Treason

Treason is defined as "Violation of allegiance toward one's country…especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or purposely acting to aid its enemies." It is also defined as "A betrayal of trust or confidence."

Speaker John Boehner has committed treason

John Boehner should be charged with Treason. And every member of the House of Representatives who have decided that, in order to repeal a law they don't like, they will prevent the government of the United States from fulfilling its obligations—which they voted to create. Boehner and the Republicans have violated their allegiance to the United States. Our government is in a partial shutdown. Frankly, I'm unhappy with that. The shutdown should be total. Troops ought not to be paid. No processing should happen. All actions of the American government should be suspended, including check processing for members of Congress and the President.

Here are the Republican arguments: Firstly, they want to call the Affordable Care Act a Bill. It is not. It is a law. It was passed by a majority of Congress and signed by the President. Done. Second, Republicans say that the Affordable Care Act was never debated or there was, somehow, insufficient debate. There was lots of debate. I attended one public meeting that was hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce. And they had a guy in the front of the room who sold everyone a huge pack of lies that I haven't trusted any statement from the US Chamber since then.

The United States Supreme Court affirmed the Constitutional
status of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

Republicans are now saying that the United States Supreme Court rewrote the law. The US Supreme Court interpreted the law (that is what they do, you know) and they interpreted the fine in the "required to carry insurance" part of the law as a tax, since it is collected by the US taxing authority, the IRS.

In face, pretty much everything Republicans and their masters have said about the Affordable Care Act is false. It has created jobs. It has improved health care for Americans. And it's just about to make health insurance more affordable for everyone.

Now, these folks who have decided to hold government operations and government payment of debts hostage to a bill that is passed, signed and is law that is in effect right now.  They didn't like it when it was passed, but it was passed by the majority party in Congress. And, the way laws work, you have to get a repeal all the way through Congress and have a President sign the repeal. That is the way it works.

But, for these Republicans, that's not good enough. They believe that one house in our bicameral legislature ought to be able to repeal a law if they just pass the repeal enough times. So far, it's been 40.

This treason being done by the Republican Party is aiding our enemies. One enemy that is being helped out here is the international terrorists. We have put all investigations of their activities on hold. Additionally, since the necessary staff must accompany the President to the APEC summit and the government is shut down, China (which isn't exactly an enemy) will get the head of the table. Our views won't be considered.

Now, what if the shoe were on the other foot? What if Democrats repeatedly passed the repeal of a Republican-supported law in just one house of Congress. Let's say, 40 times. What if Democrats halted all functions of government and halted payment of our debts because they didn't like that Republican law. What if that Republican law were upheld by the Supreme Court?

There would be a bloodbath. Republicans would be screaming bloody murder, encouraging their base to take up arms against any Democrat they could find. And when Republicans demonized Democrats under 6 years of Bush II, they did that unchecked. And Democrats, then in the minority, didn't resort to Treason. Why? Because Democrats understand that majorities aren't permanent. If you change the rules such that a minority is not able to do something in Congress, the other party will do the same to you when you are in the minority.

Senator Lindsay Graham knows the
Republicans may be a permanent minority party
if they run out of "Angry White Men."

So what's going on now? I think there are two things happening. One is that Republicans know they will be called out as liars for how they have demonized the Affordable Care Act. And the other is that Republicans know that 1.5 Million more people in the United States voted for Democrats than Republicans in the House of Representatives and that, despite the fact that Republicans completely gerrymandered districts to create ultra-safe districts for themselves, they are, in the words of Senator Lindsay Graham, running out of angry, white men. Senator Graham was urging Republicans to widen their tent, but the effect the TEA Party is having on the party is that their tent is actually getting more narrow.

Republicans stand to be a permanent minority party once again. So they feel like they don't have to pay any attention to the law of impermanent majority and they can just play dirty from here on out.

Last time we did that, we had a Civil War. And the people that won that had demographics on their side.They were also the states that paid the most into the Federal Treasury.

America

The McLean House - the site of Lee's surrender
to General Grant, which ended the Civil War

I have been bothered recently by this whole idea of secessionists and secessionism. First of all, the issue was settled back in the Civil War. States may not leave the United States. Counties may not leave states. Cities and towns cannot create their own state or country. That's out. The issue was settled in 1865 with Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

So, what's this stuff about secessionism?

In America, we have our differences but we have always pulled together as a country. Until recently. And the only difference is all about scoring political points—but in reality, it is causing a very real danger to the country.

Here's a recent discussion I had concerning Detroit's bankruptcy that I had on Bloomberg's website:

Detroit skyline

Detroit is one of the signature cities in the United States. As Americans, we all hold the responsibility for this failure. We are also able to assist in the regeneration of Detroit. And we should. Just as all Americans pitched in to buy War Bonds, we should all consider how we can each contribute to a new, modern, efficient and well-run Detroit.

Where are the Motown artists? I would love to attend a concert to raise money. Where are the people who will stand up for Detroit? We're great at describing this failure in detail. How about we put our heads together and create success?

I was stunned by the following reply:

You've got to be kidding. Do you really think someone in Hicksville, NC or Podunk, Wyoming cares or even should care about Detroit? Should anyone, even Detroit residents, contribute further to the corruption and graft that has bankrupt that city?

I do like your reference to war bonds. Detroit is, after all, a war zone.

Snide comment about Detroit being a war zone aside, the poster obviously didn't understand why anyone in Hicksville, North Carolina or some town in Wyoming ought to care. People in all 50 states should care and need to care. Because they're Americans.

I replied:

Searching for survivors in New Orleans after Katrina

Detroit's issues are a disaster that is man-made. And so was the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans. There were warnings in the case of New Orleans and there were warnings in the case of Detroit.

I recall that Republicans didn't want to rebuild New Orleans. "We can't afford it," was their reasoning. Nothing could be further from the truth. New Orleans largely rebuilt itself, with a little help from the state and very little from Washington. As a result, New Orleans population is approximately 56% of the pre-Katrina population. That means less revenue to the state, less revenue to the city and less revenue to the federal government, as displaced people don't make what they made before. The case for rebuilding New Orleans was made and then ignored. And that was, perhaps, the most un-American thing anyone could have done. Rebuild after Katrina and you get 100% of your tax base back. Don't rebuild and you wind up with a deficit.

This is the same with Detroit. Detroit's population in 1950 was 1,849,568. In 1980, there were 1.2 million people. Today, the population of Detroit is 701,475. That's just a little over half the 1980 figure and one third of the city at it's height. Cities are geared to expand, not contract.

Gutted Apartment Buildings, NYC

I lived in New York in the 1980s and watched as Reganomics destroyed whole sections of the city, many of which looked like the result of the bombings in Germany during WW II. New York grew because its principal source of income, Wall Street, didn't move away to another country, like Detroit's. But NYC also received a great deal of rebuilding money from Washington and Albany. And New York diversified into high-tech, media and other areas besides Wall Street.

In Detroit's case, there has never been the kinds of sums to help rebuild the city and make it prosper or diversify its tax base. If you, personally, were hit by a similar disaster, man-made or otherwise, I'd instruct my Representative and my Senators to make you whole because we are both Americans. Because Americans stand with Americans and don't let one another sink. Because, if we don't, our children will be learning Mandarin in order to get a job in any kind of business. Now, I have nothing against China or the Chinese and I was very proud that we sent rescue workers to that country to help in the wake of their natural disasters (namely earthquakes), because that's what we do here in America. That's what makes us unique in the world.

I would prefer to see our country strong. And our strength comes from Americans helping Americans. If you look at the states in the center of this country, you'll see states that, per capita, send less money into our federal treasury than they get back. These are the truly red states. I grew up in one of them, Kansas. And we prospered because our system was one for all Americans, not just those living in the states that pay the most to the federal coffers. If that were the case, we'd be three or four very different countries—one or two of which would not be in the G-20 (the 20 nations with the largest economies). But that's not the case, because we're all Americans, in it together, pulling for each other.You can go into all the wrongs that Detroit's government has done and sit there on the sidelines and snipe at them. That will get you nothing and Detroit nothing. Me, I like America. I want to see the entire nation succeed and don't want to sacrifice one square inch of our soil.

Senators Coburn and Inhofe, who say
American ought not be for Americans and
Americans ought not support one another in crisis.

Of course, there is this real tide from the right talking about how "we can't afford disaster relief." Two senators, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn held up needed aid to three eastern states after a hurricane hit them. Inhofe and Coburn are both from Oklahoma, a state with very few—if any—hurricanes to its credit.

But then there was this tornado. And then another. And the first one really did a lot of damage in Moore, OK, which is a suburb of Oklahoma City. I was raised in Kansas and, for the most part, a tornado is all about a warning. When they do touch down, they're liable to knock down a barbed wire fence or two, kill cattle, take down a barn.

But we've been spreading out, recently, as a species and what used to be farmland is now suburb. And those areas may get hit by tornadoes.

I live in Connecticut, a state that rarely sees tornadoes and never sees the kind of F4 and F5 types that hit near Oklahoma City. I suppose I could have urged my senators to give tit for tat.

But that's not American.

There’s a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin that is probably rightly attributed to  Richard Penn in “Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, Within the Last Sixty Years” (published in 1811) that applies here:

“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Of course this was written around the time of the Revolutionary War and "hanging separately" was something the British wanted to do to many of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, served in the Continental Army and the states militias then and served as delegates to the Continental Congress. The last phrase in the Declaration of Independence is as follows:

…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Where is the mutuality in Coburn and Inhofe's rhetoric where they say "we need to offset any disaster aid in savings in the budget?" Where is the pledge to each other in saying "we cannot afford to rebuild New Orleans?" There is nothing mutual and there is no "sacred Honor" in letting Detroit rot.

We are not fifty states. We are America. And I say it's time to start acting like it.

Taking back the Revolution

I see a lot of TEA Partiers and conservatives claiming that our 1776 revolution was an anti-tax revolution, was a conservative revolution and that this is echoed today in current events.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Look, it's really easy and popular to oppose taxes because nobody likes paying them. But if we don't, we have to give up roads, bridges, the Internet, trash hauling, police, the military a navy, public storm shelters, interconnected trains that bring us goods, airports, air traffic control, harbors, international relations with trade partners, Indian casinos instead of Indian wars, schools, universities, a banking system, fair trade, and so on. Stuff we all take for granted.

There were conservatives active in our Revolution. They were called "Loyalists." They were relocated to Canada or left to England after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783 which ended hostilities. In fact, England ended hostilities because the liberals (known as Whigs) took over Parliament and decided peace was more important than trying to beat the American Colonists into submission in a war that had become very unpopular in England.

But that was England. The issue in America was not taxation, in and of itself. It was lack of any representative in Parliament that could argue the Colonists' side or represent the interests of colonial people. In fact, the Continental Congress asked Benjamin Franklin to travel to England to represent our interests to Members of Parliament (since we had no direct representation).

The whole idea of a Parliament is a liberal ideal. The conservatives believed in the Divine Right of Kings—if you were born a prince, you had a right to rule. Here in the American colonies we had, of necessity, been self-governing since being dropped off here in the colonial establishments. Communication with England could entail a three-month trip. The idea of a "right to rule" kind of got fuzzy here, as we didn't have any established monarch on these shores, and many of the wealthy landowners who had been given grants here by the King were absentee—they lived in England.

The Continental Congress Voting Independence

We chose to form a Confederation under Articles that were our "first Constitution." When that very liberal document that gave states rights over that of any central government and that turned out to make self-governance impossible, we chose to re-form our government. The 1787 Constitutional Convention was our SECOND attempt at trying to self-govern. (King George III was absolutely certain that this "generalissimo" George Washington character would be a dictator within a very few years, echoing Oliver Cromwell).

Much of our Constitution (and, if you consider the Articles of Confederation a constitution, this was our second) was a reaction to England. We didn't like how Parliament governed. We didn't like how non-representative it was, with some constituencies very small, others very large, some constituencies populous, others not. So we decided that representation would be apportioned in accordance with population, counted in a census every 10 years. That was very liberal, and it was almost unheard of. It flew in the face of the governance of the Princes of Europe, who set boundaries based on what the nobility had done for them and this patronage system was their system of representation. If you were "in favor," you were better represented. "Out-of favor" meant scant little.

And the forming of a Republic was considered impossible. This was a way radical liberal ideal to form a republic, where the masses would all have a say in governance. So some conservatives (who were very liberal as compared to Europe) thought that it would be better to have representation of the States interests. So the bicameral legislative bodies were set up, with the States choosing their Senators and the masses choosing their Representatives.

Lincoln knew that the princes of Europe
wished to destroy our Republic

All in all, for its time, our Constitution is a very, very liberal document.

You get confirmation of that with Lincoln, the first Republican President. He affirmed that there could be no breakup of the United States, as he knew that the princes of Europe would just as soon carve up this country and all of its resources in order to create their own little (actually big) fiefdoms here. At the time of Lincoln, "four score and seven years ago," the idea of a representative Republic was a totally liberal idea. The Conservatives went with princes, kings, kingdoms, empires and colonial systems.

The neo-conservatives of today have no claim on the American Revolution or on our Constitution—both extremely liberal, progressive ideals.

Now, I have been told that I'm trying to assign the tenets of today's Liberal and Conservative movements to those of the 1700s. This is not true, either. This is not apples and oranges.

The neo-conservative movement is all about "lowering the burdens of full participation in society for the 'job creators'" which are defined as the wealthy. By lowering the burdens, they mean reducing taxes, omitting regulation so that they may conduct business unhampered by any governmental paperwork, restriction or interference and by allowing businessmen to call the shots.

Sounds great. After all, we would never have had any revolution had it not been for the big corporations encouraging us to… Wait!

After the Seven-Years War, King George III ceded all land
west of the Eastern Mountains to the Indians

Back in 1776, the cry was "Taxation without Representation is tyranny!" But the Crown was taxing us to help pay for the Seven Years' War which we, in America, call the French and Indian War. We were direct beneficiaries of that war, in that it expanded our land and reduced attacks by the indigenous nations on our settlements. Of course we didn't like the restrictions put on us that the King signed in the treaties with the Indian Nations that kept us hemmed in by the Appalachian and Allegheny Mountains.

The Colonials read the treaty and decided they didn't like it. And I think the treaty made across the Atlantic by people who didn't live here was an additional concern with respect to the lack of representation in Parliament for the Colonials. Certainly young George Washington had familiarized himself, as a surveyor, with the lands in the west over the mountains and one result of our Revolution was that he was able to use land acquired in those western territories, which King George III had, with his signature, given in perpetuity to the Indians and withheld from the Colonials. And all this without one representative in Parliament to make the point that the European colonists might, actually beg to differ.

Would having had a representative in Parliament have changed anything? Probably not, but there would have been at least one voice of concern raised in our favor.

Additionally, our Revolution freed us from the yoke of the English Royal Chartered Companies that were set up by the King to make money for the wealthiest—in England, not here in America. These were truly the first transnational companies. And they were empowered to do things that we assume only governments do, such as:

• Trade with the indigenous peoples
• Form banks
• Own, manage and grant or distribute land
• Raise its own police force

The Seal of the Virginia Company of London, known
as the London Company

There were restrictions on what a colonist could do. All trade had to go through these Royal Chartered Companies. For example, Thomas  Jefferson could not sell the grain and tobacco grown on his plantation directly to anyone. Everything had to pass through the hands of the London Company, which had been chartered by James I on 10 April 1606. They set the prices for what he sold and also set the prices for everything he purchased through them. 

These were Royal monopolies and served, in effect to enrich the "job creators" of their day through the restraint of trade and strict control over the Colonists. As I have mentioned, these chartered companies were truly transnational in scope, as colonists were not allowed to trade directly with anyone, save through these companies. To the extent Jefferson's tobacco found its way to France, it was only through the London Company.

Liberals wanted free trade, allowing American farmers the ability to trade directly with anyone, and this was another result of our Revolution: No longer were we held in the thrall of the oligarchs who were the beneficiaries of these transnationals.

Today's neo-conservative movement still adheres to this principle that large transnational companies

TEA Party rally. Their claims to adherence to the principles
of the American Revolution are utterly false.

ought to manage their own affairs without any interference from the common man in the form of a "leveling of the playing field" through regulation. An echo of these chartered companies lies in the use of Halliburton, an oilfield services company that was going through bankruptcy shortly after GW Bush and Dick Cheny were given the Executive by the US Supreme Court. Immediately, the Bush Administration started banging the drumbeat for war with Iraq because of Cheny's interest in the company as its former CEO. After the 9/11 attacks, Halliburton was given no-bid contracts to help with the Iraq war effort, making hundreds of millions for the executives of that company, just as the stockholders of the London Company profited from the plantations here in the American colonies.

As you can see, I am really bothered by this claim that the American Revolution was some kind of a conservative movement. In all levels of society, in all ways of doing business of limiting upward mobility and of controlling the people, the conservative movement wants to roll us right back to the "royal excesses" of the pre-Revolutionary era. The founders of this country did not set up a nation based on Christianity. They were not rebelling against taxes—indeed, they instituted their own but made sure that there was representation of all views.

And I'm not bothered by the rhetoric because I disagree with the political aims of the TEA Party. I am bothered because their claim is utterly false, devoid of fact and a pack of lies.

Just like the whopper about how if a woman is raped, her body shuts down the conception thing. But that's another article.