Tag Archives: freedom

Freedom and Morality

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) had a few words to say on this [emphasis added].

The Department of Agriculture proudly declares: “Each $5 in new [food stamp] benefits generates almost twice that amount in economic activity for the community.”  Our government is running food stamp promotions at foreign embassies.  One worker was given an award for overcoming “mountain pride” and getting more people to sign up.  Where I grew up in Alabama, all honest work, even the hardest, was honored.  And pride, self-respect, and a desire to be independent was valued, not a thing to be overcome.

And

People are being hurt every day by the Washington establishment the Democrats are determined to shield from accountability.  Government has never been bigger or more out of control.  They say there is no problem with waste, fraud, and abuse; they say the problem is you; they say you are not sending them enough money; they say they have wisely spent every penny.  So, you must just send them more.  And, if you don’t?  Well, they won’t stop spending, they’ll just borrow more.

Here is Sessions’ suggestion for an economically effective and morally sound budget outline:

Instead, we must act to create more jobs and better pay.  And we can do it without adding to the debt.  Here’s how:

  • Make welfare temporary and the welfare office an employment and job training office.

  • Unlock America’s vast energy resources to create millions of good-paying jobs.

  • Defend American workers from unfair foreign trade practices.

  • Reform the tax code to make America globally competitive, creating more jobs here.

  • Make government leaner, less wasteful so it produces greater results for the money you earned and sent here.

  • Enforce an immigration policy that protects legal US workers from unlawful competition.

  • Eliminate every burdensome federal rule or regulation that isn’t needed and that destroys jobs.

  • And, finally, we must balance the federal budget.

These are steps that reduce government, they allow Americans to regain responsibility for our own actions, regain our ability to work toward our own goals, and these steps leave more of our hard-earned money in our hands.  All of this enhances our—and our country’s—freedom and morality.

We saw with Wednesday’s Senate budget proposal the Democrats’…freedom and morality.

More Racism

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The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the New York City Districting Commission has resubmitted its redistricting plan for the 51 New York council districts following the 2010 census.

According to a news release, the plan creates 35 so-called minority districts in which “protected racial and language-minority groups” represent an overall majority of the total population of these districts.  By comparison, the 2003 districting plan had 30 such districts.

This is blatantly racist.  The Constitution—and the New York State constitution is no different in this regard—specifies one man, one vote.  From the 14th Amendment of the Federal Constitution:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State….

From Article II, Section 1, of the New York State constitution:

Every citizen shall be entitled to vote at every election for all officers elected by the people and upon all questions submitted to the vote of the people provided that such citizen is eighteen years of age or over and shall have been a resident of this state, and of the county, city, or village for thirty days next preceding an election.

There’s nothing in here that differentiates one American, or one New Yorker, from another.  We’re all Americans; in the present case we’re all New Yorkers.  Neither constitution admits of giving special voting privileges to some Americans over others, neither constitution contemplates the racism of “protected racial” or “protected language-minority”…groups.

Both constitutions—quite properly—insist that a man’s ability to vote is based not on the color of his skin or the thickness of his accent but on the status of his citizenship.

It’s time to stop racist gerrymandering.  All of us look alike in the eyes of God, before the law, and in our right to vote.

The Racism of the Supreme Court

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During oral arguments concerning Shelby County v. Holder, a case that asks whether the several states and lesser jurisdictions must, in accordance with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, continue to submit their voting plans to Federal supervision and prior permission, came these shocking remarks:

Justice [Elena] Kagan: “Under any formula that Congress could devise, it would capture Alabama.”

Never mind that under any other formula that Congress could devise, it would not notice Alabama at all.  Formulae of this sort find what their developer want found—it’s the purpose of the formulae.  Kagan knows this.

Justice [Sonya] Sotomayor: “It’s a real record as to what Alabama has done to earn its place on the list.”

True enough.  It’s also a real record as to what Alabama has done to earn it way off the list.  Sotomayor knows this.

Justice [Stephen] Breyer: “Imagine a state has a plant disease, and in 1965 you can recognize the presence of that disease. … Now it’s evolved. … But we know one thing: The disease is still there in the state.”

Once a racist, always a racist.  Because we know.

These liberal…Justices…need to look in a mirror.

Police Surveillance

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Little Rock, AR, is expanding the surveillance capability and power of its police patrols:

A police car with a device that photographs license plates moves through the city and scans the traffic on the streets, relaying the data it collects to a computer for sifting. Police say the surveillance helps identify stolen cars and drivers with outstanding arrest warrants.

It also allows authorities to monitor where average citizens might be at any particular time. That bothers some residents, as well as groups that oppose public intrusions into individual privacy. The groups are becoming more alarmed about license plate tracking as a growing number of police departments acquire the technology.

More (worse?) [emphasis added]:

Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas said the law enforcement benefits outweigh any concerns about possible abuse of the information, which, as a public record, is legally available for anyone to see.  He said the department may get more of the devices.

No irony there at all.  Nosirree.  Thomas went on:

Should that potential of misuse therefore eliminate the capacity of law enforcement to collect data which has a legitimate purpose for the safety of our officers or the appropriateness of enforcement actions?  I don’t think so[.]

But he misses the point.  This isn’t a private citizen, for whom prior restraint constraints are properly illegal—there has to be a crime committed (of which conspiracy is one, but which requires probable cause to interrupt).  This is a government, which is hard enough to control.  Prior restraint of government is a necessary precondition for freedom.  It’s why probable cause and warrants are a for restraining governments.

There are other dangers of the police—the government—creating this particular database, also pointed out in the article.

[City Director Ken] Richardson said he didn’t hear about the device until after it had been collecting data for months.  He said he said he hasn’t heard many complaints.

“It’s hard for you to have a problem with something if you don’t know it’s going on,” he said.

So, Chief, why all the secrecy, if it’s so innocuous?

And as [Catherine, of the New York American Civil Liberties Union] Crump points out,

Given how few rules are currently on the books to protect our privacy, it’s plausible that private investigators and data-mining companies could acquire this location data[.]

And nefarious individuals posing as those.  This is a neat-sounding idea that’s highly dangerous.

The US Flag Is Litter?

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An Alabama home owners association thinks so.  This is an image of the letter sent to residents of a condo unit (the unit is owned by one of the resident’s parents).

In case it’s hard to read in this post, the typed part of the letter reads

Resident,
It has come to our attention that you have items in plain sight that are not to be visible from the parking lot by rules and guidelines stated in the home owners association bylaws.  Please remove the following listed item(s) as soon as possible to keep the community as tidy as possible.

The hand written part reads

Your flag attached to the stairs has to be removed ASAP!

When the recipients of this clean-up letter posted it on a number of veteran advocacy Facebook pages, the resulting uproar included a flood of communications to the home owners association president and condo property manager, Carol Coffey, objecting vociferously to the demand and to the implication that the American flag is just litter to be swept away.

In fact, such association bylaws that ban the US flag from public display on (condo owners’, for instance) private property are a violation of Federal law [emphasis in the original; a copy of the law can be seen here or here]:

A condominium association, cooperative association, or residential real estate management association may not adopt or enforce any policy, or enter into any agreement, that would restrict or prevent a member of the association from displaying the flag of the United States on residential property within the association with respect to which such member has a separate ownership interest or a right to exclusive possession or use.

Coffey had this to say to justify her clean-up letter:

I served in Afghanistan, I served in Iraq, and I served in Kuwait.  I am not anti-veteran, and I am not a communist[.]

And

In order to maintain the integrity of that asset [the condominium complex], we have certain rules because people could put anything out here if we let them.

Because, she says, the association bylaws are in place to maintain property value, and naturally, the American flag is just any old thing, and it depresses property values.  Coffey also claimed that she realizes there are laws that protect the right to fly the American flag, but said those are for private property and this condo was not private property, because the condos are owned by a community of people—then she said that the “community of people” who own this particular condo consists of the parents of one of the residents, as noted above.

Coffey had this whine, also:

I think they are persecuting us without knowing all the facts.  And here’s one thing that really bothers me…this person got the letter from our management team and instead of coming to the board and expressing his concern, he went and posted something on two or three veteran’s sites without all the information and without us knowing anything about it, and now we’re being threatened—that’s not right.

That’s valid as far as it goes; she shouldn’t be getting threatened.  But.  In most (all?) other legal matters, a fundamental doctrine is that ignorance of the law is no excuse.  And she’s already said she knew the law; it wasn’t a matter of her not “knowing anything about it.”  She sent her clean-up letter anyway.

Since she already knew her letter was…invalid…it’s also hard to see what good spending time protesting to her about her letter would have done, especially since that time would have violated her ASAP demand.

The right answer is to stop “considering” waivers, but to correct her homeowners association bylaws so as both to not conflict with Federal law and separately to recognize that our flag, in its own right, is a proper item to display.