Our last conversation

Please read the article linked below and consider these questions 1. Are all citizens given "equal protection under the law" as guaranteed by the US Constitution? 2. Is the War on Women different from the Mommy Wars? 3. If you are a woman, what do you see as your role in the world today? If you are a male, what do you think is the proper role women should play in our society? Be thoughtful and enjoy this our LAST CONVERSATION. Article link: http://www.policymic.com/articles/8257/om-mothers-day-2012cease-inhostilities-in-the-war-on-women-and%20mommy-wars

Poverty

After reading Honky and watching Grapes of Wrath and Pursuit of Happyness, do you feel poverty is something that can be elimnated or effectively reduced in our American society? Justify your position and engage your classmates as you discuss Poverty in America.

Free Speech--is there a limit to this right?

How free should our speech be? Are there or should there be limits to free speech? Is unchecked free speech a detriment to civil discourse in our democratic society?
Consider these questions as you look at the articles linked below.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/racist-email-federal-judge-richard-cebull-sent-his-buddies-about-president-obama-s-mom

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/rush-limbaughs-attack-on-sandra-fluke-was-hate-speech/2012/03/02/gIQAZVxrmR_blog.html

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-villa-park-councilwoman-protest,0,5376822.story

Income Inequality and living wage

In recent months the Occupy Wall Street Movement has received a lot of media attention. Though the goals of the movement haven’t always been crystal clear, one idea—“We are the 99%” has resonated with large segments of the American society. Who are these “99%” and what does the movement want for this group? The major sticking point is income inequality. For them, who is the 1% might be a better question. The one percent is CEO’s, hedge fund managers, and top executives who account for 31 % of our nation’s income. This group, for the most part, has not suffered from the recent economic downturn. In a recent University of California at Berkley study revealed that from 2007-2009 Wall Street profits, representing many of the corporations for whom the top one percent work, have risen 720%, while at the same time unemployment has more than doubled, and American’s home equity has diminished by 35%. This last statistic is particularly troubling since most of middle class Americans wealth is tied up in their homes. So, while most of America has been suffering, the wealthiest one percent has actually improved its economic standing. A Yale University study also reveals that during that same time period, 2007-2009, the top one percent has an average of $600,000 more per year to live on, while middle class Americans have experienced a drop in income of nearly $8500 per year. Are these trends fair? Should the government intervene to make income distribution more equal? The opinions of Americans are mixed. President Obama recently stated, “We can’t leave our values at the door….great reformers in American history did their work not just because it was sound policy, or good analysis but because our faith and values dictated it.” I agree with Obama. Our economic policies should be subject to moral judgment. As a recent editorial from “Protestants for the Common Good” stated—“morality and policy should be synonymous. If not we will lose our souls as individuals and our stature as a nation”. One suggestion to bring fairness and morality to our economic system is a proposal to institute a “living wage” as law. A living wage is defined as the bare minimum wage needed to sustain a life above the poverty line. Presently that figure is roughly $10 an hour. Ten states are already discussing such proposals. The benefits are obvious. With food prices going up (5%) over the last year and gas prices dramatically rising (32%), lower and middle class families are struggling to make ends meet. The extra wage would be more money to pay for necessities and could increase consumer spending and government tax revenues. Others counter however, that since such a wage increase would lead to a significant rise in the cost of production, businesses would have to fire workers and outsource more American jobs to cheaper overseas labor markets. Other business leaders argue that a mandated living wage would also lead to higher prices and lower demand, which would make our current economic situation worse. Can American business “afford” to be moral and pay their workers a “living wage”? I believe so. Another study by UC-Berkley involving Walmart—a well-known corporation that hires minimum wage or below living wage salaries, revealed that neither Walmart prices nor profits would be significantly impacted by a living wage proposal. The study projected that the average Walmart customer would pay 36 cents more per visit and only $10 more per year if wage increases were passed on to consumer through higher prices. I would gladly pay that much, if every Walmart worker could receive at least a living wage. I know some smaller companies would have more difficulty meeting that wage standard. However the larger companies, the ones whose profits have soared in recent years, certainly can afford to do the morally right thing. As President Obama said –“we can’t leave our values at the door” when we make policy. It is time to dignify all jobs and guarantee all Americans a “living wage”.

Meritocracy in America--Fact or Fiction?

Meritocracy in 21st century America—Fact or Fiction?
It is 2012 and another Presidential election is on the horizon. The past four years have been troubling ones for Americans. We have experienced four years of economic recession. Unemployment remains high, the nation’s debt continues to skyrocket, and all the while politicians argue about the best ways to address our current economic and social woes. As our society struggles with the options to address our dilemma, many are advocating tax cuts and reductions in entitlement programs as the best method for reviving our economic system. Proponents of this approach justify this path by arguing that our nation was founded on the American Dream—a belief that everyone has the opportunity to “make it” in America. Inherent in this American Dream is the idea of meritocracy. Meritocracy suggests that financial success in America is justly and fairly earned through hard work and performance. Conversely, meritocracy implies that the poor are lazy and actually deserve the station in life which they find themselves. If both financial success and financial failure are “earned”, then politicians can, in good conscience, vote to cut programs like unemployment, Medicaid, food stamps, and other entitlement programs. They can argue that “my hard-working tax dollars” should not be used to help those who didn’t help themselves. After all, we all had the same chance to succeed, didn’t we? Why should successful people be penalized at the expense of the lazy and indolent? Do we have a meritocracy in America? Is success or failure determined by our own efforts—or lack thereof? Consider these facts. In America today, 38 million people, including 14 million children, live in households experiencing hunger. That represents 8 percent of our population. The top 1 percent of Americans have more wealth than the lower 95 percent. Does individual initiative and effort explain these facts? Two top US executives, who are among the wealthiest people in the world, admit that individual effort does not explain their financial success. Erik Schmidt, CEO of Google, said, “Lots of people who are smart and work hard and play by the rules don’t have a fraction of what I have.” And Warren Buffet, second richest man in the world, recently stated, “I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I have earned.” Obviously other factors play important roles in achieving success. Among those could be the wealth (or lack of it) of a person’s parents; the education level of that parent; God-given talent—like a professional athlete or musician; or chance or luck (winning the lottery). Regardless, it must be obvious that meritocracy is a flawed concept. Why, then, do we cling to this ideal? It’s easy--the wealthy love it because acceptance of the principle helps to maintain our current system. Economic reform is discouraged. There is no need for affirmative action or many of our social programs. Pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps—that’s the mantra of 2012. The myth is so alluring that even many of our poor have bought into the ideal. We are taught meritocracy in our schools and we see it reinforced on TV shows, movies, and the popular media. The danger of America being so smitten with meritocracy is that it has justified the status quo. Why aren’t Americans shocked and angered by the growing inequality in America? A recent study reveals that America has less social mobility than most European countries. The gap between the rich and poor is the worst in this country since the Gilded Age of the late 1800’s. A growing middle class has always been the backbone of our democracy. As these trends, mentioned above, continue, we move further away from a democracy and closer to a plutocracy. This trend has been justified and rationalized by our belief in meritocracy—an American myth that needs to be debunked.

Pursuing Happiness

As we approach the end of our semester, I find myself pondering the words that Thomas Jefferson penned in the Declaration of Independence. Borrowing his ideas from John Locke, Jefferson asserted that all people were born with three unalienable rights—“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. The establishment and protection of these three rights became the primary objective of both our political and economic systems. It was, in fact, no coincidence, that the same people who declared their independence from Britain and set up a democratic government also embraced the writings of Adam Smith—the father of capitalism—who had published in 1776 his book entitled The Wealth of Nations. Of those three rights, the most intriguing to me is Jefferson’s idea of the “pursuit of happiness”—not property, as John Locke had written in his Treatise on Government. As the American democratic political system and capitalist economic system evolved, many came to believe that Jefferson’s idea of pursuing happiness was nearly synonymous with Locke’s principle of property rights. After all, didn’t Adam Smith state that capitalism was a free market economic system rooted in private property and self-interest? In order for an economy to flourish, Smith advocated for a limited government—laissez-faire were his words—to insure government would keep its hands off our economic pursuits. If left alone, Smith argued that the “invisible hand” would self-regulate the economy and would enable citizens to pursue their happiness by acquiring wealth, profit, and property. This “profit motive” would be the engine that drove the capitalist economy. So it seemed logical that Jefferson’s “pursuit of happiness” was just another way of saying that citizens should be free to pursue that “American Dream” and acquire property and material possessions. Did Jefferson believe that that the pursuit of happiness was found in the acquisition of property? Did our founding fathers establish a Constitution to reinforce such a principle? I don’t think so.
I believe that Jefferson and our other founding fathers would have taken exception to some of Smith’s ideas of “limited government”. Smith felt that the only legitimate role of government was to provide for the national defense, establishment of a national currency, protection of patents and copyrights, and the construction of roads and bridges. In these roles, government would need few tax dollars and would mostly exist to protect our individual pursuit of happiness (property). If our founding fathers supported such ideals, why did they reject the Articles of Confederation and replace it with a Constitution that clearly strengthened the national government? The founding fathers witnessed the near collapse of our fledgling nation under the Articles of Confederation. That government had allowed so much liberty and pursuit of happiness, that chaos like Shays’s Rebellion had become all too commonplace. So a Constitution was written that gave the national government the power of the sword (military) and the purse (the ability to tax). On top of that, the writers of the Constitution included an “elastic clause” which gave the national government the authority to “stretch “its powers to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities are found in the Preamble. Our founding fathers stated that two of the purposes of our national Constitution were to “insure domestic tranquility” and “promote the general welfare”. Applying the elastic clause to these principles, the implications of the government’s role in our pursuit of happiness is obvious. There seems no doubt that our Constitution rejects the idea of laissez-faire. Our founding fathers empowered the government to intercede on our behalf to protect our pursuit of happiness. How does the government play a role in our pursuits of happiness? The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution was added to insure that all citizens would be guaranteed “equal protection under the law”. The government cannot sit idly by while corporations mistreat workers, gouge consumers, wreck the environment, and produce faulty products. Government must insure that one person’s pursuit of happiness does not prevent another from attaining his/her own happiness. In the end government must serve as some sort of social conscience. It must discourage selfish, destructive pursuit of materialism which is eroding away our national spirit. Government must encourage social responsibility and promote the common good. If government can do these things Americans might be re-discover their own humanity and remember that true happiness is not rooted in property, it is found in community. That is what I believe Jefferson meant by the pursuit of happiness. That happiness cannot be just for some. It cannot be a selfish, personal pursuit. It must be a collective, national pursuit that will serve to strengthen our American identity.

States' Rights?

An Oklahoma legislator has proposed the creation of a state militia to “counter the encroachments of the federal government”. A candidate for governor in Texas has suggested that his state “secede from the union”. Fifteen states have filed suit to nullify a new federal health care reform act. These ideas and propositions sound eerily similar to the rhetoric of 1860 America—a time when our nation was on the verge of Civil War. However these suggestions are coming from politicians in the year 2010. Since the election of Obama in 2008, we have witnessed a resurgence of anti-government factions like the “Tea Party Movement “and “Tenthers”. One theme is consistent with both groups—Obama is creating a socialist government intent on taking away the rights of individual and states that have been guaranteed by the Constitution. Are these movements right? Has the power of government shifted away from the people and states towards the federal government? Let’s look at the Constitution for the answer.
We in Civics learned that our “founding fathers” established a federal system of government. The Constitution identified powers that belong to the federal government (enumerated powers, implied powers), powers set aside for the states (reserved powers), and powers that were shared (concurrent powers). During the ratification debate of the 1780’s Federalists and Anti-Federalists argued over the balance of that power. Federalists feared a weak central government—such as the one created by the Articles of Confederation. Therefore, to insure more order in our society, the Constitution provided for Article VI, which was called the “supremacy clause”. This clause provided that the Constitution was the “supreme law of the land” and “states were bound to federal laws made pursuant to the Constitution.” In other words a state law, in conflict with a valid federal statute, was null and void. Sounds pretty clear cut. In the minds of our “founding fathers” the federal government appeared to hold the “upper hand” in terms of the “balance of power”.
Anti-Federalists, fearing a tyrannical central government, wanted assurances that their rights and the rights of the individual states would not be abused. They pushed for and won a “Bill of Rights” that accomplished both objectives. The tenth amendment asserts that “the powers not delegated to the US by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved for the states.” The “Tenther” movement, with followers like Tim Pawlenty, Republican governor of Minnesota and 2021 GOP Presidential hopeful, believes this amendment allows states to nullify federal laws—like the new Health Care Reform Act. It has been used by others to justify secession.
Which is it? Does our Constitution provide for a federal system of government whereby state and national government share power equally, or did the “founding fathers” create a federal system that placed the federal government supreme? I believe it is the latter. Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion, when farmers tried to avoid paying a federal excise tax—a tax they believed was unconstitutional. Lincoln did not allow the Confederacy to secede and fought a Civil War to prove once and for all that federal law was supreme—states cannot nullify federal statutes; nor can a state secede from the union. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson used federal authority to force Southern states to accept federal civil rights laws. Few claimed these actions, taken by a variety of Presidents, were unconstitutional. Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that secession is illegal or equal protection of the law means that schools have to be integrated. However, by holding up the Preamble or using Article I, Section 8, Clause 18—the elastic clause—of the Constitution, the federal government can legally expand the “supremacy clause” to include enumerated AND implied powers; powers that can be used to justify most federal actions that are promoting the public good for all Americans. We are not fifty separate nations—we are one nation of fifty states all committed to “liberty and justice for all”. There can only be one “supreme” power. That power best resides in the hands of the federal government. It is, therefore, the federal government’s primary responsibility to preserve the fundamental principles of American democracy—liberty and justice. Our “founding fathers” understood that. Why don’t the Tea Party Express and the “Tenthers”?