The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901, Heather Cox Richardson, 2001, 312 pages, Dewey 973.8, IThe Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901, Heather Cox Richardson, 2001, 312 pages, Dewey 973.8, ISBN 9780674006379
Class and race conflict. (Three guesses which class will win.) The prosperous elite maintained that the interests of capital and labor are the same. Those at the bottom of the vertical playing field knew that capital and labor are in conflict. pp. 113, 119-120, 124-125, 129, 131.
Elites North and South, Republican, independent, and Democratic, (and black and white!) came to believe that if disaffected workers elected the government, it would support disadvantaged groups: America would no longer strive for the equality of opportunity that permitted excellence but would settle for the equality of condition that guaranteed mediocrity. pp. 183-184, 209.
"Shall we compel the Southern states to submit to the rule of ignorant field-hands?" p. 202.
In reality, the post-1880 low-wage industrial economy kept workers poor, owners rich. pp. 189-190, 206. Industrialization created an urban underclass p. 196.
Moreover, far from the laissez-faire policy elites demanded toward the working class, government at all levels lavished aid on business owners. p. 190.
In the 1880s in the South, mills hired white workers almost exclusively; large landowners pushed small farmers into tenantry and sharecropping. p. 190.
In 1890-1903, each Southern state, with Northern approval, adopted education, literacy, or property requirements for voting. pp. 209, 220. In 1894, a Democratic Congress repealed all federal elections laws. States would do as they pleased. p. 214.
In 1895 in /Debs/, the Supreme Court virtually outlawed labor strikes. p. 215. /Plessy v. Ferguson/, 1896, okayed discrimination in public facilities. p. 220. (The Supreme Court was Southerner-controlled.)
Lynchings increased dramatically beginning 1889. p. 218.
By 1880, 5 million Americans worked in factories; nonagricultural workers exceeded agricultural workers. p. 184. Between 1880 and 1900, 6.6 million workers participated in 23,000 labor strikes. pp. xiii, 185.
The South produced nearly 4.5 million bales of cotton in 1861; production would not return to that level until 1875. Cotton prices fell in 1867 to 14¢/pound, less than the cost of production. p. 28. Freed rural blacks provided 63% to 72% of the labor forced from them under slavery. p. 32.
Black people were still whipped and sold as punishment for crimes. p. 29.
The addition of 4 million freedpeople to the census would increase the South's representation in Congress dramatically. p. 42. U.S. post-Civil-War population was 35 million. p. 72.
There was a dramatic rift in the black community between the few with property and the many without, as of 1867. p. 52.
Southern whites worked to reimpose de facto slavery. p. 53.
Freedpeople wanted land, which could've been, but wasn't, confiscated from former enslavers. p. 53. White Southerners took care to make sure freedmen did not acquire land. p. 83.
Poor Southern whites were facing starvation by late 1866, after repeated crop failures. p. 55.
Black dockworkers successfully struck for higher wages in 1867 in Mobile and Charleston. pp. 55, 92.
Propertied Southern whites feared taxation and spending if blacks voted. pp. 59-60, 92, 95-96. Northern elites likewise were unhappy with the results of universal suffrage in New York City, including the spoils-based Tammany Hall city government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamma... The Northern elite didn't want working-class immigrants to vote. pp. 78, 93-94. Elites of both sections opined that only those who owned the country should govern it, and feared for their property and position should the working class of both races unite. pp. 97-99.
The South Carolina legislature was majority black, 1867-1876. p. 89. It levied taxes. The minority of wealthy whites screamed, "taxation without representation!" pp. 112, 114, 117.
Fear of confiscatory government by have-nots realigned politics such that Democrats won a majority in Congress in 1874. p. 120.
In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes stopped using federal troops to protect freedmen--and used them instead to put down the Great Railroad Strike. p. 121
In 1879-1880, tens of thousands of blacks relocated from the South to Kansas. Chapter 5.
Heather Cox Richardson has read seemingly all the newspapers and magazines of 1865-1901, and distilled them for us in 250 pages of text.
She does the same with today's news on her blog, Letters from an American. It's a terrific summary (she's been posting at about 2am Chicago time every day; about once a week she takes a day off: "Today was an absolutely perfect July day and I'm not going to ruin it by looking at the news."--https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... ) at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... Except, bizarrely, she doesn't know that (view spoiler)[the Clinton-Clinton-Obama-Biden-Harris party /always/ serves the investor class, to our cost. Biden forced Mexico to consume Monsanto genetically-modified corn: (English & Spanish: https://www.jornada.com.mx/notas/2023... ). Clinton quietly sent bankers to arrange world trade deals that race to the bottom in environmental and worker protections, to enrich bankers and multinationals. Clinton quietly exploded the prison population. Obama quietly took /no/ action on climate change, quietly rolled out a lobbyist-written medical-insurance plan that authorizes insurers to charge us 25% more than they pay providers: they're on cost-plus, for the first time ever. Obama quietly amplified the Asian wars, and vastly expanded drone warfare. Obama quietly bailed out Wall Street and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. We can have Wall Street's left-hand puppet quietly serving up the world to the rich, saying, "yes we can!" or, "I'm the change agent!" Or we can have Wall Street's right-hand puppet doing the exact same things, loudly railing against "illegals," "socialists," "liberals", "Eurocrats." To read Heather Cox Richardson, that choice is enough. It is not. Democrats have proven they will do nothing to curb climate change, will not tax the rich, will continue to enact lobbyist-written laws they haven't read. Sure, Republicans are even worse. Democrats do not deserve the free pass Richardson gives them, merely for not being Republicans.
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Even FDR, who did more than any other president to make the playing field between the rich and the rest of us less vertical, did so largely by using our Pacific fleet to prevent fuel from entering Japan, to force Japan to go to war with us, so U.S. corporations, not Japan, would control the former European Pacific and Southeast Asian colonies. (hide spoiler)]
The Spanish Inquisition, Henry Kamen, 1965, 334 pages.
In the 1000s thru 1400s, Castile (Central Spain, as distinct from Aragon (Valencia, Aragon, and The Spanish Inquisition, Henry Kamen, 1965, 334 pages.
In the 1000s thru 1400s, Castile (Central Spain, as distinct from Aragon (Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia) on the east coast and Portugal on the west coast)) was engaged in its effort to reconquer Spain from the Moors, who had conquered in the 700s. Reconquest destroyed religious and racial coexistence. pp. 11-12.
In the 1300s, with only Granada still Muslim, the pogroms commenced. pp. 13, 23.
As of 1482, of 9 million Spaniards in Castile and Aragon, 0.8% were higher nobility and 0.85% were town aristocracy: they controlled 97% of the land. p. 14. The Spanish Church had an income of over 6 million ducats a year, when a ducat was 8 days wages of a skilled worker. p. 14. The Archbishop of Toledo received 80,000 ducats a year.
In 1492, the Christians conquered Granada. p. 14. Ferdinannd and Isabella decreed the expulsion of all Jews from Spain. pp. 16-17, 32. Middle-class Jews in banking and business had encroached on aristocratic hegemony. p. 17.
Sadly, Jews "voluntarily" converted to Christianity remained in charge of banking and business. p. 17. The Pope had established the Inquisition in 1478 to examine the genuineness of their conversion. pp. 17, 44. Those New Christians aren't like us Old Christians. pp. 19, 24. Oh, and we don't want any Protestants here. p. 19.
Spaniards never filled the banking and business void left by expelled Jews and persecuted conversos. p. 20. Italians and Germans filled that void in Spain. p. 21.
The Inquisition began to collapse only when the regime which created it began to wither. p. 21.
Jews monopolized the Spanish medical profession in the 1200s. pp. 24, 37-38. Only Jews bid for positions as tax and tithe collectors. pp. 24-25. Jews were government ministers, financiers, treasurers, and managers. p. 25. "All sought after comfortable posts and ways of making profits without much labor." pp. 25-26.
All the noble houses included conversos, so had no right to claim true nobility. pp. 29-30. Only elites descended from peasants were guaranteed to be free of Jewish ancestry. p. 30. This fact threatened the whole social order. p. 30.
Most conversos were secretly or openly practicing Jews. Mocking God and the true religion. p. 30.
Later conversos had little or no religion, doing without books or rites to avoid detection. p. 31.
The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic, Stephen Vladeck, 2023, 334 pages, Dewey 347.7The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic, Stephen Vladeck, 2023, 334 pages, Dewey 347.7326 V843s, Library-of-Congress KF8748 .V53 2023 Law Library
The current Republican majority of the Supreme Court decides cases for partisan political purposes. They hide behind unsigned, unexplained, "shadow docket" rulings.
Unsigned actions by the radical-right majority, to undermine the rule of law: unreasoned, inconsistent, impossible to defend. --Elena Kagan, p. xiv. And exceed the Court's authority. pp. 13, 154.
The Supreme Court declines to hear 99% of the cases brought to it. Those denials permit the lower-court ruling to stand, and thereby create law. p. 63-64.
Congress has the power to change the rules the Supreme Court operates under. But forbears to do so. p. 59.
It takes four justices to agree to hear a petition. This is an /unwritten/ rule! p. 81. Since Amy Coney Barrett succeeded Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, the three voices of reason can no longer compel a petition to be heard, over the six on the radical right. p. 83.
2014.10.06-2015.02.09 The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 18 states by refusing to hear the cases. pp. 75, 77. The justices may have been trying to let gay marriage become legal in all 50 states without saying so.
2014.11.06 But the circuit court for Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan forced their hand. It upheld gay-marriage bans in its states, saying that if courts are to invalidate such laws, the people deserve a reason, and the circuit court couldn't find one. p. 76.
2015.01.16 The Supreme Court agreed to hear the petitions that the Sixth Circuit Court ruled against. p. 77.
2015.06.26 Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan legalized same-sex marriage in the whole U.S., over the dissent of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. pp. 61, 79. It may have been an awareness that this would be the result, that led Roberts to refuse to hear the petitions from the earlier 18 states. pp. 80-81.
2020.11-2021.04 Amy Coney Barrett created majorities in six cases to emergency-order stopping government action, that lower courts had twice denied. 2005-2020, the Court did so only four times. p. 17.
2021.09.01 Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett outlawed abortions in Texas: in a 400-word order in Whole Women's Health vs. Jackson, they upheld Texas's ban on abortions past 6 weeks of pregnancy--effectively overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent, 10 months before Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health made it official, 2022.06.24. pp. ix-x, 16.
2022.01 The radical-right Court blocked OSHA's COVID vaccination-or-testing mandate, directly affecting 83 million Americans. Without a hearing. Without explanation. p. 16.
2022.02.07- Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett required Voting-Rights-Act-violating congressional-district maps to be used in Southern states, creating at least three, maybe up to seven, safe Republican House seats that should have been safe Democratic seats. Without explanation. Unsigned. pp. 13-16.
The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, and its Republican-appointed Catholic majority, has in numerous decisions privileged "the chuThe U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, and its Republican-appointed Catholic majority, has in numerous decisions privileged "the church," and corporations with power to deny legal rights to individuals. Even though "the church" nowhere appears in the Constitution. Instead, the First Amendment grants religious rights to /individuals/ not to be required by the government to participate in a particular religion, nor to be prevented by the government from doing so.
By an Indiana University professor.
Cited by Linda Greenhouse in /Justice on the Brink/, 2021, p. 21.
/Justice on the Brink: The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months that Transformed the Supreme Court/, Linda G/Justice on the Brink: The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months that Transformed the Supreme Court/, Linda Greenhouse, 2021, 300 pages, Dewey 347.7326090512, ISBN 9780593447932
Clear, engaging, eye-opening. A year in the Supreme Court, 2020.06.30 through 2021.07.01. And, lots about the legal and political background. A good introduction to the major changes in many laws the Roberts court has made and is making: Require girls and women to bear children against their will. Require the government to give money to churches. Exempt anyone who professes a government-recognized religion from laws everyone must obey. Permit people in power who profess religion, to deny other people's rights, in ways that would be impermissible if the boss, owner, or official did not profess religion. Roll back voting rights, civil rights, and the rights of the accused. Erase restrictions on armed people roaming at large (but not in the Supreme Court building). Roll back environmental protections. Enshrine property rights. Slash government's power to regulate. Further curtail labor rights. Greenhouse gives us some glimpses behind the scenes, the justices' arguments among themselves that they don't share with the public. pp. 128-129.
With Ginsburg alive, the court was 5 justices who always want to privilege the privileged and oppress the oppressed (wrongly termed "conservative," including by Greenhouse) to 4 who only sometimes wanted to do so (wrongly termed "liberal.") With Barrett having succeeded Ginsburg, it's 6 to 3. So the outcomes are largely the same. The difference is that Chief Justice John Roberts can no longer insist on a pretense of following precedent. He's now outvoted by 5 extremists openly contemptuous of any principle other than remaking the world as they choose. Roberts is acting to create the same Catholic plutocracy the rest of them are: he just would prefer to do it in a way that he thinks makes him look judicial. pp. 219-220, 233. The 2022 succession of Stephen Breyer by Ketanji Brown Jackson doesn't change the typical 6-3 split. The court was divided 5-4 from the late 1970s until 2020. All the "swing" justices were Republican-appointed, each farther toward "all-for-the-billionaire, nothing-for-the-rest" than the last. p. 234.
As of 2022, there are four women on the court: three who compose the typical voice-of-reason dissent (Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan), and one among the radical-right majority (Amy Coney Barrett).
All six radical-right justices were appointed by Republican presidents; the three moderates are Democratic appointees. (Among the predecessors of the 2022-current nine also, six were appointed by Republicans and three by Democrats.)
1981-2021 Reagan and all subsequent Republican presidents plege to appoint federal judges who would overturn the abortion rights of Roe v Wade. Meaning Catholic. p. 19.
1981-1982 John Roberts, then a lawyer in the Reagan administration, tries to end the Voting Rights Act. p. 5, 162, 234.
1988.02 The Senate confirms President Reagan's nominee, Anthony Kennedy, to the Supreme Court. p. xiii.
1991.10.23 Clarence Thomas, appointed by G.H.W. Bush, succeeds Thurgood Marshall.
1996.06.26 Ginsburg, Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, Rehnquist decide United States v Virginia: Virginia Military Institute must admit qualified women. Scalia dissents. Thomas, whose son attended the school, recuses himself. pp. 43-44.
2002.06.27 Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas decide Zelman: public funds can be used for religious schools. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer dissent. p. 17.
2005.09.29. John Roberts becomes chief justice, appointed by George W. Bush, succeeding Rehnquist. In the Roberts court, nearly 90 percent of religious claims prevail, vs. about half in the previous 52 years. Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett, all Catholic, and Gorsuch, Episcopalian raised Catholic, all favor the religious side in more than 90% of such cases. p. 19-20.
2006.01.31 Sandra Day O'Connor, the "swing" justice of her time, retires; Samuel Alito, appointed by George W. Bush, succeeds her, wrenching the court to the right on abortion, race, religion, and women's rights. p. 90. O'Connor was the only justice then or later, to have held elective office. p. 238. Before she announced her retirement, she wrote, "When we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for the constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must answer: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?" No current Republican appointee would say any such thing. They are all busily enshrining religion in law. p. 238.
2007.06.28 Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide Parents Involved in favor of white parents: integrating schools violated their Constitutional right to equal protection. Stevens, Breyer, Souter, Ginsburg dissent. pp. 5-6, 130-131.
2008.06.26 Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide District of Columbia v Heller, creating an individual right to bear arms, where the Constitution grants the right only for state militias. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer dissent. pp. 170-175.
2009.08.08 Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by Obama, succeeds David Souter. She is the only one on the court to have ever presided over an actual trial. She was a Manhattan assistant district attorney five years, six years as a trial judge in federal district court in New York, and eleven years on the Second Circuit. p. 123.
2010.08.07 Elena Kagan, appointed by Obama, succeeds John Paul Stevens. She had been dean of Harvard Law School (where she hired "conservative" and "liberal" professors), then Obama's solicitor general. p. 228.
2013.06.25 Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito decide Shelby County [Alabama] v [Obama's Attorney General Eric] Holder, nullifying part of the Voting Rights Act. In dissent, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, says that the majority is throwing away our umbrella in a rainstorm because they haven't been getting wet. States rush to impose voting restrictions. pp. 13, 158-164, 224-229, 234.
2014.06.30 Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas decide Hobby Lobby: corporations don't have to provide legally-mandated healthcare coverage if the owner professes religion. Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, Kagan dissent. p. 23.
2015.06.26 Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan decide Obergefell: states must grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito dissent. pp. 56-58.
2016.02 Justice Antonin Scalia dies. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately announces he won't permit President Obama to fill the vacancy. Nor to fill numerous other vacant federal judgeships. pp. xiii, xxi.
2016.06.27 Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Sotomayor, Kagan decide Whole Womens' Health: Texas may not impose undue burdens on abortion providers that would require closing half the abortion clinics in Texas. Roberts, Thomas, Alito dissent. p. 27, 189-191.
2016.11 Hillary Clinton loses to Donald Trump. With appointments by a Democratic president, the court would've upheld the right of the unborn to remain unborn to mothers who don't want and can't care for them; would've upheld voting rights, civil rights, and sometimes the rights of the accused. With a democratic socialist president, the appointed justices would also not have granted personhood rights to concentrations of wealth. p. 4, 89.
2017.01 Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch to fill the Scalia vacancy. Senate Republicans abolish the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments, so Democrats can't stop it. Gorsuch joins the court 2017.04.10. pp. xiii-xiv.
2017.05.08 Trump nominates Amy Barrett to a federal judgeship. p. xxi.
2017.06.26 Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Kagan, Thomas, Gorsuch, Breyer decide Trinity Lutheran v Comer, requiring the state of Missouri to give money to a church. Only Sotomayor and Ginsburg object. pp. 15-16, 217-221.
2017-2020 Trump picks, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell installs, more than 200 federal judges. p. xi.
2018.10.06 Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by Trump, succeeds Anthony Kennedy. pp. xii-xiii.
2020.05.25 Minneapolis police murder unarmed black man George Floyd. The Roberts court will wait until fall to continue undoing civil rights. p. 4.
2020.06.05 Indiana University professor Winnifred Fallers Sullivan publishes a book, /Church State Corporation/, pointing out that the Roberts court has in numerous decisions privileged "the church," and corporations with power to deny legal rights to individuals. Even though "church" nowhere appears in the Constitution. Instead, the First Amendment grants religious rights to /individuals/ not to be required by the government to participate in a particular religion, nor to be prevented by the government from doing so. p. 21.
2020.06.30 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, all Catholics, and Gorsuch, Episcopalian raised Catholic, decide Espinoza v Montana: the state is REQUIRED to give money to religious schools. Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer (three Jews), and Sotomayor (nonpracticing Catholic) dissent. pp. 16-18, 218-221, 233.
2020.07.08 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Kagan, Breyer decide Our Lady of Guadalupe: Religious schools are allowed to discriminate widely and with impunity for reasons wholly divorced from religious beliefs. Sotomayor and Ginsburg dissent. pp. 21-22, 218-219.
2020.07.08 Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanagh, Kagan, Breyer decide Little Sisters of the Poor: Employers which are religious may deny their employees healthcare coverage. This permits such employers to deny coverage to their 2.9 million employees. Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissent. pp. 26, 88, 126-127.
2020.09.18 Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies. p. xv.
2020.09.26 Trump nominates Amy Coney Barrett. The Senate confirms her 2020.10.26; she joins the court 2020.10.27. pp. xii, 65.
2020.07-2021.01 Trump puts thirteen condemned prisoners to death. Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett (2020.11- ) deny all appeals, consistently rejecting inmates' credible claims for relief. They refuse to consider reasons for a stay of execution, nor to give their reasons for denying a stay, or even vacating an existing stay. This is not justice, say Sotomayor and Ginsburg (2020.07), in dissent. Kagan usually dissents; Breyer often dissents. pp. 90-95, 111-112, 118-123, 144-148, 179-182, 198-201.
2020.11.25 Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo: Whatever anyone gets, religion must get too. If people are allowed to shop for groceries, there must be no limit on the number of congregants at a religious service, at whatever cost to public health, in a pandemic, with deaths at record levels, while the Supreme Court itself is meeting by phone. Roberts, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 96-99, 105, 106, 175-179, 255.
2021.01.06 Donald Trump incites a riot in the U.S. capitol in which several people die. p. 116.
2021.02.05 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide South Bay United Pentecostal: California must weaken restrictions on public gatherings by making a special exemption for worship services. Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 141-144.
2021.06.17 Roberts, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett (9-0) decide Fulton v Philadelphia: An agency that finds foster parents has a religious right to deny same-sex couples consideration as potential foster parents, in violation of the city's antidiscrimination law. The city cannot refuse to contract with the agency. The government is now no longer neutral on religion. Religious claims now trump all others. "God hates fags" has the force of law. pp. 58, 75, 77-83, 207-221.
2021.06.23 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid: Any entry of a labor-union representative into a workplace is a categorical "taking" of the owner's property that the government cannot mandate without paying the owner. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 221-224.
2021.07.01 Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide Brnovich v Democratic National Committee: Governments are free to make voting as inconvenient as they choose for racial minorities, Native Americans, people who live in non-affluent neighborhoods, students, anyone likely to vote Democratic. All that the Constitution now requires is that voting be theoretically possible. Kagan, Breyer, Sotomayor dissent. pp. 224-229, 234.
2021.08.13 This book's manuscript finished.
2021.11.09 This book's publication date.
2022.06.23 Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide New York State Rifle & Pistol v Bruen: to carry a pistol in public (but not in the Supreme Court building) is a constitutional right. The state must not ask why the person wants to. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 170-175.
2022.06.24 Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Roberts decide Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health: Roe v Wade and Casey are invalidated. Government officials may now compel a girl or woman to bring an unwanted child into the world against her will, however early in pregnancy she seeks to end it. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent. pp. 185-198.
2022.06.30 Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett decide West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency: EPA must not require power companies to shift to solar or wind. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan dissent.
2022.06.30 Stephen Breyer retires; Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by Biden, joins the court. She's the first justice raised Protestant to be appointed since G.H.W. Bush picked Souter (Episcopalian) in 1990. There are now five practicing Catholics (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Barrett), one Episcopalian raised Catholic (Gorsuch), one nonpracticing Catholic (Sotomayor) and one Jew (Kagan).
Too bad we couldn't've had a Justice Linda Greenhouse.
"I had nine months to write this book. It took every one of those months, plus the previous four decades of immersion in the life of the Supreme Court as a journalist, writer, and teacher."
Updates:
2022.09.06 Trump's radical-right judges dance to his tune:
Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master to review the government documents the FBI recovered from Mar-a-Lago … which could delay the FBI investigation indefinitely ... an appeal would go to the 11th circuit, where Trump appointed 6 of the 11 judges who, if they wished, could further delay the case, and then agree with Cannon. The Department of Justice could then appeal to the Supreme Court: which now has a 6 to 3 Republican majority, three of whom Trump himself appointed. --Heather Cox Richardson https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
2023.06.01: Court erodes workers' right to strike, in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters, 8-1: only Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Pp. 22-48 of the pdf is her dissent: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...
Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master. They are employees whose collective and peaceful decision to withhold their labor is protected by the NLRA even if economic injury results. pdf p. 47 of 48.
2023.06.30 The Court reversed the secretary of education's provision of debt relief to student-loan borrowers during COVID. Pages 48-77 of the pdf are Justice Elena Kagan's dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions... Heather Cox Richardson's blog on it: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
How the South Won The Civil War, Heather Cox Richardson, 2020, 240pp., ISBN 9780190900908, Library-of-Congress JK1717, Dewey 306.20973
This is history How the South Won The Civil War, Heather Cox Richardson, 2020, 240pp., ISBN 9780190900908, Library-of-Congress JK1717, Dewey 306.20973
This is history as current events: not just what happened but the scheming behind it.
It's not exactly that the South won. It's the everything-for-the-overlord, nothing-for-the-rest-of-us ideology that has triumphed. With help from fanning white American fears of losing to blacks, women, foreigners: divide and conquer. Rich men convinced voters that extending the right of self-determination to people of color, women, and poor Americans would destroy it for white men. p. 203.
Heather Cox Richardson writes a wonderful summary of today's news (she's been posting at about 2am Chicago time every day; about once a week she takes a day off: "Today was an absolutely perfect July day and I'm not going to ruin it by looking at the news."--https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... ) at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... Except, bizarrely, she doesn't know that (view spoiler)[the Clinton-Clinton-Obama-Biden-Harris party /always/ serves the investor class, to our cost. Clinton quietly sent bankers to arrange world trade deals that race to the bottom in environmental and worker protections, to enrich bankers and multinationals. Clinton quietly exploded the prison population. Obama quietly took /no/ action on climate change, quietly rolled out a lobbyist-written medical-insurance plan that authorizes insurers to charge us 25% more than they pay providers: they're on cost-plus, for the first time ever. Obama quietly amplified the Asian wars, and vastly expanded drone warfare. Obama quietly bailed out Wall Street and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. We can have Wall Street's left-hand puppet quietly serving up the world to the rich, saying, "yes we can!" or, "I'm the change agent!" Or we can have Wall Street's right-hand puppet doing the exact same things, loudly railing against "illegals," "socialists," "liberals", "Eurocrats." To read Heather Cox Richardson, that choice is enough. It is not. Democrats have proven they will do nothing to curb climate change, will not tax the rich, will continue to enact lobbyist-written laws they haven't read. Sure, Republicans are even worse. Democrats do not deserve the free pass Richardson gives them, merely for not being Republicans.
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Even FDR, who did more than any other president to make the playing field between the rich and the rest of us less vertical, did so largely by using our Pacific fleet to embargo fossil fuels from entering Japan, to force Japan to go to war with us, so U.S. corporations, not Japan, would control the former European Pacific and Southeast Asian colonies. (hide spoiler)]
"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." --billionaire Peter Thiel. Meaning, "My freedom to do as I will, to your cost, is infringed by your governing me." p. xxviii.
"Man is selfish and lawless and must be kept in line by a ruler." --Thomas Hobbes, /Leviathan/, 1651. p. 4
"No! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses!" --John Locke, /Two Treatises on Government/, 1690. p. 5
"No taxation without representation!" --John Adams, 1769. p. 9
Freedom of elites such as Jefferson, required slavery. pp. 13, 20-22. Democracy was attainable only so long as it was exclusive. p. 125.
Men owned their women and children. p. 14.
"All men would be tyrants if they could." --Abigail Adams, 1776. p. 22
1793 cotton gin: suddenly cotton is king. pp. 27, 34
Southern elites insisted that government do nothing except protect property. p. 35
1850: fewer than 1,800 slaveholders owned more than 100 people apiece; U.S. population 23 million, 3 million enslaved. p. 36
1857 Dred Scott decision: Negroes have no rights which the white man is bound to respect. And, Congress cannot prohibit slavery. p. 39
Land-Grant College Act, 1862, "so a poor man's son and a rich man's son had the same access to education." p. 46. [This was much truer in the 1970s, when the state of Illinois paid $12 of University of Illinois expenses for every dollar of student tuition, than in 2022, when the state paid only thirty cents of University expenses per dollar of tuition. Here's Heather Cox Richardson on student debt: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... ]
Lincoln said, "I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." p. 68. Bad idea. The language, "all men are created equal," if we believe it, prods us to make it so. We get what we expect. Give me hypocritical equality rather than hopeless acquiescence to despotism.
The Texas cattle rush lasted from 1866 to 1886. During the Civil War, Texans couldn't get cattle to market: they multiplied and overgrazed. After the war, they sold for $4, or could simply be collected, on the hoof in Texas; they brought $40 in Chicago, or, the Army would pay 8 cents a pound if they were driven to a fort. White southerners moved west. p. 87. Cowboys were peons: the money went to the owners. p. 88.
The federal government gave settlers land, gave railroad owners land and money, provided a market for western cattle and crops, protected settlers from natives. p. 88.
Chinese Exclusion, 1882–1943. p. 98. (See /Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943/, Sucheng Chan, 1991. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... )
Western and southern politicians all wanted to keep nonwhites from power. Not until 1965 would Congress attempt to protect Black voting. p. 101. A few extractive industries dominated the West, and a few tycoons dominated life and politics. p. 103. "It took a gold mine to develop a silver mine." p. 104. Work was low-paid and dangerous. p. 105. Western towns and cities supported a power structure that favored the concentration of wealth--even after Populists put Democrats in power in 1892. p. 108.
Cattle barons hired gunmen to murder their small competitors. The Wyoming governor and President Harrison sided with the cattle barons, who got away with murder. 1892. pp. 108–109. The Idaho governor and President Harrison also sided with mine owners over strikers; the army removed the local sheriff, who was on the strikers' side. p. 109. Tycoons believed democracy a perversion of government, as had plantation owners: Civilization depends on "the sacredness of property." The alternative is "Communism," which kills initiative and destroys prosperity. "The best interests of the race are promoted" by the system of individualism, "which inevitably gives wealth to the few."--Andrew Carnegie, /The Gospel of Wealth/, 1889. pp. 109–110. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field wrote more opinions than almost any justice in history, insisting that the primary law in America was protection of property. p. 110.
1897, Assistant Secretary to the Navy Teddy Roosevelt wanted to go to war with Spain, which was trying to put down a rebellion in its colony of Cuba. U.S. Business interests did not want to go to war for starving Cubans. They wanted Spain to retake control and keep the sugar and tobacco coming. p. 117–118.
The U.S. quickly beat the Spanish in Cuba--and in the Philippines, which Spain also owned. Spain ceded the Philippines to the U.S. for $20 million. Filipinos were excluded from the peace negotiations. The Sugar Trust, which had 95% of the U.S. sugar market, loved it. The Philippines produced 200,000 tons of sugar in 1897. The Trust had staged a coup against the queen of Hawaii. Bringing sugar-growing areas into the U.S. meant the Trust would pay no tariffs. pp. 120–121. The U.S. also got Puerto Rico and Guam. The islands became quasi-American: no tariffs for the Trust, no citizenship for the natives. pp. 122–123.
Teddy Roosevelt became governor of New York in 1898, promising to take government out of the hands of corporations. Republican party operatives convinced him to take the vice presidency under William McKinley instead. p. 125. An unemployed steelworker who believed the Republican Party was instituting oligarchy assassinated McKinley in 1901 and, "that damned cowboy is president." p. 125. Roosevelt wanted everyone--EXCEPT people of color, union organizers, independent women, or the poor--treated equally. p. 126. /Those/ people are "special interests" wanting handouts. The underclass. Without an underclass, there can be no equality for deserving people like us. p. 128.
Roosevelt broke up industrial trusts. p. 126. His Progressives wanted worker safety, reasonable hours, fair pay, childhood education, food safety, and NO UNIONS. They wanted to prevent monopolies and tax corporations, but leave them alone. p. 127.
Richardson would have us believe the "gold bugs" who put McKinley in the presidency in 1896 wanted to "advance democracy," while the "free silver" proponents of the South and West were the antidemocratic force. In fact, the gold men were the bankers, who knew that control of currency kept them in interest income and power. p. 134. See /Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913/, James Livingston, 1986. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
To people of color, the New Deal looked pretty much like the old deal. p. 138. Social Security deliberately excluded farm work and domestic work--where black workers predominated. See /There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America/, Philip Dray, 2010. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
In 1943, Congress finally ended Chinese Exclusion, in effect since 1882. p. 149.
William F. Buckley, in his plutocrat-funded /National Review/ magazine, insisted that government do nothing but protect life, liberty, and property--just as slaveholders had insisted a century earlier. p. 155.
Americans' incomes, across the economic spectrum, doubled between 1945 and 1970, thanks to wage laws and tax laws. p. 156.
In the 1950s, 62% of the federal budget went for war industries, many of them in California. p. 157. By 1961 the military-industrial complex employed more than 3.5 million Americans directly, and many more indirectly. Its beneficiaries beat the war drum, claiming the "liberal elite" had gone soft on communism. And that the government--the source of their prosperity--should not tax nor regulate them. p. 160. Westerners and southerners agreed that desegregation, which gave black Americans benefits paid for by tax dollars, offered prime evidence of a communist conspiracy. In Arizona, the Hoover Dam and fifty other federal agencies brought $342 million into the state, while the federal government took less than $16 million in taxes. That money was the source of the Goldwater family fortune. He claimed instead that it was solely due to his family's hard work. p. 162. He resented labor law and taxes, and insisted that the government had no business in "social welfare programs, education, public power, agriculture, public housing, or urban renewal." p. 163. Never mind that he would never have been rich without it. Nor that without public education the age would be dark.
Reagan, too, ignored the utter dependence of the West on government contracts. p. 167. He won the California governorship in 1966, promising to "send the welfare bums back to work," and "clean up the mess in Berkeley," where students were protesting the Vietnam War. p. 169.
Milton Friedman claimed tax cuts for the rich would pay for themselves. p. 177. Didn't work out that way.
In 1978, California passed Proposition 13, limiting property tax to 1% of the value of the property, and required a two-thirds majority of the legislature to raise taxes. p. 178. Reagan said, "Government is not the solution. Government is the problem."
Reagan, as president, slashed taxes of the rich and cut protections for the rest of us. Unfettered rule-by-the-rich. p. 180. He nearly tripled the national debt, from $1 trillion to $2.8 trillion. p. 183.
From Thomas Piketty's Wealth and Incomes Database: http://wid.world In the U.S., for only forty years, from 1942 through 1981, was the average income of the top .01% less than 165 times the average family income. These were the years when the federal government effectively wielded political power – through labor law, antitrust law, and progressive taxation – to lessen the slope of the playing field. The top .01% take many hundreds of times the average income now. By 2015, the top 1% of families had as much wealth as the bottom 90%. p. 186.
Newt Gingrich, as speaker of the House in 1995, eliminated House of Representatives committees and staff. Bewildered representatives turned to lobbyists to explain issues and write bills. pp. 184-185.
2011 median income & wealth by race, p. 186: White $50,400 income, $111,000 wealth Latino $36,840 income, $8,300 wealth Black $32,000 income, $7,000 wealth Pine Ridge Lakota (40,000 people) $3,000 income.
Reagan's Federal Communications Commission in 1987 ended the Fairness Doctrine requiring fact-based reporting and equal time for candidates. p. 188.
Rupert Murdoch started Fox News in 1996, Roger Ailes, CEO. p. 192. Other channels began spewing Fox's opinions, after Fox called them, "biased." p. 193. Fringe ideas became mainstream through incessant repetition: government is socialism. Minorities and women attack American freedom.
Bill Clinton accepted many of the Republican austerity and deregulatory policies. p. 194.
Florida purged up to 100,000 legitimate voters, presumed Democrats, from the rolls before 2000. George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and with it the presidency. p. 195.
Republican redistricting after the 2010 census guaranteed Republican majorities in House delegations of states with a minority of Republican votes. p. 197. Especially Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan. In 2012, Democrats won the presidency and the senate; Democrats had 1.4 million more votes for their House candidates than Republicans had, but Republicans won a 33-seat majority in the House. p. 197. [Of course, Democrats, when /they/ had majorities in state legislatures, /could have/ instituted nonpartisan redistricting laws. They didn't. They wanted to draw maps to their advantage when they were in power.]
Reagan appointed more judges than any other president ever. p. 197.
By 2016, Republicans sounded like slaveholders defending oligarchy. p. 198. They claimed poor whites, too, had only themselves to blame. A speech from 1860 sounds like it was said in 2016. p. 201.
Trump virtually eliminated the estate tax. p. 199.
Other books on similar lines:
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Edward E. Baptist, 2013. The Industrial Revolution was a revolution in textile manufacture, made from cotton grown, cultivated and picked by enslaved people. Slavery was brutal. Slavery was far more profitable than free labor. Slaveholders would /never/ voluntarily have freed slaves. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer, 2016. How extractive-industry billionaires captured control of American thought and politics. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, 2002. Real power is not in the political system. It’s in the private economy: that’s where the decisions are made about what’s produced, how much is produced, what’s consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty, 2013 in French, 2014 in English. Wealth inequality is self-amplifying. Only a global tax on wealth itself, not just an income tax, can prevent a re-descent into a lords-and-serfs world. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A People's History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution, Peter Irons, 1999. Pre-Civil-War decisions such as Dred Scott helped make the Civil War necessary, by refusing to impose judicial limits, nor even honor political limits, to slavery. Post-Civil-War decisions consistently helped make the Civil War meaningless by refusing to enforce blacks' rights to life and citizenship. The first chief justice, John Jay, felt that, "Those who own the country ought to govern it." Judges furthered the interests of the social and financial elite. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 adopted the Constitution largely because it would increase their own personal wealth in public securities, land speculation, mercantile, manufacturing and shipping businesses, and ownership of slaves. The Constitution was a victory for slavery, aristocracy, and elitism. The Massachusetts Bay Colony /Body of Liberties/, 1641, said, "Every person shall enjoy the same justice and law." That is, every person except not religious dissenters, women, African slaves, and Indians. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today, Kevin Bales, 2009. The U.S. government is complicit in the abuse of workers, bringing them into the country on A-3, G-5, B-1, and J-1 visas, that tie workers to individual employers, and give the workers few rights and fewer protections. Agriculture, domestic work, any low wage occupation traps thousands of people in slavery. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
A Living Death: Life without Parole for Nonviolent Prisoners, Jennifer Turner, ACLU, 2013. Blacks are sentenced to life without parole in U.S. federal prison for nonviolent offenses at 20 times the rate of whites. The U.S. has less than 5% of world population, but 25% of world prison population. One out of every four Americans has a criminal record. The U.S. orgy of life-without-parole sentences began after the supreme court temporarily stopped the death penalty. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Fall of Wisconsin, Dan Kaufman, 2018, ISBN 9780393635201.
Not just about 2011, when our Koch-puppet governor & legislature began repealing 100 years ofFall of Wisconsin, Dan Kaufman, 2018, ISBN 9780393635201.
Not just about 2011, when our Koch-puppet governor & legislature began repealing 100 years of good government. Sets the stage with some of the history, and sequel, 1793 through Mar. 2018.
The Kochs & a few other billionaire extractive-industry barons have taken over state governments in over half the states, using their "American Legislative Exchange Council" (ALEC, see alecexposed.org) to push through antienvironment, antiworker, probillionaire laws.
The book came out before the 2018 election, when Democrat Tony Evers won the governorship. Since then, the wholly-Koch-owned Republican legislature hasn't got all its own way. Neither has Evers been able to undo the damage, with still-Republican legislature, and still-corporate-vassal Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The history tells us it's always like this. 1800s politicians were owned by railroad, lumbering, and other monied interests (pp. 20-24). They must be re-beaten in every generation if there's to be a government of the people. (Fighting Bob LaFollette, p. 5)
"Which shall rule--wealth or man; which shall lead--money or intellect; who shall fill public stations--educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?" --Edward G. Ryan, Wisconsin Chief Justice, 1873 (pp. -6, 22)
The author says, "conservative," where he means feudalist, all-for-the-billionaire, screw-the-populace, rape-the-planet.
Veterans are disposable. (pp. 37-38)
Janesville Congressman Paul Ryan (R) waged war on community's safety net. (p. 42) Wanted to privatize Social Security, eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of the gains of the past 100 years. (pp. 44-45)
Fri. 2/11/2011 Gov. Walker announces Act 10: eliminate collective bargaining for public employees, take $1 billion/yr. from them in pensions & insurance. (pp. 46, 55) (And cut corporate taxes.)
Billionaire Diane Hendricks: can we crush unions? Gov. Walker: We'll divide and conquer: public-employee unions now; next private sector. (pp. 47-48) As Reagan broke air-traffic-control union in 1981.
Duty of government: protect the weak from the strong. Power and wealth mean the subjection of the many. --John Bascom, University of Wisconsin president, 1874-1887, "the guiding spirit of my time" --Fighting Bob LaFollette (p. 57-58)
1901, Gov. Bob LaFollette establishes Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau: university experts write model bills, reforming a process that had been corrupted by lobbyists. (pp. 58-59)
1911 Wisconsin passes fair, progressive, state income tax, written by a professor. By 1920, 11 states had followed suit. (pp. 59-60) 1911 workers' compensation for on-job injury. (p. 60) For companies, workers' lives were cheap.
1892 University of Wisconsin "Magna Carta of Academic Freedom." (pp. 60-61) Economists whose views scared off donors from other universities, came to Madison. (p. 61) Need govt. & unions to curb capitalist power. --Professor Richard Ely. Influenced Presidents Roosevelts & Wilson. (pp. 61-62; Donald R. Stabile, /The Living Wage: Lessons from the History of Economic Thought/, 2008)
Living wage Wisconsin law 1913 removed by Gov. Walker 2015. (p. 62)
Fourteen Socialists in 1911 Wisconsin legislature. (p. 62) Pushed Republicans to the left. Socialists so organized, could print flyers in twelve languages and deliver to every Milwaukee home, in the appropriate language, within 48 hours. (p. 63) Lobbyists knew that they couldn't influence Socialist politicians. Incorruptible. --William Ejuve (p. 64) Socialist Milwaukee mayor Hoan: transparent government, higher minimum wage, libraries, schools, parks. (All that Socialist stuff. pp. 64-65)
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees founded in Madison in 1930s to save Civil Service from replacement with machine-politics patronage system. (p. 66)
Racial & economic justice are inseparable. --Martin Luther King, Jr. (p. 67) "when slaves get together, Pharaoh can't hold them in slavery." Anti-conspiracy law was written to bust unions. (p. 67)
President LBJ pushed Memphis mayor to recognize sanitation workers' union (AFSCME) after Martin Luther King was murdered, 1968. (p. 68) Millions of public workers gained by strikes. (pp. 68-69)
1948-1979, unions nearly doubled average U.S. wages, and lowered the white/black wage gap. When unions dwindled, white/black wealth gap spiked. (p. 69. epi.org's graph of flat wages & soaring productivity since then: https://www.epi.org/chart/labor-day-2... The Reagan years began seeing the return to a lords-&-serfs world, amplified under every president since. Only in 1942-1981 did top 0.01% take less than 165 times average U.S. income. Hundreds of times avg. now. That graph used to be at Thomas Piketty's world inequality database, https://wid.world/country/usa/ )
Bill Clinton's NAFTA closed thousands of U.S. plants. (p. 70)
Republican state senator Scott Fitzgerald admits the mining company wrote the mining bill that repealed environmental and good-government protections. Mining billionaire Chris Cline donated $15M to Gov. Walker & Republican legislators' campaigns. (pp. 104-106)
Gov. Walker & Republican legislature gave $4.5 billion of public money to Foxconn, a Taiwanese company--and rewrote laws to protect it from lawsuits. pp. 110, 266. (And took $ billions from public education. p. 125 And cut environmental protection jobs. p. 201)
David Koch: "We're spending money in Wisconsin" to shape government to enrich extractive billionaires, to everyone else's cost. (114)
Bill Clinton & Obama pushed for taking money from public schools & giving it to private for-profit & religious schools. And for ending welfare. (p. 116)
Some of Peter Berryman's "Bring Back Wisconsin to Me" lyrics, p. 117. Full lyrics: https://louandpeter.com/i-don-t-get-it See end of this review for full lyrics
Weaponized philanthropy funded the feudalist ascendancy. See Jane Mayer, /Dark Money/, 2016. (p. 117) Weaponized philanthropy lowers billionaires' inheritance taxes, and is bringing back feudalism. (p. 119) Weaponized philanthropy launched Milwaukee's school-voucher program. (p. 120) Public money taken from public schools, given to private for-profit and religious schools.
ALEC has been in control since Republicans gained over 700 seats in state legislatures in 2010. Anti-public-education, antivoting, antilabor, antienvironment. Anti-safety-net. Wisconsin: statewide school-voucher law, right-to-work(-for-less, no union shop), voter ID (disenfranchise young, old, poor, minority). Legislators wholly-owned by the billionaire class. (pp. 121-125)
After Republican gerrymandering, Democrats have never held more than 39 of 99 assembly seats, even with a large majority of total votes. (pp. 151, 218. Democrats had refused to set up a nonpartisan redistricting process when they were in power.)
The fatality rate in construction trades is 40% higher in right-to-work (no union shop) states. (p. 168) Right-to-work generates no economic gains, but drives down wages for all workers. (p. 172) Wisconsin passed right-to-work in 2015. (p. 174)
Northern blue-collar voters for racist George Wallace, let Nixon win in 1968. (p. 179; /Unsteady March: Rise & Decline of Racial Equality in America/, Philip A. Klinker, 1999; /Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City/, Barbara J. Miner, 2013.) But union members supported Obama much more than nonunion. (p. 180)
Hillary Clinton: 1986-1992 corporate lawyer, on board of rabidly antiunion Walmart. She was part of those decisions. Unsafe work, wage theft, sex discrimination. Waltons donated to her 2016 campaign. Hillary cheerled for NAFTA. Hillary praised Trans-Pacific Partnership throughout her term as secretary of state. Subordinates national sovereignty to corporate profit. Hillary: TPP is "gold standard" of free-trade deals. As presidential candidate, suddenly claims to oppose TPP. Lobbied Congress to pass Colombia free trade as secretary of state. Claimed as presidential candidate to oppose it. 143 Colombian labor leaders have been assassinated since it passed (2011 - Mar. 2018). NAFTA lost .7M U.S. jobs to Mexico. China WTO entry cost U.S. more than 3M jobs. Hillary cheered. 75% of the losses were in more-unionized manufacturing sector. Private-sector union membership 15.7% 1993 when NAFTA passed, to 6.4% 2016, when Hillary lost to Trump. Since 1960, no Democrat has won presidency w/o winning Wisconsin primary. Trump claimed to oppose free trade. Clinton talks labor out 1 side of mouth, but fat cats pull her strings. Right-wing populist beats corporate Democrat. Walker did 3 times. (pp. 183-186) Sanders beat Hillary by 136,000 votes, 13 percentage points in WI primary, won 71 of 72 counties. (pp. 189-190. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_... But Democratic-party profoundly antidemocratic rules gave Clinton 47 Wisconsin delegates, Sanders 49. Nationwide, Sanders would've had to beat Clinton about 60%-to-40% to have overcome the Democrats' pro-establishment superdelegate bias. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_... Trump beat Hillary in Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, 0.8 percentage point. And in Michigan by 11,000 votes, 0.2%; Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes, 0.7%. Bernie could've won these states, and therefore the presidency, had Democratic-party leadership not forced a Clinton nomination. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_... )
Amazing article by Barbara Lee With on Democratic leadership's throwing the nomination to Hillary--and on the particular corporate cabals whose creature Hillary is: https://wcmcoop.com/2019/05/21/why-th... Donna Brazile, who was interim Democratic Party chair after Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, tells us Hillary took /all/ the Democratic party's money for her own campaign: https://www.politico.com/magazine/sto... From her book, /Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House/. Also /What Happened to Bernie Sanders/, by Jared H. Beck: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
Decline in union membership correlates with rising income inequality. (p. 191) Right-to-work(-for-less) laws decrease Democratic vote share by 3.5%. (p. 191) If Act 10 (no public-sector collective bargaining) is enacted in 10 more states, Democratic Party will have no power. --Grover Norquist. (p. 192)
Trump used unauthorized foreign workers to build Trump Tower. (p. 199)
Windigos are the spirit of greed & excess. The more they eat the hungrier they get. Also known as billionaires. (pp. 204, 231) Walker supported frack sand mining, 26,000-pig factory farm near Superior lakeshore, wolf hunting. (p. 205) Ojibwa prophesy: if wolf goes extinct, man will soon follow. (p. 208) Enbridge pipeline through Wisconsin. Hundreds of Enbridge spills in past 10 years. Canada tar to Chicago & Gulf coast. (p. 209) 2010 Michigan Enbridge spill .8M gallons tar crude in Kalamazoo River. (p. 210) Carcinogenic benzene piped to dissolve tar. Walker's Dept. of Natural Resources: only token fines for polluters, fire over half of scientists. Wisconsin legislature pushed through laws prohibiting pipeline liability insurance requirements, & granting Enbridge the right to seize private property to build an adjacent pipeline. (pp. 211-213)
Wisconsin unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. (p. 217) Democrats can't win more than 39 of 99 seats. (Though Democrats get a majority of total votes for legislators. pp. 151, 218)
Koch interfere in Iron County Board elections (site of GTac mine. p. 218)
Chapter 7: Which shall rule, wealth or man? Since 2011, Wisconsin: child poverty, stagnant wages, defunded education, polluted water, $2 billion budget deficit after tax cuts for the rich. (pp. 233-234)
Bob's bride, Belle LaFollette in 1881 made minister remove "obey" from vows. (p. 237) We need Bob now. (We do have Democrat Tony Evers as governor, since Jan. 2019. He's a huge help.)
Kathy Cramer, /The Politics of Resentment/, 2016: Rural vs. urban. Resentment continues even after the tall poppy is cut down. Taking wages & benefits from someone else doesn't make you happier about not having them! (pp. 239-245)
After Trump won, fans yelled racial slurs at high-school girls in a soccer game. (p. 244)
Wisconsin whose motto was “Forward” Was populist as it could be But now the new motto is “Backward” Oh bring back Wisconsin to me
CHORUS: Bring Back, bring back ! ! Oh bring back Wisconsin to me, to me ! ! Bring back, bring back ! ! Oh bring back Wisconsin to me
They’re trying to stifle our voices They’re trying to keep us derailed (No train!*) They’ll find it’s not easy to do though (Joe) McCarthy once tried and he failed
Though we may be “God’s frozen people” We bask in the warmth of our plea Don’t bury our rights in a snowbank Oh bring back Wisconsin to me
Our Mother Wisconsin is fragile It’s very upsetting to see She wandered away with a Walker Oh bring back Wisconsin to me
Wisconsin's employers are hiring It’s just like the governor says And soon there’ll be no unemployment In Beijing, Mumbai or Juarez
(* Gov. Walker cancelled Obama's Wisconsin high-speed-rail plan--after money had been spent and manufacture begun.)
Current events, reported by Wisconsin Citizens' Media Co-op: https://wcmcoop.com/
Capitalism depends on a globalized legal system that protects ownership claims while concealing its activities from states and national courts. --ThomCapitalism depends on a globalized legal system that protects ownership claims while concealing its activities from states and national courts. --Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology, 2020, p. 154.
HB501 .P48 2019 Law Library Due back Dec 21, 2023...more
The Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney, 2019, 504pp (379pp text) ISBN 9780316475266
Lots about what's wrong with U.S. law, from legal education to cThe Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney, 2019, 504pp (379pp text) ISBN 9780316475266
Lots about what's wrong with U.S. law, from legal education to congress, courts, executive agencies, compulsory arbitration, and policing. It's a comprehensive catalog of failures in our legal system. Marred by author's focus on creating a world that would transfer wealth from the rest of us to himself even faster than it now does.
The changes the author /wants/ are those that would enrich venture capitalists such as himself. He wants laws changed to let him invest in law firms, without the inconvenience of himself practicing law. He wants to replace lawyers with artificial intelligence--which he says is better than lawyer intelligence. The point? He then can charge a corporate client $millions for milliseconds of processing time, rather than the same $millions for thousands of lawyer hours, for making minor modifications to a contract.
He mentions Social Security and Medicare, saying their funds are running out, so of course cuts will have to be made. (p. 377) The reality is, current benefits have always been paid for with current (or future) taxes—as is all of government. The author will never suggest taxing the few who have all the money.
The author's first suggestion for what to do about the sorry state of legal education: close one-third of the law schools! This would guarantee that no one could become a lawyer without wealthy parents, and would further remove access to legal assistance from the nonwealthy.
Admits that corporations spend over $3 billion per year lobbying Congress, and that they outspend public-interest groups and unions combined by 30-to-1. Yet, bizarrely, claims that corporations spend this $3 billion per year without getting much in return! saying only that lobbyists "sometimes" write laws. In fact, the return-on-investment from lobbying is almost infinite. For this $3 billion, corporations reap $ trillions in increased plunder. (pp. 97, 100, 102, 103)
Tells us Congressional leadership has arrogated outsized power to itself, leaving rank-and-file members mere yes-people. Then proposes that the number of Congressional representatives be vastly increased! (pp. 373¬–374) Leaving each one more insignificant still.
This author would not see that we need to officially empower and fund a public-interest research-and-lobbying group, on each and every issue that concentrated wealth lobbies on. These would be in the Citizens' Utility Board mold. State legislatures have outsourced utility rulemaking to Public Service Commissions. Utilities present their rate cases to the PSCs. The CUBs then show the PSCs why the utilities do NOT need such high rate increases. It works because CUB staff is knowledgeable, and genuinely committed to the public interest. And because CUBs receive government funding. (Wisconsin legislators of the everything-for-the-rich party recently drastically lowered CUB funding.) It works because PSCs haven't been completely captured by the industry they govern. CUB research and lobbying has the same hundreds-to-one return on investment that corporate lobbying has. A CUB with a tiny staff can save small ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars off the excess rates utilities wanted to charge, for a million dollars in CUB staff work. By contrast, a general-purpose representative of a geographic area can't hope to separate the truth from the lies and spin of lobbyists for hundreds of monied interests.
Even in the agrarian 1700s, generic representatives of geographic areas served to further only the interests of the wealthy elite. The sort of representation we need is representation by a knowledgeable public-interest group /on each issue/.
The author stops short of suggesting forbidding A to sue B "for reasons A will discover as B gives A all possible information."
The author would never suggest putting lawyers under oath in court.
The author would strip agencies of all "judicial" powers! (p. 374) They might as well close, w/o power to enforce their rulings. They're already too timid to go to court much to fight the big boys.
The author wants government-lawyer pay increased to corporate-lawyer levels. (He'd never suggest anything that might reduce corporate-lawyer pay. Nor even more-progressive income taxes.) And of course he wants more subsidies for law students. But still elite pay for lawyers.
The author has a strange habit of invoking the name of an issue and saying /nothing/ descriptive about it. He spends a page on Ledbetter without saying a word describing the issue, nor the controversy, nor the Court decision, nor the dissent, nor what the law provided (p. 82). He drops James Traficant's name, telling us to google him! (p. 94) All he would've had to say was, "congressman James Traficant, imprisoned for corruption." But no. He wants us to google instead. C'mon. Tell us what it is you're /talking about/, without making us research it to find out.
The book's strength is its thorough catalog of failings of the U.S. legal system. The author's suggestions: no. Just no.
25 Britain & New Zealand have no written constitution.
30 Humanity's back always seems to ache for the royal lash.
35 jurisprude
39 "Natural law" (each one's own conception of it) was trumpeted by: Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, 18th-century revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Lon Fuller, John Finnis, MLK, & the KKK.
39 Idea of natural law rejected by: David Hume, Hitler, John Austin (28–29), authoritarians.
55 all major graduate-entrance exams have a math section /except/ the LSAT.
61 ukiyo
64 Law school and business school are only graduate programs where many professors teach something they've never done, or not done well.
71 One useless man = disgrace; 2 = law firm; 3+ = congress. —Peter Stone
82 a page on Ledbetter saying NOTHING about what the issue was nor what the Court decided, what the dissent was, or what the law provided.
94 "google for James Traficant. It's worth it."
97 claims staff write bills. ignores the extent to which lobbyists do.
100 corps outspend public-interest groups 30:1. $3B lobbying 2017. Lobbyists know much more than the lobbied.
102 claims unusual for lobbyists to write laws! real: lobbyist wouldn't be doing his job w/o specifying exactly, in writing, what the interest-group wants the law to be.
103 lobbyists "sometimes" write laws.
103 quality of laws ranges from low to non-existent.
129 boil cake until tasty
135 judicial specimens
167–168 Alex Kozinski xxiv sexual harasser
188 furniture-usury case, former 1Ls
193 justice is open to all, like the Ritz hotel. —Sir James Matthew
200 $96,000 debt public law school; $134,000 private (+$150,000 opportunity cost)
201 govt lowers its costs by imposing an implicit tax on users of private legal services.
209 avg 5 million pages of documents produced per major case to trial 2010. (1/1000 helpful enough to exhibit)
210 discovery costs as much as a case is worth.
211 American exceptionalism (Stalin, not flattery)
231 a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. Sol Wachter.
262 if a cop follows you for 500 miles, you're going to get a ticket. —Warren Buffett
264 U.S. cops killed more people in first 24 days of 2015 than English and Welsh police killed in the last 24 years.
264 on a per-capita basis, /white/ Americans are killed by police at 26 times the rate of their German counterparts.
278 code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving legal text
309 Hammurabi eye for eye
312 a prisoner-year in jail costs the state $210,000
The best tax policies money can buy. 2003 book. Many of the worst don't-tax-the-rich laws were enacted under Clinton.
The notes are absurd. They're poiThe best tax policies money can buy. 2003 book. Many of the worst don't-tax-the-rich laws were enacted under Clinton.
The notes are absurd. They're pointers to newspaper articles! Even if you could find one, it wouldn't have source notes. Johnston repeatedly tells us of malicious tax laws, designed to shield rich cheaters. He NEVER gives us the number of the US Code he's talking about. Had he done so, we'd have something definite to point our congresspeople and senators toward. But nope. So his admonition on page 304, "we have to demand reform," is hollow to the point of hypocrisy.
Johnston does cite people who watch tax policy in the public interest. Unfortunately they have no political clout:
Thomas Ray
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