Obama DID NOT Rip the Supreme Court or the Constitution

The latest distortion of Barack Obama’s positions can be found on World Net Daily. The headline says it all: “Obama rips U.S. Constitution, Faults Supreme Court for not mandating 'redistribution of wealth.'” Also jumping on board is The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg:

A just-unearthed 2001 interview with Obama on Chicago public radio reveals as much. Then a law school instructor and state legislator, Obama offered an eloquent indictment of the Warren Court for not being radical enough. While the court rightly gave blacks traditional rights, argued Obama, "the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth." Unfortunately, according to Obama, "it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."

The only problem is it JUST AIN’T SO!

Obama criticized neither the Constitution nor the Supreme Court in the aforementioned interview. If anything, he criticized the civil rights movement for focusing on litigation to the exclusion of political action that might have achieved more of the movement’s goals. Here are Obama’s comments as quoted on World Net Daily:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK.

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

At this point the YouTube video of the interview carries this dishonest caption: “Yes he just said it’s a tragedy the Constitution wasn’t radically interpreted to force redistribution of wealth for African Americans.” NO HE DID NOT! There is no criticism of the Supreme Court or the Constitution there. The tragedy, according to Obama, was the failure of the civil rights movement to pursue change through the political process. He is acknowledging that the courts were not the answer to all the problems.

Obama made this point again when asked whether legislation or litigation was the appropriate way to bring about change:

The court's not very good at it. I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, the court … engaging in a process that essentially is administrative.

Once again, no call for changing the courts or the Constitution.

Can't We Cut the "Redistributionist" Crap?

The United States of America has had a progressive income tax for almost a century. Social Security is almost three quarters of a century old.

Reasons to Hope and Reasons to Despair

Riding up to Janesville, Wisconsin on Saturday, one of the women related a story about a canvasser in western Pennsylvania who was told by a woman who came to the door that she would have to ask her husband who she was voting for. When she called to her husband, the answer came back, “We’re voting for the n****r.” The woman turned to the canvasser and said without any embarrassment, “We’re voting for the n****r.” (The story is all over the blogosphere, but I have no idea whether it is apochryphal.)

The three women in the car thought that the story was shocking, but I found it very encouraging. I have no illusions about the existence of racism, but it is nice to think that people can overcome it sufficiently to see where their economic interests lie. My father was fond of saying that Ronald Reagan’s genius was in convincing a lot of members of the middle class that they could afford to be Republicans.

Speaking of the crazy things that people believe, I just started reading Matt Taibbi's The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, & Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire. His take on Pastor John Hagee's support for Christian Zionism is brilliant:

[I]t was unmistakably an ingenious solution to the problem of how to rally
southern conservative Christians a few generations removed from their
cross-burning Klan days to the cause of Israel. If it turns out that it was
dreamed up by the same guy who figured out how to get laid-off Midwestern
factory workers to whoop for free-trade Republicanism by plastering the airwaves
with French-kissing men, I have to say, that guy deserves some kind of special
medal—a Triple Order of Satan, or something like that.

Part of Taibbi's research involved joining Hagee's Cornerstone Church and learning how to vomit demons into a paper bag at a weekend retreat.

I could not help but think of Sarah Palin as I read Taibbi's assessment of the possibility of rational political discourse with such people:

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that
Christians of this type should learn to “be rational” or “set aside your
religion” about such things as the Iraq war or other policy matters. Once
you’ve made a journey like this—once you’ve gone this far—you are beyond
suggestible. It’s not merely the informational indoctrination, the
constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc.,
that’s the issue. It’s that once you’ve gotten to this place you have left
behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent
opinion about such things.

Canvassing for Obama

2008 will mark the ninth presidential election that I have voted in. Prior to this year, I had never contributed to a presidential campaign, worked on a presidential campaign, displayed a political sign in my yard, worn a button for a candidate, or put a bumper sticker on my car. This year, I have done all these things on behalf of Barack Obama. Yesterday, I went canvassing in Janesville, Wisconsin on behalf of Obama. Two weeks ago, I canvassed in Hales Corners, Wisconsin.


The McCain supporters I encountered were much friendlier this week than they were two weeks ago. In Hales Corners, the Republicans seemed angrier. One elderly lady asked "How can you vote for him?" A middle aged man said "We're not fans of that guy." This week, one guy came to the door swearing at his dogs, but smiled warmly when he saw my Obama button and said, "We're voting for McCain, but good luck with that socialism." His neighbor two doors down said he was voting Republican, but he thanked me for my "enthusiasm."

I can't help but think that the warmer attitude I encountered this week reflected a sense of resignation. Over the last two weeks, the bad economic news had not slacked, the McCain campaign has careened from issue to issue in the hopes of finding a message, and high profile Republicans have been abandoning their party's nominee with unprecedented frequency. With the McCain campaign giving up on a state that the Democrats barely carried in 2004, the Republicans I encountered in Janesville may just be demonstrating the good sportsmanship of people who know they have been beaten fair and square.

Next weekend I am heading down to Indiana to see whether the Hoosiers will vote Democratic for the first time since 1964.

Why Greenspan Was Wrong About Deregulation

If you don't watch CNBC, you may only know Vince Farrell as the financial analyst who got Whammied out of the decabox on the Daily Show.






However, today Farrell absolutely nailed the hole in Alan Greenspan's deregulatory philosophy:

The problem with the models is that it does assume rational behavior. As
far as an institution protecting its equity, which is what [Greenspan] said,
institutions don’t protect equity, people protect equity. The people in
those institutions saw huge bonuses by pumping this stuff out. So if you
want to call that irrational behavior, it’s irrational as far as the economy
wound up going, but it is very rational for their self-interest. There is
no institutional self-interest. . . . [Greenspan] still just doesn’t get
it.

As I noted in my recent post on Corporations and the Free Market, corporations are imaginary people. They are creatures of law. They do not have instincts like fear and self-preservation. If the regulatory scheme is not designed to tie the compensation of the executives to the long term health of the company and the risk of loss, there is nothing in the nature of the corporation to deter those executives from risking catastrophic losses that will fall on society as a whole in order to earn returns that they will enjoy.

Is Sarah a Socialist?

Who is the governor of the state that practices the purest form of wealth redistribution?

Here is a hint: Which state taxes the oil companies in order to write checks directly to each one of its citizens?