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Tuesday, February 16, 2021
The woman already fighting to unseat Lauren Boebert
POLITICO NIGHTLY: The Kanye Doctrine: No one president should have all that power
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RSN: FOCUS: Eugene Debs | Why We Have Outgrown the United States Constitution
16 February 21
We are still well short of completing this month's RSN funding drive. We are roughly 15% of the way. By comparison we are , on average typically at 30% by now. The donations this time are far fewer and far smaller.
For those of you that are active donors we thank you, and ask your patience as we make the case to those who are not yet donors to join us.
We would ask everyone to consider going forward the many benefits of shorter funding drives.
Sincere thanks to all.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611
16 February 21
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FOCUS: Eugene Debs | Why We Have Outgrown the United States Constitution
Eugene Debs, Jacobin
Debs writes: "In a 1911 article, legendary socialist Eugene Debs excoriated the US Constitution as an 'autocratic and reactionary document' written by aristocrats and 'in every sense a denial of democracy.'"
To mark Presidents’ Day, we reprint the fiery essay here in full.
he convention of 1787, held in Philadelphia, which framed the Constitution of the United States and adopted that instrument on September 17 of that year, consisted exclusively of what [Alexander] Hamilton, one of its dominating spirits, called “the wealthy, the well-born, and the great.” There was no workingman present to degrade its councils. Labor was held in contempt, unfit to have a seat among the aristocrats who composed that body and controlled its deliberations.
Neither was there a woman among the delegates to ruffle the dignity of the grave and revered “fathers of the Constitution.” It was a place for the wise and mighty, and for powdered wigs, velvet knee breeches, silk stockings, and silver shoe buckles.
The democratic spirit so defiantly expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and which had sustained the patriots during the dark days of the Revolutionary War, had largely subsided, and nothing was further from the purpose of the delegates than that the government they had met to establish should be controlled by the people. As professor J. Allan Smith remarks in his Spirit of American Government:
It is difficult to understand how anyone who has read the proceedings of the Federal convention can believe that it was the intention of that body to establish a democratic government. The evidence is overwhelming that the men who sat in that convention had no faith in the wisdom or political capacity of the people.
The Constitution itself furnishes sufficient evidence of that fact. It is not in any sense a democratic instrument, but in every sense a denial of democracy. The Declaration of Independence had been democratic and revolutionary; the Constitution, however, was autocratic and reactionary.
Only six of the fifty-six signers of the declaration had a hand in framing the Constitution. Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Samuel Adams were not in the convention. Jefferson bitterly opposed the Constitution as finally adopted, and Henry openly denounced it.
Woodrow Wilson was right in declaring that the government was established “upon the initiative and primarily in the interest of the mercantile and wealthy classes,” and that “it had been urged to adoption by a minority, under the concerted and aggressive leadership of able men representing the ruling class” — and he struck the keynote of the Constitution when he said that the convention that framed it was backed “by the conscious solidarity of material interest.”
There is not the slightest doubt that the Constitution established the rule of property; that it was imposed upon the people by the minority ruling class of a century and a quarter ago for the express purpose of keeping the propertyless majority in slavish subjection, while at the same time assuring them that under its benign provisions the people were to be free to govern themselves.
A democracy in name and form — a despotism in substance and fact!
And this stupendous delusion has not yet lost its magic power upon the people, a great majority of whom still believe, in their mental childhood, that the “Constitution of the fathers” established democratic rule, and that we are a free and self-governing people.
Admitting for the moment all that its most zealous devotees claim for the Constitution as an “inspired instrument,” that it embodies all the wisdom and statesmanship of the age in which it was written, the fact still remains that it is now antiquated and outgrown, and utterly unsuited to the conditions and inadequate to the requirements of the present day. So palpably is this fact in evidence that we see the Supreme Court, the specially constituted authority to construe the provisions of the Constitution and preserve inviolate its reputed integrity, ride roughshod over the “inspired instrument” and by judicial interpretation make it serve, as it has from the beginning, the class in power. And to accomplish this essential service under capitalist class government, the Supreme Court contemptuously ignores and defies the sacred “Constitution of the fathers” by boldly usurping the power not only to construe it absolutely to suit themselves and serve the ends of the ruling class, but by deliberately invading the domain of the legislative, virtually destroying a coordinate branch of the government created under the Constitution, and annulling, wiping out utterly, laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people.
Constitutions, like the times and conditions in which they originate, are subject to the everlasting laws of change. Evolution is no more a respecter of a Constitution than it is of those who make it.
In 1787, when the Constitution was adopted, the population was about 3 million, and agriculture and mercantile interests dominated the colonial life. Today the population is 100 million, and capitalized industry controls the government and shapes the national destiny.
There has been a complete revolution in the methods of producing, distributing, and exchanging wealth, the essential means of life, and a corresponding revolution in the industrial and social life of the people. The ruling class of the colonial era has vanished as a class as completely as have those who composed it. And the Constitution they adopted is just as completely out of date as would be its makers, if by some magic they could appear upon the present scene. In their day, the ruling class consisted of small landowners, petty merchants and traders, and professional persons who made up what was known as the “official class.”
The actual workers and producers were still in a state of semi-feudal servility, an inferior element, and practically without voice in the affairs of government. But there were no hard and fast lines between the classes of that day, nor any sharp antagonisms to bring them into violent collision and to array them against each other in hostile conflict.
In the century and a quarter since elapsed, there has been an overwhelming industrial and social transformation. The weak and primitive agricultural colonies of that time have become a vast and powerful industrial nation. There is now a sharply defined capitalist class and an equally sharply defined working class. The struggle between these modern industrial classes is growing steadily more intense and reshaping and remolding the entire governmental structure and social organism.
Political government has had to give way to industrial administration, and the old forms, including the Constitution, are now practically obsolete. Political government, its constitutions and its statutes, its courts, its legislatures, and its armies, scientifically considered, are institutions under class rule, expressly designed to establish the supremacy of one class and enforce the subjugation of another class. With the end of class rule, political government will cease to exist. Its functions, which are essentially coercive, will no longer be required.
With the overthrow of the capitalist class and the installation of the working class in power (which must be the inevitable outcome of the present struggle), the government of political states will be superseded by the administration of national industries.
In discussing the United States government and the Constitution, Professor J. Allen Smith, already quoted, correctly concludes that “this complex system of restrictions which is the outgrowth and expression of a class struggle for the control of the government must necessarily disappear when the supremacy of the people is finally established.” The present Constitution was not designed to establish but to prevent the supremacy of the people. It is outgrown, obsolete, dead. Industrial and social development are not halted by it, but these forces sweep past it with scant regard for its ancient and musty respectability.
Politicians and legislators are today the representatives, not of the people, but of the trustified capitalist class. The government is essentially capitalistic, as is also, of course, the Constitution to the extent that it is still vital and has any binding effect at all.
The working class is now the rising class and will soon be the triumphant class, and then the capitalist state will be superseded by the working class commonwealth, and industrial despotism by industrial democracy.
The old Constitution will have its place in history and will serve its purpose in the study of governmental evolution and class rule, and among the inspired relics of a past age. It is a class instrument, inspired by class interests, and will survive only to mark a historic epoch in class rule.
The new Constitution will not be framed by ruling-class lawyers and politicians, but by the bona fide representatives of the working class, who in the day of their triumph will be the people in the complete sense of that magnificent and much maligned term.
And the representatives of the working class will consist of women as well as men, sharing equally the rights and duties, the privileges and opportunities of the councils of state, and they will smile indeed as they look over with pitying toleration the “Constitution of the fathers” and recall the convention in secret session that framed, in blissful ignorance that toilers and producers were citizens, and that women are also included in the people.
The new Constitution will be framed by an emancipated working class with the sold object of establishing self-government, true democracy, conserving the freedom and security and promoting the happiness and well-being of every man, woman, and child.
RSN: FOCUS: Robert Reich | Convicted or Not, Trump Is History - It's Biden Who's Changing America
16 February 21
Why I Am Uncompromising on Funding
The stakes are high. We can have a powerful, influential publication — that serves the community or we can have nothing. It's a thin line. "We the community" often get less, because we accept less. Enough of that. Watch us fight, you fight too. Step up with what you can afford, watch what we do with it.
In peace and solidarity.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611
16 February 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
FOCUS: Robert Reich | Convicted or Not, Trump Is History - It's Biden Who's Changing America
Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Reich writes: "While most of official Washington has been focused on the Senate impeachment trial, another part of Washington is preparing the most far-ranging changes in American social policy in a generation."
Republican infighting has created a political void into which Democrats are stepping with far-reaching reforms
Congress is moving ahead with Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which expands healthcare and unemployment benefits and contains one of the most ambitious efforts to reduce child poverty since the New Deal. Right behind it is Biden’s plan for infrastructure and jobs.
The juxtaposition of Trump’s impeachment trial and Biden’s ambitious plans is no coincidence.
Trump has left Republicans badly fractured and on the defensive. The party is imploding. Since the Capitol attack on 6 January, growing numbers of voters have deserted it. State and county committees are becoming wackier by the day. Big business no longer has a home in the crackpot GOP.
This political void is allowing Biden and the Democrats, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, to respond boldly to the largest social and economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Importantly, they are now free to disregard conservative canards that have hobbled America’s ability to respond to public needs ever since Ronald Reagan convinced the nation big government was the problem.
The first is the supposed omnipresent danger of inflation and the accompanying worry that public spending can easily overheat the economy.
Rubbish. Inflation hasn’t reared its head in years, not even during the roaring job market of 2018 and 2019. “Overheating” may no longer even be a problem for globalized, high-tech economies whose goods and services are so easily replaceable.
Biden’s ambitious plans are worth the small risk, in any event. If you hadn’t noticed, the American economy is becoming more unequal by the day. Bringing it to a boil may be the only way to lift the wages of the bottom half. The hope is that record low interest rates and vast public spending generate enough demand that employers will need to raise wages to find the workers they need.
A few Democratic economists who should know better are sounding the false alarm about inflation, but Biden is wisely ignoring them. So should Democrats in Congress.
Another conservative bromide is that a larger national debt crowds out private investment and slows growth. This view hamstrung the Clinton and Obama administrations as deficit hawks warned against public spending unaccompanied by tax increases to pay for it. (I still have some old injuries inflicted by those hawks.)
Fortunately, Biden isn’t buying this, either.
Four decades of chronic underemployment and stagnant wages have shown how important public spending is for sustained growth. Not incidentally, growth reduces the debt as a share of the overall economy. The real danger is the opposite: fiscal austerity shrinks economies and causes national debts to grow in proportion.
The third canard is that generous safety nets discourage work.
Democratic presidents from Franklin D Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson sought to alleviate poverty and economic insecurity with broad-based relief. But after Reagan tied public assistance to racism – deriding single-mother “welfare queens” – conservatives began demanding stringent work requirements so that only the “truly deserving” received help. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama acquiesced to this nonsense.
Not Biden. His proposal would not only expand jobless benefits but also provide assistance to parents who are not working, thereby extending relief to 27 million children, including about half of all Black and Latino children. Republican senator Mitt Romney of Utah has put forward a similar plan.
This is just common sense. Tens of millions are hurting. A record number of American children are impoverished, according to the most recent census data.
The pandemic has also caused a large number of women to drop out of the labor force in order to care for children. With financial help, some will be able to pay for childcare and move back into paid work. After Canada enacted a national child allowance in 2006, employment rates for mothers increased. A decade later, when Canada increased its annual child allowance, its economy added jobs.
It’s still unclear exactly what form Biden’s final plans will take as they work their way through Congress. He has razor-thin majorities in both chambers. In addition, most of his proposals are designed for the current emergency; they would need to be made permanent.
But the stars are now better aligned for fundamental reform than they have been since Reagan.
It’s no small irony that a half-century after Reagan persuaded Americans big government was the problem, Trump’s demise is finally liberating America from Reaganism – and letting the richest nation on earth give its people the social support they desperately need.
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