Monthly Archives: March 2010

Apply The Smith Act

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In listening to the suggestions by the Tea Partiers and Republicans that there should be a violent overthrow of the government, I thought There oughta be a law..

Well, there is something called the Smith Act. I found this at answers.com.

The Smith Act was a product of America’s prewar anxieties. Proposed by Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia, the measure was one of several antisubversive bills introduced in Congress during 1939. A modified version was adopted by both houses on 22 June 1940, as Title I of the Alien Registration Act.

Section I provided a fine of up to ten thousand dollars and ten years in prison for attempting to undermine the morale of the armed forces. Sections II and III provided the same penalties for anyone who “advocates, abets, advises, or teaches” the violent overthrow of the government; publishes or distributes printed matter that advocates the violent overthrow; organizes any society with such a purpose; knowingly joins such a society; or conspires to do any of the above.

The Smith Act was initially invoked in 1941 against eighteen members of the Socialist Workers party in Minnesota but was rarely used during World War II. After the war, it became a primary weapon in the government’s war on domestic communists. In 1948 the Justice Department brought charges against twelve members of the Communist party’s Central Committee, and after the Supreme Court upheld those convictions and affirmed the validity of the act in Dennis v. United States (1951), indictments were secured against state party leaders throughout the country. In all, 141 persons were indicted for violating the Smith Act, but, because of the more liberal standards applied by the Court in Yates v. United States (1957) and Scales v. United States (1961), only twenty-nine of those indicted served jail terms.

A President’s On-the-Job Training

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Follow this link to the Newsweek piece by Jon Meacham.

He highlights a suggestion for President Obama that he elicited in an interview with former President Bill Clinton.

There are objective reasons that huge numbers of Americans are confused, angry, frustrated, and afraid, said Clinton. In that environment, the proper response is relentless explanation. …

relentless explanation puts into a neat phrase the exact thing that I have felt the Democratic party and its candidates have needed for years. There are some nuances that are worth reading about in the article.

I was dancing around this idea in my previous post Fight Fear With Positive Vision.

The Newsweek article sums up the advice thusly:

But his life and the life of the nation would be a good bit easier in the coming years if he undertook the unpopular armed with the lessons of his first great battle, over health care. First, explain relentlessly. Second, tell us how what you are explaining will lead us to a better place, and describe that place. Assume nothing; repeat yourself until you are numb. Only then will the message begin to sink in. It is a curious irony that Obama has been hobbled by a failure to communicate, but he has. The good news is, as Bill Clinton can tell you, there’s always tomorrow.

How the GOP Made It Happen

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Follow this link to the article that explains how the GOP made health care reform happen.

A special thanks goes out to Scott Brown.  Without his win, this might never have happened.  Without him there would have to have been 60 Democratic Senators to vote for the bill.  Now there only needs to be 51 to vote for the reconciliation.  I guess Martha Coakley is a more astute politician than I had thought.

I didn’t quite see it the way the above article does, but I had been thinking that the more difficult the Republicans make it, the more compromises have to go into the bill.  It might have been a cleaner bill if the Republicans had not used the threat to  filibuster and had just let the bill come to a vote.  They could still have all voted against the bill and it might have been a better bill.

According to the news yesterday, the passage of the bill meant death to the Democrats come November.  Miraculously, today, after the bill passed, the same press thinks it might help the Democrats in November.  I guess it is sort of like trying to explain why the stock market goes this way or that on a daily basis.  You can make up anything, and there is no one who will disprove your thesis.

Bernie Sanders–Fight Republicans’ hypocrisy (on “reconciliation process”)

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In his 20 March 2010 Boston Globe editorial, Fight Republicans’ hypocrisy, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders writes,

The good news is that, in order to get this country moving again, all the Democrats have to do is to use the same Senate procedure that Republicans employed — time and time again — in the past. The “reconciliation process’’ requires a simple majority of 51 votes to pass legislation in the Senate, not 60. I find the hypocrisy extraordinary that when Democrats now talk about using reconciliation, Republicans begin whining and howling about how unfair and undemocratic it is. They have used that very same approach time after time when it suited their purposes.

Remember Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America,’’ the bible of the Republican Revolution of the 1990s, which attempted to slash Medicare and Medicaid, cut education, raise taxes on working families, weaken environmental standards, and give huge tax breaks to the rich? Before President Clinton vetoed that bill it passed by reconciliation. In fact, of the 22 times that reconciliation has been used since 1980, Republicans have used it 16 times — often to provide tax breaks to the wealthy and slash health care for the elderly and poor.

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, among many Republicans, is now a critic of reconciliation. But back in 2005, when the Republicans used it, he sang a different tune: “All this rule of the Senate does is allow a majority of the Senate to take a position and pass a piece of legislation… Is there something wrong with majority rules?’’ Gregg was right then. He’s wrong now.

In 1985, Congress provided health insurance for the unemployed, a backstop insurance policy commonly known as COBRA. Do you know what COBRA stands for? It’s the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. In 1996, Republicans used reconciliation to pass legislation that ended six decades of welfare policy. In 2001, Republicans used reconciliation to pass President Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut that mainly benefited the wealthy. In 2003, Republicans increased the deficit by $350 billion by providing generous tax breaks for the wealthy and large businesses. In 2005, Republicans passed a reconciliation bill without a single Democratic vote that provided deep cuts to Medicaid and raised premiums on Medicare beneficiaries.

Republicans believed in reconciliation when George W. Bush was president and wanted to push an agenda that benefited the wealthy and large corporations. Now, however, they vigorously oppose reconciliation because some of us want to reform a disintegrating health care system and make college more affordable for working families.

Want more?  Paul Krugman says read Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 11 March 2010 letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Krugman also says Ezra Klein of the Washington Post sums up Reid’s letter to McConnell as “Reconcile This!”

-RichardH

China: The Coming Costs Of A Superbubble

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Follow this link to the article in The Christian Science Monitor.

The article explains the Chinese economic phenomenon in terms that I have not seen before.

In fact, China’s defiance of the global recession is not a miracle – it’s a superbubble. When it deflates, it will spell big trouble for all of us.

To understand the Chinese economy, consider three distinct periods: Late-stage growth obesity (the decade prior to 2008); You lie! (the time of the financial crisis); and finally,  Steroids ’R’ Us (from the end of the financial crisis to today).