Update no.645

Update from the Heartland

No.645

21.4.14 – 27.4.14

Blog version:  http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

To all,

The big news this week, at least for lil’ol’ me out here on the Great Plains of this Grand Republic, I submitted my letter of resignation for retirement.  I will officially leave the corporate world on Friday, 2.May.2014.  Jeanne and I are both excited to move on to the next stage of our lives.  I will finally be able to write full time.  I will be working for myself from now on.  I am currently in the final editing process for my next book – The Clarity of Hindsight; The Words and Deeds of World War II – a history book decades in the making.  Following shortly behind Hindsight, Book III and Book IV of the To So Few series of historical novels are written and just need final editing.  Stay tuned, there is more to come.

“A Putin affiliate evokes Hitler. The West should be worried”

by Richard Cohen

Washington Post

Published: April 21 [2014]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-a-putin-affiliate-evokes-hitler-the-west-should-be-worried/2014/04/21/ddbd3794-c980-11e3-95f7-7ecdde72d2ea_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics

While I agree with Cohen’s recitation of history in this instance, I believe he and most folks fail to recognize the overarching blueprint / playbook Hitler gave us in 1925 – Mein Kampf (My Fight).  Seven years before he became Deutsche Reichskanzler, Hitler told us in explicit detail exactly what he intended to do.  We had pretty good clues, validating his plan in progressively audacious actions from 1933 to the invasion of Poland in 1939.  While I may quibble a bit with the history, Cohen’s point is spot on!  The Migranyan position further fails prima facie in the light of Stalinist hegemony both prior to 1941 and certainly after 1945.  Arguably, Stalin killed more people than Hitler.  While Putin has not carried out (to public knowledge) the paranoid purges and pogroms of Josef Stalin, more than a few similarities persist in illuminating Putin’s actions.  Recent anti-Semitic papers add a very chilling punctuation to what is happening in Ukraine.  Migranyan’s attempt to rationalize Putin’s actions fails on numerous levels, not least of which is reflected in Cohen’s opinion.  What so many fail to acknowledge in these hegemonic rationalization debates is, if ethnic peoples are dissatisfied with the established government, they can and should immigrate to their affinity state rather than foment unrest or violence.  So, if ethnic Russians are unhappy in Ukraine, they should move to Russia, to live with others who think and act like them rather than encourage an aggressor to “defend” them.  That said, I hold no illusion as to who the instigator was in Crimea or in Eastern Ukraine.  The only question in my mind remains, where and when will the West draw the line to stop Putin’s hegemonic intimidation and intent?  I can appreciate the Russian apprehension regarding threats or enemies at its doorstep.  Russian history is replete with examples of misplaced trust and tragic suffering as a consequence of invasion.  Heck, the Soviet Union agreed to and signed pacts with the Germans on 23.August.1939 – the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that divided up Poland and green lighted Soviet domination of the Baltic states – and, on 11.February.1940, the German-Soviet Commercial Agreement.  The German deception was so thorough and convincing that Stalin disbelieved and ignored the mounting intelligence warning of German offensive intent, only to be confronted with the invasion on 22.June.1941 that came within a hair’s breadth of taking Moscow and Stalingrad. Even more amazing in that event, it took days for Stalin to believe his commanders at the dissolving front that Germany had actually attacked the Soviet Union.  I suppose we should recognize the societal paranoia of Russians.  We can only hope that someday a generation of Russians will grow up to accept their strength and not see enemies in every crack and crevice.

I choose to read judicial rulings, old and new, high and low, out of an integral curiosity about living, the law and governance in this Grand Republic.  I usually learn about our history and our laws from these judicial pronouncements.  The process helps me formulate opinions on a wide variety of topics.  It is not often I am depressed by my curiosity.  That said, I must confess one of those rare episodes upon reading McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission [570 U.S. ___ (2014); no. 12-536] – the Supremes’ latest decision regarding political donations.  The focused, singular question at issue in the McCutcheon case is the aggregate limit on donation imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) {AKA McCain–Feingold Act, or Shays-Meehan}[PL 107-155; 116 Stat. 81; 27.3.2002], as an amended to Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) [PL 92–225; 86 Stat. 3; 7.2.1972].  Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority, as he observed, “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades--despite the profound offense such spectacles cause--it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”  He added, “At that point, the limits deny the individual all ability to exercise his expressive and associational rights by contributing to someone who will advocate for his policy preferences. A donor must limit the number of candidates he supports, and may have to choose which of several policy concerns he will advance--clear First Amendment harms that the dissent never acknowledges.”  Roberts added, “Moreover, while preventing corruption or its appearance is a legitimate objective, Congress may target only a specific type of corruption – ‘quid pro quo’ corruption.  Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder's official duties, does not give rise to such quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner ‘influence over or access to’ elected officials or political parties.”  The Chief Justice concluded, “For the reasons set forth, we conclude that the aggregate limits on contributions do not further the only governmental interest this Court accepted as legitimate in Buckley. They instead intrude without justification on a citizen's ability to exercise ‘the most fundamental First Amendment activities.’ {Buckley v. Valeo [424 U.S. 1 (1976)]}.”  Not surprisingly, the concurring opinion of Associate Justice Thomas supported the Court’s judgment, as he disagreed with the extent; he believed all restrictions on campaign donations should be removed.  Associate Justice Breyer wrote for the dissent and went directly to the point, “Taken together with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission [558 U.S. 310 (2010)], today's decision eviscerates our Nation's campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.”   Justice Breyer concluded, “The result, as I said at the outset, is a decision that substitutes judges' understandings of how the political process works for the understanding of Congress; that fails to recognize the difference between influence resting upon public opinion and influence bought by money alone; that overturns key precedent; that creates huge loopholes in the law; and that undermines, perhaps devastates, what remains of campaign finance reform.”

            To be blunt and perhaps rather crass, Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion seems to discount, i.e., nearly ignore, the history and pervasive, corrupting influence of money, as if he is quite content existing in the crystal palace of purity, unencumbered by reality or practicality.  They see money and the process of donating money to political candidates in a rather sterile, naïve manner.  Soft money, hard money, who cares?  It is all potentially corrupting of the political process.  Citizens United brought to sharp focus numerous unsettling aspects of the thinking of the current bench of Supreme Court justices.  The majority of the Supremes have convinced themselves that corporations are citizens and money is speech, so we can only imagine what is next.

            As I read the ruling, the image that kept creeping into my consciousness is the game of whack-a-mole.  Chasing money is never easy.  What all of the vaunted Supremes missed here is the public versus private aspect of this issue.  Flag burning, protests & parades, and even speech itself are public events; giving money to a candidate is a very private & clandestine action.  Further, the collateral consequences of that “giving” sets up a quid pro quo that is likewise largely hidden from public scrutiny.  When private or perhaps clandestine intention is attached, the task becomes virtually impossible.  Congress has made numerous attempts to reduce the corruptibility of vast amounts of money from 1907 to 2002.

            What is the difference between a bribe and a donation?  I say, intention – a personal and private attribute.  The dissent offer three examples of grotesque circumvention of political campaign donation laws, albeit eviscerated by Citizens United and now McCutcheon.  Given the bent of the Roberts Court, perhaps the best we can possibly hope for is refinement and/or reform of the surviving laws.  My suggestion: repeal all existing, surviving, campaign finance or donation laws, so that there are no limits, caps, thresholds or other restrictions other than every contributor (individual, business or organization) publicly disclose ALL contributions in money or otherwise.  We should make it federal law, so that political donations of any form must be “cleared” by or through the Federal Election Commission (FEC), declared on federal tax returns, both individual and business, and excluded from business expenses of any form, so that political donations cannot be claimed as an expense against revenue, thus make all taxpayers cover his donations. The current FEC donor files are antiquated and of little value, as they are far too segmented and not linked; plus, they cover only individual donations.  I suggest we make a public, federal, searchable database that connects donations greater than a threshold, perhaps US$100 per donor, per candidate (or political entity), such that anyone can query the database by donor, by candidate, or any other relevant metric.  Further, political action committees in any form should be segregated and excluded from 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status and placed into a new category of political organization that must report all income and expenses to be correlated with the Internal Revenue Service and FEC databases.  At least in making political contributions public, we would stand some modicum of chance at illuminating conflict of interest as well as graft and other forms of corruption.  I think we can all recognize the difficulty for Congress to make donations public; they might want to make everyone else’s donations public but not theirs, but somehow we must demand they overcome their natural reticence with the objective of making corruption more difficult to attain.

            I absolutely agree that a wealthy citizen’s freedom of speech and political affiliation is protected by the Constitution, and that his freedom of speech must not be hampered or infringed upon more than a poor citizen – no more, no less.  Where I diverge from the Supremes’ reasoning hangs upon the “advantage” of wealth to amplify any particular citizen’s voice.  Ideally, our individual political voice is infused with our vote; thus, a rich man’s vote should be inherently equal to a poor man’s vote.  While the philosophical equality is explicit in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence and NOT in the Constitution, any historian can circumscribe an argument that Jefferson’s words of equality did NOT truly mean equality, i.e., “. . . all men are created equal . . .” did not mean all human beings or even all citizens; since at those days, only landed, educated, free males were considered “men.”  We have taken a far more broad, inclusive interpretation of those immortal words, and thus the meaning of the Declaration and implicitly the Constitution.

            Just a personal footnote: technology has enabled and strengthened our capacity as citizens.  Just a decade or two ago, citizens did not have access to legislation in progress or the laws as enacted or modified.  We would have to have some form of knowledge of legislation and request a copy from our representative; and even then, if we received a response at all, it would take weeks or months to fulfill.  Even our public libraries did not have law books.  Today, we can read and assess for legislation and laws ourselves.  Openness and access has enhanced our citizenship.  The same openness can reduce the likelihood of corruption.  As Justice Brandeis so succinctly said, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”  So, let us shine a very bright light on the money and remain vigilant for laws that favor big donors.  Equal is equal in my mind.

News from the economic front:

-- According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is reportedly testing its own delivery network to cover the final leg of a package's journey to consumers' doorsteps – “the last mile,” the holy grail of e-commerce: same-day shipping.

-- Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services lowered Russia’s credit rating one level from BBB to BBB-minus – one level above junk status – and kept its outlook on the country negative.  S&P cited heightened tensions with Ukraine and the prospect of economic sanctions. In their public statement, S&P said, “In our view, the tense geopolitical situation between Russia and Ukraine could see additional significant outflows of both foreign and domestic capital from the Russian economy and hence further undermine already weakening growth prospects.”

Comments and contributions from Update no.644:

Comment to the Blog:

“Even as the Russian government looks more and more as if it follows the usual strongman strategy of growing by taking over the neighbors, you throw a monkey wrench into that picture by mentioning “embarrassing defections of troops to the rebel cause.” Once again, this seems a bit more complex than the usual domination by the strong. The refusal of the pro-Russian rebels to abide by Russia's truce agreement adds to the weirdness.

“Incidentally, the concept “hell bent upon creating enemies to focus and amplify nationalist juices among believers and suppress voices of dissent” also fits the US government for most of this century.

“I agree with Mr. Pitts' analysis. The flow of huge amounts of money into political parties and campaigns has come very close to eliminating the representative republic designed in the Constitution. Let's hope it's not too late.

“The immediate cause of the Korean ferry disaster is known. The real question is how that came about.”

My response to the Blog:

            Re: Ukraine.  I do not see the incongruity.  I imagine the defectors are ethnic Russians and most likely recognize Russia as the stronger nation as well as most likely to succeed . . . not particularly different from the loyalist colonists during the American Revolution . . . except the stronger nation lost.

            Re: “hell bent.”  My apologies, I do not and cannot think of any instances the U.S. responded or acted in such a manner.  An example or two would be quite helpful.

            Re: Pitts’ opinion.  Indeed!  I share your hope.

            Re: Korean ferry disaster.  OK.  What is the root cause?  My observation was supposition based on public information that has not been validated or verified.  I am not confident we have sufficient information to determine root cause.

My very best wishes to all.  Take care of yourselves and each other.

Cheers,

Cap                        :-)