston Globe



What post # are we talking about?
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Post by Saint_ »

Speaking of "Reaping and sowing" this says a lot and details the lies I was talking about::)



Reaping and Sowing: The Republican Decline

I wonder how many of you understand what's actually happening with the Republican Party. You can complain all you want about the Democrats; the current incarnation of the Republican Party is largely history, and they will be the last ones aware of that reality.

Now, when I say the Republican Party is dead, please note that I am only talking about the party's current incarnation. They could very well come back at some point. But it will have to be as something different; the current version of the party is history. This political death was a long time coming, but it was inevitable, largely because the ideology they've adopted demands it.

The political ideology (or "movement," as they laughingly call it) that has been labeled "conservative" for the last 30 years is actually anything but conservative, and it was built largely upon lies and deceit, and that is why it's going down, and going down hard. You're watching the end of one of the most shameful eras in our history, folks, and you should be saying, “Good Riddance.”

That sounds like a strong statement, but it's not. And if you doubt the assertion, think hard. The last truly honest neocon was Barry Goldwater, and he was soundly trounced by Lyndon Johnson, who was a true conservative who saw the writing on the wall and adopted the inevitability of civil rights for blacks, and the need for the government to do something about the rampant poverty that continued to thrive in pockets all over the country. For that, he was labeled "liberal," and the neocon deception was under way.

The Goldwater defeat motivated the neocons to attempt a different strategy; one in which they held the same



beliefs as before, but couched them in more "acceptable" language, so as to hide their true intent. In addition, they also adopted very subtle, but very strong racist overtones that definitely had to be hidden behind "code words." Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" was a blatant attempt to exploit the racism in those who objected to the federal government's actions on behalf of blacks, in order to ensure their civil rights, and to prevent discrimination. The "Southern Strategy" (a phrase coined by Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips -- yes, THAT Kevin Phillips) used the code word "states' rights" to secure the Southern states as a stronghold for the Republican Party. The entire "Southern Strategy" was basically dishonest, because it was a wink and a smile to Southern racist elements, in language that couched its true intent, which would never have been found acceptable to most reasonable people.

Unfortunately, this patently dishonest concept demonstrated great success early on, because the "people" it appealed to most had made it a practice to keep people down seven days a week, while praising God in full voice for an hour or so on Sunday, and they had a stellar ability to operate in stealth. As a result of its great electoral success, this dishonest strategy spread to all sorts of issues, and was tailored to appeal to different groups. Essentially, the entire "movement" was based on a wink and a nod to extremists, and before long, these people became the Republican Party's "base" of support. Prior to Goldwater's numbing defeat, most of these extremists had been relegated to the fringes of the Democratic Party,; in this new incarnation of the "Party of Lincoln, the wingnuts had found a home. The new neocon Republican Party's strategy of lies, half-truths and euphemism, so as to appeal to the average voter without giving away their actual intent, had long been practiced by racists in the Jim Crow South, and it became the key to the Republican Party's resurgence.

For a clue, take a look at some of the terminology these people use. To the average "conservative" in this day and age, the terms "states' rights" and "federalism" are synonymous, which is absolutely absurd. In reality, the terms are opposites. "Federalism" is all about a strong central government, after all; hence the root word "federal." The Federalist Society, which is a strongly neocon organization dedicated to taking power away from the federal government, uses Alexander Hamilton as a figurehead, even though it preaches the exact opposite of Hamilton's vision of a strong, centralized federal government. Neocons also love to toss around phrases like "fiscal responsibility" as they shrug at enormous budget deficits and throw billions of dollars in tax cuts at the rich and huge corporate donors. They talk about "personal responsibility," but don't enforce it when one of their own does something wrong. They use the word "quotas" when discussing affirmative action, despite the fact that quotas were outlawed in 1978. When they discuss "welfare," they invariably invoke an image of a fat black woman living in a tenement with a dozen kids, and scoff when anyone mentions the legislative subsidies routinely given to corporations that are already worth billions of dollars, and who use those tax dollars to pay their executives millions.

In other words, the current "conservative" movement (which is in no way conservative, of course) was built on lies and deceit, and has only achieved its current success through more lies and more deceit. But there's a problem when you build a political "movement" on something that doesn't match your true intentions. At some point, if your message is appealing enough, you'll find electoral success, as the Republican Party did quite a bit over the last 30 years, and then you have to perform.

And that is why the GOP finds itself in its current predicament. They created a governmental model that is completely incompetent, and unable to function in a public service capacity. For eight years, the Republican Party had what they wanted, and they demonstrated themselves to be completely incapable of governing, in part because their lust for power was all about gaining power, in part because what they actually believe in is in direct conflict with the United States Constitution has always been about, and also because the neocon movement has populated itself with people who have no problem lying and being deceitful to get what they want. If anyone was surprised by a neocon president who didn't think the Constitution should apply to him, and a Congress whose leadership was populated by criminals, they shouldn't have been.

Why are people so surprised by the corruption that is the hallmark of the neocon "movement"? Their entire political training regimen came from people like Newt Gingrich, who thought of himself as something of a genius of sorts when it came to political language, and using such language to manipulate public opinion. Gingrich, of course, wasn't the problem, he was a symptom. Forty years ago, it would have seemed inconceivable that a popular political movement in the United States could be led by the vile group of miscreants that has led the current incarnation of the Republican Party. And frankly, most of the "brains" behind the GOP's rise have bailed in the last few years, thus leaving the current party with the dumbest group of imbeciles to ever lead a major political group. As a result, fewer than a quarter of Americans self-identify as Republicans, and that number looks to be dropping further. Check out this cast of idiots, and then ask yourself why anyone would ever NOT consider the Republican Party effectively dead.

The official leader of the Republican Party is Michael Steele, a man whose greatest claim to fame before this "honor" was a fake story he perpetrated, in which non-existent "liberals" pelted him with Oreo cookies. The event never happened and, frankly, Mallowmars would have been more appropriate. Steele is an empty suit, folks; he is only where he is because of his skin tone, and he may be the only person in the

nation who doesn't realize it. He's never run a successful campaign, he's never been elected to political office on his own, and he's never had any serious political responsibility. His greatest claim to fame has been as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, which isn't exactly a position of enormous responsibility, and as Mike Tyson's former brother-in-law. He has no media skills, as is evident every time he gets before the cameras or microphones, and he has minimal political instincts. His election as head of the RNC, and their failure to fire him, in spite of his obvious and repeated incompetence, is testament to the political vacuousness of these people.

The ideological head of the Republican Party is Rush Limbaugh. The only person who should think that's a good thing is the drug-addled gasbag himself, because he makes a lot of money duping his gullible listeners. Limbaugh is a documented liar, who is not above saying anything if he sees it as necessary to support "the cause." But his recent rise in the Republican ranks should worry anyone who wants the GOP to be taken seriously as a political party. Look; Limbaugh's popularity peaked about 15 years ago. If he's lucky, 14 million people listen to his show in a given week, and you only get that number when you add together all five days. It's likely that 90% of the people in this country have never heard his show, and I

would suggest that at least half of all voters wouldn't know who he was when they saw him. He's a former (?) drug addict, who apparently doctor-shopped for prescriptions for oxycontin, or hillbilly heroin, and worked his ass off to get away with it, despite his repeated admonitions in the past that all drug addicts should rot in jail. (Limbaugh only escaped jail through the generous assistance of the ACLU, by the way; a group he spends a lot of time castigating for being "un-American.") He lives and works inside of a huge Florida estate, behind a gate, while claiming to speak as an "everyman" of sorts, as if "regular guys" go on regular junkets to the Dominican Republic armed with handfuls of Viagra. He's always been a "good soldier" of sorts, especially back in the days when he was telling anyone dumb enough to listen that the Clinton Administration was full of murderers and thieves. He followed that up, of course, by admonishing the same moronic "dittoheads" that the Bush Administration was NOT full of murderers and thieves. . He's been married three times as often as most of the people he calls "immoral," even as he claims evangelical Christians among his strongest supporters. Limbaugh is a coward and a proven racist, and most people who actually bother to listen to him think he's an *******. Limbaugh as a leader is not a good sign; it's more like a sign of apocalypse for the Republican Party.

The House Minority Leader -- the de facto leader of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives -- is John Boehner, who, besides apparently being addicted to bronzer and quite possibly alcohol, seems to be able to cry at the drop of a shot glass. He's also one of the mud-dumbest "leaders" in the history of Congress. His first claim to fame was his work to close the House Bank, which was the biggest non-scandal scandal ever seen in politics. Basically, members of Congress used to cash post-dated checks at the bank. Now, those same Republicans are champions of businesses that offer "payday"

loans, in which the poor get screwed to the tune of as much as 1000% interest for the privilege of borrowing $100 to pay the high electric bills caused by Boehner's championing of the concept of deregulation. Boehner also helped usher through rules that prohibited Congresspeople from receiving campaign contributions on the House floor -- AFTER he was seen handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to Congressmen on the House floor. Boehner's PAC took a whole bunch of money from Indian tribes who were clients of Jack Abramoff, while claiming he didn't know no stinkin' Jack Abramoff. In 2004, a Sallie Mae lobbyist threw a fundraiser for him, where more than 30 Sallie Mae executives wrote large checks to Boehner's PAC. About a year later, he gave them a few "favors," which he slipped into the Higher Education Act. He rents a Capitol Hill apartment from a lobbyist. Last September, when all hell was breaking loose on the financial front, Boehner attended a secret meeting with Congressional leaders, plus Paulson and Bernanke, and immediately after, cashed out of a mutual fund. Boehner was also complicit in covering up for Mark Foley's pedophilia. Boehner is also a lousy politician. The only reason he keeps winning election is because his district was pretty much drawn in his favor. Twice now, he's come up with bills that were supposedly alternatives to Democratic plans, and both times, he became a laughingstock for doing so. As you'll recall, back in February, he produced an alternate stimulus plan with no numbers. Then, this month, he did the same with a "health care bill," presenting a phony bill with no real reforms, and absolutely no numbers, while assuring us that the bill would save us money.

The Senate Minority Leader is Mitch McConnell, who could be the most openly hypocritical leader in Republican political history, and that's going some. McConnell has been working tirelessly against health insurance reform, which would give millions of Americans access to the same health insurance choices McConnell has. But did you know that McConnell has a pre-existing condition? In other words, if he was one of his constituents, he wouldn't even be able to get health insurance. See, he was stricken with a mild form of polio when he was two. Ironically, part of the reason he was able to overcome it was because of

physical therapy his mother learned at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. In other words, he was lucky. He also likely had insurance. But McConnell is not just a hypocrite on health care; his entire career is built on hypocrisy. Amazingly, he was front and center back in 1998, demanding that Clinton aides be forced to testify under oath about the infamous blowjob, but when it came time for the Bushies to testify about their collective sins, McConnell was suddenly against such a thing, and saw it as having a negative impact on the presidency. McConnell's also taken the oath of office many times, yet he doesn't seem to understand what it says. He opposed campaign finance reform, using the First Amendment as a basis -- he apparently thinks those with more money have more free speech rights than everyone else. But he was all for allowing the NSA to spy on Americans, and even introduced a bill sanctioning the practice. He once stupidly claimed that the Iraq War was a "success" because it kept the terrorists over there. He actually believes that the minute we pull out of Iraq, terrorists will stream over here. Apparently, using soldiers (like my son, for example) as decoys is a valid use of our military to Mitchy. McConnell is also profoundly stupid; he's actually against closing Gitmo, because he's sure the several hundred people still there might "return to the battlefield." He's apparently unaware that not all of those people will be just "released," and he's apparently of the opinion that our military is so weak that a couple of hundred miscreants could cause major problems on "the battlefield." (Call me crazy, but that would seem to be a major reason to get our soldiers off that battlefield, but what do I know?) By the way, he based this on the fact that, of the more than 400 former prisoners Bush released, eighteen have gone back to battle against us.

Those are just the GOP political leaders, who like to pretend their big, tough and macho, when they're really a bunch of cowards. There are also the mouthpieces Republicans use to get their message out. Besides Limbaugh, who's simply the biggest turd on crap mountain, there are Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly,



Michael Savage, and their newest Clown Prince, Glenn Beck. Among the leaders of the pack heading toward the 2012 Republican presidential nomination are Mitt Romney, who has absolutely no chance in a national election, Rudy Guiliani, who probably couldn't become Mayor of New York anymore, Bobby Jindal the exorcist, and Saran Palin, who is pretty much a national joke to everyone who isn't a wingnut. And Jeb Bush will be be about 115 years old before he has a shot at becoming the third Bush failure as president.

The current incarnation of the Republican Party is toast. And it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. The leadership of the the GOP gained power through lies and deception, and for the eight years they basically ran everything, they were almost absolutely corrupt. Whenever politicians in a democracy base their philosophy on deception, doesn't it follow that they'll pretty much only attract corrupt people? Honest people simply will not lie to move an agenda forward, no matter how just they feel their cause is.

For 40 years, the "real conservatives" in the Republican Party have been held hostage by a bunch of zealots who would say and do anything they felt they had to in order to obtain power. Of course, those claiming "principles" just sat back and let them do so, because their side was "winning." These "conservatives" rarely complained about the actions of the Reagan Administration during Iran-Contra, and actively cheered when Bush 41 pardoned pretty much everyone involved. They sat back, watched and cheered as the court set a new and dangerous precedent by allowing a sitting president to be the subject of a frivolous lawsuit while in office, and then championed his impeachment for something that wasn't even a crime, even though they knew he'd never be convicted. They didn't claim a violation of "states' rights" when the Supreme Court abused their Constitutional mandate and demanded



that Florida stop counting votes in 2000. Where were their principles when John Kerry was being "Swift Boated"? Was it principled to sit back and say nothing as the right wing Bush campaign put out flyers in racist areas suggesting that John McCain had a black child, and was therefore not qualified to become president? Where was their concern for "principle" when Max Cleland was being called a coward, and it was suggested that he lost three limbs "the wrong way" in Vietnam? Throughout the life of this "movement," phony "conservatives" ran all sorts of people for office based solely on their stated ideology and their ability to raise money (or more accurately, their ability to threaten people for money), not any sort of "principle."

The Bush Administration and the wholly corrupt Republican-led Congress were the direct descendants of the dishonesty that marked the "conservative movement" since Goldwater's defeat. The Republican leadership is populated by so-called "conservatives" who lied and cheated to get there, and who are dishonest at their core. They don't care about people, because people who will do dishonest things to get what they want naturally don't care about people. They don't understand the concept of public service, because people who lie and cheat to get where they are have no concern for how others are affected by the things they do. They only hire cronies to crucial positions, because people who are naturally dishonest tend to be paranoid and assume that others are as dishonest as themselves. Imagine an entire government leadership populated with "everyone does it" relativists. Actually, you don't have to imagine it; that's exactly where we found ourselves for eight years. And that is why the Republican Party leadership is largely composed of a group of morons who look very much yapping dogs, standing outside, trying to get us to let them back in the house. But we can't because they'll just poop on the carpet again if we do.

And that is exactly where the current incarnation of the Republican Party belongs. And it's not just the Republican Party that's going down right now; it's the entire "conservative movement." And it's precisely because real conservatives allowed winning to take precedence over honesty and fairness, and because they don't understand the concept of government service.

In other words, you reap what you sow, and the right has been sowing these seeds for a very long time.
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by Ahso! »

bts;1285739 wrote: this is first link in original post:

few are willing to even discuss succession - the boston globe



what post # are we talking about?#16
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Post by BTS »

Rhodes, Alfred Henry, 1941-

Biography:

Alfred Henry Rhodes was born on March 16, 1941 in Midnight, Mississippi. Rhodes graduated from Tougaloo College and attended graduate school at Jackson State University. He became an organizer and leader in the local civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s and participating in numerous demonstrations and marches.

Henry A. Rhodes has been a teacher in the New Haven public school system since 1977. The last three years he has served as a Facilitator for Social Development and Curriculum. Being a teacher in the New Haven system has afforded him an opportunity to participate in the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and develop curriculum units for his students.



Some of his works:



“”Lynch Law—An American Community Enigma,”



Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission photograph of Alfred Rhodes (left) and Henry Hatchett [sic] leading a crowd of African American women across Pearl Street during a demonstration for welfare rights in Jackson, Mississippi, 1960s



94.04.05: Nativist and Racist Movements in the U.S. and their ...





Civil Rights: 1964
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Post by BTS »

Saint:

Seeing as you didn't credit the site you copy and pasted that "Outdated" hit piece from, I will:



Please Cut the Crap!: Reaping and Sowing: The Republican Decline



Highlighting "lies and deceit" make it all true?



You better not underestimate the "Tea Party" movement, lest you will be on the outside looking in.



So Rush is the head of the conservs.?...:yh_rotfl

When did we vote him in? Or did the Dems. elect him?



I just think you are paranoid.
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Post by BTS »

Ahso!;1285745 wrote: #16




Try this:

Civil Rights: 1964
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Dems reaping what they sowed

Post by Saint_ »

BTS;1285757 wrote: Saint:

Seeing as you didn't credit the site you copy and pasted that "Outdated" hit piece from, I will:



Please Cut the Crap!: Reaping and Sowing: The Republican Decline


Hey thanks, I was going to put in the byline, but I couldn't find it.:D



Highlighting "lies and deceit" make it all true?


Ummmm.... yes?



You better not underestimate the "Tea Party" movement, lest you will be on the outside looking in.


If I EVER get so radical, neurotic, confused, rabid, and idiotic that I start joining "tea parties", shouting out "HE LIES!" in Congress, or talking about overthrowing my own government , please bash me in the head and have me committed.



So Rush is the head of the conservs.?...:yh_rotfl

When did we vote him in? Or did the Dems. elect him?


Nice of you to admit it.:D



I just think you are paranoid.


No, not paranoid. Depressed at what the NEOCONS have done to America. Distressed that we are still waging an illegal war in Iraq, started by NEOCONS, but never paid for by them. Disgusted with the backbiting, destructive, "no to everything" attitude of the NEOCONS and disillusioned by the ridiculous, destructive, despicable, and detestable policies of the war-mongering, torture-promoting, drill-baby-drill, kill-the-Earth, my-way-or-the highway, kill-'em-all-and let-God-sort-them-out, gun-toting NEOCONS, absolutely!:-1

But never paranoid!:rolleyes:
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