Sam1
Sam1's JournalBack Door Secession
On Monday, The New York Times reported that eleven counties in Colorado are promoting efforts to secede from their state government. Of course, men like Governor Rick Perry of Texas have gone further and threatened secession from the federal government. It is not much noticed that parts of the country act as if they had already seceded from the union. They do not recognize laws and Supreme Court decisions, or constitutional guarantees of free speech. For instance seventeen states have violated the First Amendment by preventing or hindering the work of “navigators”—organizations and businesses funded by the federal government to educate people on ways to follow the rules of the Affordable Care Act. Some groups routinely attempt to block health centers from advising women on the legal right to contraception. Eight state legislatures this year have passed voter restrictions that may violate the Fourteenth Amendment, and similar measures are pending in other states.
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/oct/09/back-door-secession/
Close the borders – gangs of benefit cheats are coming!
So the American conservatives wimped out again after a month or so of mindless bluster and hot air. The only problem is that their posturing, in itself, causes damage to the economy. It’s interesting that the conservative economists keep harping on about their belief that the existence of a budget deficit causes uncertainty among private firms who are then reluctant to invest because they fear higher tax rates to pay back the deficit. While this flawed narrative is not theoretically robust, defies history, and is empirically bereft, uncertainty is a problem for firms and the ridiculous behaviour of the American conservatives in the Congress in recent times has dramatically increased it. The world is moving now into a second phase of the retrenchment of the state. The first phase required the neo-liberals to redefine the crisis, which was clearly an issue of excessive private debt, as crisis of sovereign debt. They have been successful in achieving this step. Our ignorance and obsequiousness has allowed this mindless narrative to dominate the public debate. The second phase is now well underway way where the victims of the austerity become the focus of attention for the Conservative politicians. The unemployed are vilified as lazy and welfare cheats (their benefits are targeted – for example, in Ireland now); single mothers are accused of strategic pregnancies; and the old furphy – benefit migration – is wheeled out into the public debate to engender an increasing resentment of the presence of ethnic minorities who is simply trying to do what all of us want – to improve the lives of their families and themselves. All of these campaigns are designed to divide and conquer the populace, segment this into conflictual factions (“them and us” mentality), and justify further unwarranted cuts to government spending.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=25743
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: fly over country
Home country: USA
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2005, 08:23 AM
Number of posts: 498
