Why Vote: To Take Our Country Back

I just got done reading this diary and comments on DailyKos titled Admirers of Constitution Booted for Wearing Impeach T-shirts in DC. This diary chronicles something that happened today, something I would have thought impossible in the United States of America:

With the original First Amendment "Freedom of Speech" looking on, admirers of the U.S. Constitution in the Washington D.C. National Archives Building today were ordered to leave for wearing tee-shirts reading "Impeach Bush and Cheney."

The only thing I could think of to add to the comments was this:

This is just another reminder of why it is so important to elect a Democrat President this year. We have GOT to take our country back from those people.

But then I got to thinking, this is why we need to vote in the Florida Presidential Primary on January 29th. We do have to take our country back. Some folks being told they have to leave the National Archives building because their T-shirts bothered the rent a cops seems like a rather trivial thing. But something like this should never happen in our country.

However, many things that should never have happened in this country have happened in the past seven years. The current administration has:

• Ignored the threat from Osama bin Laden and then was surprised when 9/11 happened.
• Failed to finish the job against bin Laden in Afghanistan, thus allowing him to regroup and remain dangerous today.
• Lied us into a war in Iraq for their own political purposes.
• Wiretapped us without warrants.
• Employed torture against captured enemies.
• Thrown away habeas corpus.
• Allowed political hacks to over rule scientists.
• Robbed our national treasury with no bid contracts to their corporate cronies that are then fraught with fraud.
• Allowed the creation of private armies (a la Blackwater)
• All but broken our military with this endless war in Iraq.

And I'm sure you all can add many, many more items to this list.

None of the current crop of viable Republican candidates repudiates any of this. In fact, most of them fully embrace all of this list. And in a few short days, most of them will be running around all over our state spouting their own brand of nonsense. Meanwhile, our Democratic candidates will not be here. Well, maybe not until January 27th, anyway (the day after the South Carolina Democratic primary).

So we Dems have had a little intra party squabble about moving the primary up. What is that in comparison to the importance of putting an end to the atrocities listed above? We all need to get out and vote for the primary candidate of our choice. We need to show the Republicans, and more importantly, the independents in this state, that we Democrats are going to be fighting hard here in Florida.

So get out and vote, Democrats. Let's show that we are going to fight hard here in Florida to take our country back!

He shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed

The title of this diary is a clause from Article. II, Section. 3 of the Constitution for the United States of America. This is a particularly apropos time to take a close look at the meaning of this clause. What are the real duties of the President of the United States? What are the real duties and responsibilities of the Congress of the United States? Why does this matter now more than ever?

The answers (?) to these and other questions are below the fold...


This clause bears repeating right at the outset

he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed

Article. II of the Constitution deals with

The executive Power

which

shall be vested in a President of the United States

It contains only four sections. This is in contrast to Article. I. dealing with

legislative Powers herein granted

which has ten sections.

Section. 8. deals with the powers of Congress. Among these are the power

To raise and support Armies, ...

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

So what is this diary really all about? Why is any of this at all important right now? Over at RockRidge Nation, George Lakoff and Glenn W. Smith have posted an important piece titled The Framers Got It Right: Congress is the Decider. In this piece Lakoff and Smith posit

Congress would find it easier to act courageously if the public understood the constitutional stakes. And that public understanding requires correct and persistent framing by Congress itself. What needs to have been framed — indeed what still needs to be framed — is Congress's constitutional responsibility and power to set the course on military missions like Iraq. (emphasis added)

To prove this point they quote David J. Barron of the Harvard Law School

Congress possesses substantial constitutional authority to regulate ongoing military operations and even to bring them to an end.

They also quote Louis Fisher, Constitutional Specialist, Library of Congress

The legislative judgment to take the country to war carries with it a duty throughout the conflict to decide that military force remains in the national interest...In the midst of war, there are no grounds for believing that the President's authority is superior to the collective judgment of its elected representatives. Congress has both the constitutional authority and the responsibility to retain control and recalibrate national policy whenever necessary.

Lakoff and Smith go on to argue

Congressional leaders have neglected to remind the nation what the Constitution says. They have allowed the president to reframe the Constitution, usurping their power for himself. The Framers framed it right. The Congress irresponsibly let the president reframe the Constitution.... Opponents of the president's Iraq policies should have framed the issue immediately when Democratic leaders took control in January 2007. The message should have been: Congress defines the strategic mission; the president's job is to carry it out. He is refusing to carry out his mission.

Lakoff and Smith point out the frames successfully used by the Bush administration that have made the Congress afraid to execute their powers. They also point out the framing traps that proponents of bringing the Iraq Occupation to an end should avoid. They also provide useful frames to help the public understand the true nature of the situation, including this

Progressives must point out that it is the president, with an enabling Congress, who commenced a foolhardy adventure with no clear exit strategy or way to "win." That same president has refused to properly prepare or adequately equip soldiers — and now he is blaming Congress. When Congress passed a supplemental spending bill with reasonable timetables attached, he refused it. The betrayer is the president. Say it over and over: The president has betrayed our troops and the nation.

This reminds me of something my good friend alonewolf has been saying. I am going to paraphrase what alonewolf says Congress and Democratic candidates should be saying about authorizing this misadventure in Iraq

We gave him the keys to the car. We didn't tell him to drive it into a ditch.

Like any parent whose child drives their car into a ditch, Congress should, no must, take away the keys to the car.

Read the Rockridge piece. They give some good ways where we can help to make that happen.

Property Taxes and Quality of Life

There is no question whatsoever that the hottest topic in the state legislature right now is property tax "reform". What I want to know is who up there is taking a serious look at how these so called reforms are going to affect the quality of life here in Florida? What do I mean by this? Come along and we'll take a quick tour of the issues.

Nobody disputes that there are serious inequities in our current property tax system. However, nothing in the House bill actually addresses those inequities, and precious little in the Senate bill. Here are the subgroups of people who have been most seriously disadvantaged by our current property tax system:

1) Rental property owners and by extension renters.
2) Business property owners
3) Non homestead residential property owners
4) Homesteaders trapped in their homes by Save Our Homes

Rental property owners, particularly those who rent affordable units, have been brutally hit by the current property tax system. But the people they have been hit by are the property appraisers. The appraisers see that property as a potential high price condo and tax it accordingly. That's akin to an income tax that taxes you on what you might have earned rather than what you actually earned. What a brilliant idea that is.

Business property owners have the same problem. Their properties are being taxed as if they were in a new multi use property or a new office tower, as opposed to the mom and pop shop they actually run. More taxes on potential.

Non homestead residential property owners, or second home owners if you will are also getting hammered by the run up in real estate values. But legislators, here's a clue. These people are either not citizens of Florida, or they are fortunate enough to own a second home in this state. The first group are not voters here. The second group, to the extent they can afford to have a second home in this state also ought to be able to afford the taxes on it.

Finally we have the homesteaders who are trapped in their current homes by the Save Our Homes amendment and its unintended consequences. The Save Our Homes amendment is working exactly as it was meant to. People are not being taxed out of their homesteads in Florida. But they are being held hostage in their current homes due to the tax consequences of moving into a new home.

So what do the House and Senate "reform" plans do for these classes of tax payers? The house bill does virtually nothing for anyone except homestead property owners, the exact class that needs tax relief the least. I was fortunate enough to buy a property in downtown St. Petersburg 10 years ago. Thanks to Save Our Homes and Homestead Exemption, the taxable value of my home is still below my 10 year old purchase price. Meanwhile the actual market value of my home has quadrupled. Do I need tax relief? Actually my city taxes in St. Petersburg declined slightly last year. The only tax reform I need is Save Our Homes portability.

The Senate bill attempts a form of temporary portability. Their excuse is that there are constitutional issues (US Constitution) against just making Save Our Homes fully portable. The issue is that making Save Our Homes portable would unconstitutionally create different classes of taxpayers in Florida. This argument is spurious at best. We have had Homestead Exemption for as long as I can remember. We have additional homestead exemptions available for the elderly, disabled veterans, widows and probably some other groups. None of these has ever been successfully challenged on constitutional grounds. There is no real reason to suspect that Save Our Homes portability would not pass the same test.

How about rental property owners and the renters themselves? Well, if your rental property is qualified as "affordable" and you agree to maintain that use of the property for 20 years, you can get your appraised value figured on actual cash flow on the property. There is no reason that actual cash flow could not be used as a valuation method on all rental properties.

The same thing applies to other business property owners. They need to get off "highest and best use" appraisals and get onto some variation of current use valuation. Nothing substantial is being proposed for these property owners.

Now, what has all this to do with quality of life. The reforms that I am in favor of above are already going to cost local governments tax revenue. The bigger gun to the head of local governments is actually the various proposals to "roll back" local governments property tax revenue to some prior year. That is what is going to hit us all squarely in our quality of life.

My own local governments, St. Petersburg and Pinellas County have not been profligate squanderers of tax money, but they are being dumped into the same boat with other local governments that might have been. Both governments have been looking at the likely consequences of the property tax proposals in Tallahassee. Both local governments have insisted that the police and sheriff's departments would not have services curtailed due to property tax revenue reductions. So where does that leave them?

St. Petersburg has mentioned that some fire stations might be closed. That can not have a good effect on overall fire department response times.

St. Petersburg and Pinellas County are faced with a homelessness crisis, as evidenced by the tent cities that have sprung up in St. Petersburg. Residents and business owners want government to step in and fix the problem. The temporary solution is more emergency shelter beds. The longer term solution is affordable housing. Both of these "solutions" cost money. However these are precisely the spending areas that are likely to fare poorly when the budget axe falls. We will then have to deal with the current homeless situation without major relief for some time to come.

Pinellas County is starting to have second thoughts about the feasibility of Tax Increment Financing (TIF). This is the program that allows all property tax revenues from a specific area (city and county) to be reinvested in those specific areas. TIF has had spectacular results in downtown St. petersburg and in Ybor City. If county governments decide they can no longer afford TIFs, the economic effects in construction spending slowdowns will be felt for years to come.

St. Petersburg has already prepared a letter to all social service agencies and charities that have received financial support from the City. These folks have been told to plan their budgets on the basis that they would receive no funds from the City of St. Petersburg this year. These items include support for alcohol treatment centers and an inebriate receiving center.

Other quality of life areas sure to receive budget hits are the Pier Aquarium, the Florida Orchestra, the MLK Festival Band Event and various other City Co-sponsored events. Some of us are surely going to miss these things when they are gone.

There are other areas that are sure to take some hits as well. Library branches might close, or have their hours of operation sharply reduced. Parks will not have their grass cut or their other maintenance needs tended to as we would like to see them.

If our legislators rush into this so called "property tax reform" without careful consideration, we are going to be feeling the unintended consequences in our quality of life for years to come.

Who will the legislators blame then?

The Big Lie - Iraq - Again - Part II

So many lies, so little time. I was going to write next about the lie that all these horrible consequences would necessarily follow a withdrawal of US troops from combat duty in the Iraq Civil War. I still intend to deal with this topic. However, a new Big Lie has emerged from the Iraq War Supporters.

I am sure you've have heard it. Any mention of placing conditions , or restrictions on the supplemental funding for the war brings forth immediate cries of "micromanagement" from the Iraq War Supporters. Is this really true, or is it just one more Big Lie?

Come below the fold where we'll deconstruct this one and perhaps find some Truth....


Let's start off by defining micromanagement. Dictionary.com gives us this:

mi·cro·man·age : –verb (used with object), -aged, -ag·ing.
to manage or control with excessive attention to minor details.
[Origin: 1985–90]
—Related forms
mi·cro·man·age·ment, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v
1.1)Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

House Republican Leader John Boehner had this to say about a recent plan by John Murtha to place restrictions on the use of funds in the upcoming Iraq supplemental funding bill:

“His aim, he made clear, is not to improve readiness but to ‘stop the
surge.’ So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations
bill -- an action Congress is clearly empowered to take -- rather than try to
micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional? Because, Mr. Murtha said, it will deflect accusations that he is trying to do what he is trying to
do.”

Not to be outdone, Condoleezza Rice said:

proposals being drafted by Senate Democrats to limit the war amounted to "the worst of micromanagement of military affairs."

Even Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program is getting in on the act. They quote :

ROY BLUNT, REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: It's hard to imagine a group less capable of making tactical decisions about specific troop deployments than 535 members of Congress.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline, in the same story, also had this:

NANCY PELOSI, DEMOCRAT HOUSE SPEAKER: No more blank cheques for President Bush on Iraq. Our taxpayer dollars must go to protect our troops, to keep our promises to our veterans and to provide for the safety of the American people. In light of the facts, President Bush's escalation proposal will not make America safer.

and this:

TOM LANTOS, DEMOCRAT CONGRESSMAN: We are not fighting terrorism in Iraq. We are attempting to referee a religiously based civil war, which saps our strength and destroys our fabric as a society.

So what is all this talk really about? Does Congress in fact have the power to set policies that control how the military operates? Has it been done before?

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution:

The Congress shall have Power to ...provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States...
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union...To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States

So it would appear that Congress does indeed have the power to govern the military. In fact, Congress has done just that from the inception of the republic. There is 5 USC CHAPTER 99 - DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE NATIONAL SECURITY PERSONNEL System passed in January 2005 (For those of you not paying attention, this was in the Republican controlled Congress). Then there is 10 USC TITLE 10 - ARMED FORCES. This entire title of the code is devoted to the governance of the armed forces of the United States. It covers everything from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps.

So Congress has indeed exercised its powers under the Constitution

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

They have done it under Democratic and Republican controlled Congresses. They have done it before there were Democrats and Republicans. And they should continue to do so now.

So, when you hear your Republican friends talking about Congress micromanaging the Iraq war, just point them to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. If that doesn't work, direct their attention to 10 USC TITLE 10 - ARMED FORCES. If none of that works, you know you've got the type of Republican who voted for Allan Keyes for the Illinois Senate seat now held by Barak Obama.

Our Founding Fathers Gift to Us

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Founding Fathers laid out for us exactly why we have a government. This is why. These 52 words, the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America says it all. And that is their greatest gift to us all.

Happy New Year

We the People

This government is being formed by the people of the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence states it clearly:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

This government was not some charter granted to us a foreign potentate. This government is a compact by of and for the people who consented to be governed by it.

in Order to form a more perfect Union

We had, of course, already secured our independence form Great Britian through the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War. The original compact beteween the thirteen original states was the Articles of Confederation . After the Revolution, the myriad problems with the Articles quickly made themselves manifest. The result was a call for a Constitutional Convention to create a govenmental compact to form a more perfect union.

establish Justice

After the who (We the People) and the what (to form a more perfect Union), the first why is to establish justice. It is important to note that the founding fathers found the idea of justice so compelling that it would be first i the list of they why's for creating this government. Perhaps it is especially noteworthy in a time when we have just so callously dumped habeus corpus.

insure domestic Tranquility

It was also clearly important to the Founding Fathers that our citizens be able to live in peace, free from domestic strife. We are agreeing here to bind ourselves together under a set of rules so that we may live in "domestic tranquility" or peace.

provide for the common defence

The Founding Fathers also recognized that it was a dangerous world out there. It was seen by bitter expererience that the most effective form of defense was a"common defence" as opposed to 13 seperate secretaries of defense. Maybe with Rumsfeld in there, 50 secretaries of defence slowing things down might not have been a bad idea.

It really is important to point out to my progressive friends that defense of the Constitution of the United States is one of the paramount jobs of government. It is not to carry a big stick, or to throw our weight around. But the sad fact is, there are people out there who reject everything our Constitution stands for and would kill enough of us to thow it onto the trash heap of history if they could. If the ideas represented here are not worth defending then you might as well kill me right now.

promote the general Welfare

I think this is the one that our Conservative friends seem to forget most about. Let's read this again:

promote the general Welfare

Imagine that. The government exists to promote the general welfare? Not the welfare of the multinational corporations or the large campaign contributors? The general welfare? Yeah, that one sort of baffles them. Kinda goes against the grain of their "government is bad" meme, doesn't it.

and last, but certainly not least,

secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

The government was formed to secure the blessings of liberty? How can that be? Government is anti-liberty. Less government is liberty. Well, not according to our Founding Fathers. They recognized that in order to secure the blessings of liberty, there must be a government in existence to ensure that those blessings are not given, sold or otherwise seduced away from us. So, when Newt Gingrich suggests that we ought to give up our First Ammendment Rights for a little security, be sure and point he and his friends towards the ultimate reason we have a government:

to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and ourPosterity