Category: Politics and Government

The Best Medal?

I’m not sure if this is tripling down, quadrupling down, or what … but Trump’s made more statements about how he’d prefer a Medal of Freedom because Medal of Honor recipients are gravely injured or even killed.

Beyond the incredibly absurd notion that he’d qualify for a Medal of Honor — his assertion boils down to this: a Medal of Honor winner gave something significant of themselves. They put themselves into an incredibly dangerous situation to allow the rest of us to enjoy our Constitutionally protected freedoms. They earned that medal, often with their own body or even their own life.

Medal of Freedom winners also did something — but the person to whom Trump was referring? Was a doctor, who did what many other doctors do without being awarded medals. The ‘extra’ that got the medal? They gave money. Some of which went to Republican campaigns and conservative causes. Now, I presume even DonOld realized you couldn’t actually award a Medal of Freedom to someone for donations to his campaign. She (and her husband) also gave money to research centers fighting substance abuse, medical research, and Holocaust remembrance — not a bad thing, but there’s a huge difference between giving your life for something and giving your time and money for something.

Of course DonOld would rather be lauded for handing over some money (or, in his case, creating a charity to allow him to get praise for handing over other people’s money to beneficial causes) than actually have to give something of himself.

 

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/medaloffreedom/

The following individuals received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Trump on November 16, 2018:

MIRIAM ADELSON. Miriam Adelson is a committed doctor, philanthropist, and humanitarian. She has practiced internal and emergency medicine, studied and specialized in the disease of narcotic addiction, and founded two research centers committed to fighting substance abuse. With her husband, Sheldon, she also established the Adelson Medical Research Foundation, which supports research to prevent, reduce, or eliminate disabling and life-threatening illness. As a committed member of the American Jewish community, she has supported Jewish schools, Holocaust memorial organizations, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and Birthright Israel, among other causes.

Who Deserves Benefits?

I blame Reagan for the public “knowing” who actually deserves benefits. Instead of showing the “welfare queen” as an extreme outlier who got caught and prosecuted because that’s an important part of government function along with “success stories” of people who survived on welfare for a few years whilst they got job training and reentered the workforce?

They wanted people to think that was a norm – your hard earned money is being stolen by the government and handed over to these frauds. Since there are so many lazy people out there stealing your money, odds are decent that anyone person getting benefits is a fraud. Obviously the people you like aren’t frauds – you are a good, loving, considerate person who wouldn’t like frauds. So it is conveniently all those people you don’t like stealing from us all.

And people manage to find something to create an ‘other’. If everyone has the same skin color, those folks are the wrong religion, descend from Irish/Italian/whatever immigrants, or are a bunch of McCoys/Hatfield’s/whatever’s.

For some reason, the ten thousand dollar toilet seats in the military budget didn’t get people thinking that military contracts are a scam misappropriating your hard earned money.

And the military one is kind of a straw man too – they eventually started 3d printing the thing and cut the cost to a couple hundred bucks (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-air-forces-10000-toilet-cover/2018/07/14/c33d325a-85df-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html).

On Suddenly

I had a dual major in Uni: history and theoretical physics. My “history mentor” was someone who studied under Howard Zinn, so my knowledge tends towards a somewhat alternative version of history. And his thesis was on slavery — so many of the Project 1619 ideas were hardly new to me. Listening to Trump say VP Harris turned Black — beyond sounding racist weird — shows a remarkable lack of historical perspective and a stunning US-centric view of the world.

Harris’s father is Jamaican. To say she isn’t Black is to say Jamaicans aren’t Black. The University of the West Indies has some 76% of the Jamaican population being of African descent.

Does he think the entirety of the slave trade was built around the USA?!? Over 90% of enslaved Africans were sent to South American and the Caribbean. Jamaica, specifically, was a British colony — and somewhere between half a million and a million enslaved people were sent there. Why? Sugar production! There were about 400,000 enslaved Africans sent to the USA. So, based on historic records? More Africans were kidnapped and forced into slavery in Jamaica than the USA.

https://www.slavevoyages.org/

Separation of Church and State

As I see states enacting laws to require religious education in public schools, I think of the history of trying to incorporate Christian philosophy in law. I’ve always wondered *which* Christian. The real answer, I expect, is everyone assumes it is their own. Good for garnering votes, but that’s going to make implementation dicey.

Obviously some sort of Reformationist Christianity (sorry Catholics!). But there’s a big difference between Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Mormon, Presebeterian, Mennonite, etc. And, yeah, they locked up the courts so what the Constitution says and what the authors meant probably don’t matter … But I like to throw Deist in there as a knod to the founding fathers.

My gut is it ends up being “left up to the states” generally. So Arkansas can be Southern Baptist, Maybe Catholics get Rhode Island (only like 40% of the population, but the next highest is Pentecostal at like 6%). In states like Ohio, religions are going to have to band together to get a majority — it’ll be like a coalition government in the UK. If we’re lucky, “I don’t want to live in a theocracy” will win a state or three.

We are either stuck with whatever religious edicts align with our region or we move. And the feds are just in charge of saying it’s not a violation of the Constitution when women wearing slacks gets banned in some state. For reasons. Really good, substantiated by history and text, reasons.

 

https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-ten-commandments-displayed-classrooms-571a2447906f7bbd5a166d53db005a62

For Anya — Bill of Rights QuickRef

Since Anya is working on memorizing the Bill of Rights, I wanted a really quick list for her to review:

  1. Religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition government for redress
  2. Keep and bear arms
  3. No quartering soldiers
  4. Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure (secure in person, house, papers)
  5. Right to due process, freedom from self incrimination, no double jeopardy
  6. Right to speedy trial, public trial, jury of peers
  7. Right to trial by jury in civil cases
  8. Freedom from excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishment
  9. Other rights reserved for people
  10. Other rights reserved to states

Causes Unknown

I keep hearing that Nikki Haley failed to mention slavery as a cause of the civil war  at this New Hampshire town hall. She *did* mention slavery as a cause, she just did so in coded speech common among racists.

 

States rights!

The state’s right to do what?

Why, the right to make their own laws and do what is right for that state!

OK, but like an example of one of these laws other than forcing people into slavery?

Umm … oh, wow. Will you look at the time! Gotta go!

 

I lived in the US south for years and had some version of this conversation so frequently it was depressing.  There were other rights – South Carolina trying to nullify federal tariffs was a problem in the lead up to the war, too. But (1) hardly the biggest concern and (2) literally not something I’ve ever found a modern states rights person mention. That’s more the realm of civil war historians.

Tax the Rich

I never really “got” the ideology of screwing over today-me on the off chance future-me started making bank. Forbes counted 735 billionaires in the US in 2023 — over 300 million people in the US. That means there’s a 0.000245% chance of someone being a billionaire.
The probability of any one person becoming the next multi-billionaire is, logically, lower than that (some billionaires start out in the 1%). Low enough that I don’t want to structure all of society around making billionaires’ lives cherry just in case I ever become one.
I mean, me personally, I’d happily fork over a couple hundred mil in taxes if I was netting a billion a year because I know I’d be using a lot of publicly funded resources for this hypothetical business, and funding those resources seems practical. But, yeah, probably not something I’m ever gonna have to worry about.

Musing on natural resources

“Any natural resource not used was wealth wasted” — it’s a quote I read in a book, and both a phrase and an ideology that I’ve been musing on. It’s an intersection of capitalism and empirical science — whilst it is difficult to ascribe a value to a “resource at rest”, there is an empirical measurement of that resources value once it is extracted and sold.

 

Finding Benefits Anywhere

At a recent school board meeting, we had a lady suggesting a list of things they should teach about how slaves benefited … evidently this is some recent research? I propose we nab her and all of these researchers out of their houses, throw them in a crowded van, and take them to a prison facility for a year or three. While they are there, they will be fed well, entered into a program to become certified in a trade, and given free access to health care. They’ll be given free range of the facility, not locked in cells; but they’ll have to work and complete their training classes. They’ll be given clothing to wear, a bed in which to sleep. If they’re really lucky, their spouse and kids will be nabbed and get to “benefit” from this great service too.

Obviously, they’d be free to leave at any point they wanted — not an option for actual slaves. If they opt to leave early, they no longer get to claim slavery had benefits for anyone other than those exploiting free labor. They will be admitting that no matter how nicely you treat someone — and these folks are going to be treated far better than most slaves were, so they’re experiencing the best case scenario — doing it against their will is not benefiting them.