A better idea than Court packing

There's chatter among Democrats of changing the size of the Supreme Court if they win the Congress and the presidency. Just like Republicans talked about changing the size of the Court in 2016 if Hillary Clinton won.

Obviously, this is naked power politics, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be some kind of reform.

I'm intrigued by what New York state does for appellate level courts: terms last 14 years and judges have to retire when they are 70 (I think this age limit applies to elected trial court judges too). I believe a term can be renewed but it is not automatic and has to be approved by the state senate.

I think this lessens the power of the presidency and the SCOTUS-stakes of a presidential election - which distort the race - because in this system, every presidential term is going to get a couple of picks.

And you don't have justices clinging on to a lifetime seat when they should be able to retire (especially if they're ill) because they want to see if a better president/replacement selector is chosen.

Obviously, both ruling parties like the current system because their policies and actions are terrible and indefensible and controlled by corporate money; SCOTUS fear-mongering is a great motivator  that prevents them from having to engage in representative governing.

Removing this excuse for corruption and facilitating some real accountability is perhaps the best reason for such a change to be made.

White supremacy has always served the rich

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.

I am working my way through the brilliant PBS documentary on Reconstruction Dr. Henry Louis Gates.

It is not news that white supremacy was and remains America's original terrorism. But it's interesting how social issues and economic issues, often treated as separate, are usually inter-connected.

What I did not know is that after the Civil War, poor whites and poor blacks worked together to wrest some degree of political and economic control from the plantation class. Hundreds of black men were elected to various offices throughout the south, until disenfranchisement in the 1890s. Aggressive promotion of white supremacy and racial caricaturing was a way to drive a wedge into that alliance and thus for the rich to preserve economic and political power.

Lynchings, which were inevitably triggered by fabricated accusations of the rape of white women, were not random. They specifically targeted black men who ran businesses or who were otherwise economically successful.

White supremacy was way to divide and conquer poorer people. It still is.

 

Stop living in fear!

I hear a lot of people saying that if you take reasonable, minimal precautions during a global pandemic which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, you are living in fear. 

So don't live in fear. 

Drive without a seat belt. 

Ride without a helmet.

Disable the brakes in your car/bike/motorcycle.

Jump off a cliff.

Science says these are bad ideas but can you really trust science? It's just controlled by Big Seat Belt (the richest lobby in DC). I mean isn't gravity just a "theory"?

 Don't live in fear by letting the tyrannical laws of physics suppress your freedom.

Without accountability, we have a police state

We've all seen countless stories of police abuse - many more disturbing than this one - in recent days.

I think most people accept that the police deserve the benefit of the doubt.. But what we're seeing is too many agencies wasting that benefit of the doubt by essentially proving the claims of the protesters. This is not new, it is just being more widely filmed.

Police often have a difficult job, but so do soldiers and firefighters and social workers and nurses. Those workers have accountability when they screw up. The benefit of the doubt CANNOT be a blank check. Especially not here. Police without accountability is a police state.

Most would agree that most cops are good cops. There's a saying that nobody hates bad cops more than good cops. But until bad cops are consistently held accountable - ie: systematically and not just when protests erupt - all cops will be tainted.

Police reform - in whatever guise it takes - is the human rights issue of our generation. We have been avoiding dealing with systemic racism for 400 years. Enough's enough.

American history lesson

In the 1770s, American colonialists were dissatisfied with British rule.

They took to the streets to protest. The result: several of them were killed by the forces of order. (Boston Massacre)

The killings fueling their anger, the Americans escalated their resistance to vandalism. (Boston Tea Party)

When the British refused to budge, the Americans resorted to armed violence. (Revolutionary War)

The Americans did issue a strongly worded press release (Declaration of Independence) but did not halt the violence.

Americans only resumed peaceful dialogue AFTER they seized autonomy following the British military surrender. (Treaty of Paris)

Rioting, as seen by Dr. King

"When I give food to the poor, I'm called a saint. When I ask why they are poor, I'm called a communist." -Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.


Dr Martin Luther King said this over 50 years ago. Still relevant today.

"I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”

Distance learning is not real education

there's an assumption by adults that kids are so enraptured by technology that distance learning would be a snap. It's easy to see kids glued to their phones and think that.

But although I've heard from countless who hate it, I've yet to hear from one kid who actually prefers this set up, though I'm sure a small minority do. Even the kids who normally whine they hate school are complaining about it.

Nor a teacher, for that matter. The clueless idiots claim teachers are lazy or glorified babysitters but every teacher out there wants to be doing more than they are permitted to do now.

And that's not even factoring in the digital divide and unequal access that implies.

This is something to consider as our governor and others hand over education design to big tech. I'm a bit skeptical that the plight of homeless students is going to be high on the radar of tech CEOs.

Tech can enhance traditional teaching methods and already have. But it should be done thoughtfully and with serious input from educators, something that 'education reform' attempts rarely include.

Any attempt to replace school learning with distance learning should be resisted with the fervor of armed white men demanding their right to poison wait staff.

Why Germany succeeded where the US failed

The German soccer leagues are the first in the world to re-open, albeit without fans. I was listening to an interview with a German soccer announcer. He said that part of what helped is that Germany "got lucky." 

He explained that they watched on TV what was happening in Italy and were quick to take action to mitigate the spread of the virus. 

Rather than choosing a national leader who rejects science and surrounds himself with the same, they chose as their national leader a trained scientist. Even in a decentralized federal republic, this was critical in setting the tone.

Little about this is "lucky."

It is the result of conscious choices made by Germans and their leaders to act decisively and proactively to prevent a crisis from becoming much worse. They saw what happening elsewhere and didn't sit on their hands and/or scream MSM sheeple Nazi Hitler hoax plandemic. They took action.

Over the decades, they've also consciously chose to develop a decent social safety net to reduce inequality and to establish a rational health care system designed to serve citizens.

The results of serious leadership: they had one of the lowest per capita death rates in the western world. And now the country is slowly re-opening.