All posts by JKF

Fighting on Two Fronts

Fighting on two fronts
The Eastern Front – Stalingrad 1942. Utter destruction.

The sudden departure of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, not unexpected after a long struggle with cancer, (and May She Rest in Peace and Power), is the signal for the real struggle to begin over the control of our national destiny. Now, with The Covid and The Trump Recession on one front, and the nomination of a replacement to RGB on the other, the battle is joined at a higher level. It’s been made clear over recent years how much in this period of divided government the power of the federal courts has risen. That is the chief reason that Majority Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has done little other than obsess about appointing federal judges and justices inclined toward his ideas of partiality, favor and advantage. The hypocrisy of Senators like Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton and Mitch himself, who as a group with others of their ilk would not even favor Merrick Garland with a hearing, much less a vote, to hurry to judgement at this delicate moment  should energize all those who understand what is at stake to make the maximum effort to throw out The Party of Corruption and Lies. As the Trumpublicans have tactically exposed their flanks to  the reality of how they wish to govern, largely in absence and with favor toward only some, the opportunity for a decisive victory is stronger. Now the Great Trifecta — House, Senate and Presidency is within reach. Do not allow the opportunity to slip away. The JKF campaign is becoming very much a secondary matter.

Six weeks . . . and counting

As the Jewish New Year 5781 commences, the final push for the White House, and thousands of other elected posts in America, has already commenced with over six states having already begun in-person early voting and the first Presidential debate only ten days away. While entirely too much space is still being allotted to fantasies and fabrications as to what the current US head of state might do if he loses, many real issues are starting to gel, and together with glaring differences between the representatives of the major parties, there is a  rising awareness of how much will need to be done in 2021 after the dust from this election settles.

Back in April before the insufficiency of our country’s response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was obvious to most Americans, Adam Tooze, in the London Review of Books (“Shockwave”, 16 April, 2020), noted that the US federal system and the EU multi-nation organization were both challenged at a level well beyond China and South Korea. As successful as the Western economic bloc was at managing  the rules of global finance and strategic power, they had serious problems in dealing with an invisible enemy that seemed to dictate a choice between lockdown or a staggering death count. The US especially, because of the absence of both a national system of unemployment insurance system and a national health care system, found that even with budgeting huge dollar amounts they could not get sustained traction. Now, six months later, with young people going back to school, notably to colleges away from home, and the end of the European tourist season with the fall flu season not far behind, the citizenry of the most developed economies in the world are nervous. The US Senate cannot come up with a deal for more money, fiscal stimulus is sorely needed, the European economies are moving more deeply into recession, and the US GDP is now smaller than our national debt for the first time since WWII. With climate change adding an emphatic punctuation to the current state of affairs, it’s safe to say that this is an election that will impact human communities all over the world. It is our challenge and our opportunity to move away from war and abuse and toward meeting the real needs of our people  and our planet.

 

Labor Day 2020

Labor Day in the fall is an artifice of American culture born of the concern of the political leadership that allowing the celebration of working people to occur on May 1st, in solidarity with those who toil across the world, would only enhance the power of the international forces trying to reform capitalism. That fact, the importance of May to the forces of revolutionary action, is one big reason why I began my campaign on May Day. Now though, it is also true that our fall celebration is the official start of the final round leading up to the elections at the beginning of November, “the first Tuesday after the first Monday”, and signifies the moment of truth for the many years of planning, organizing and fund raising that those who aspire to be elected have undertaken. Therefore, because of the tremendous stakes of the next sixty days in this historic Presidential contest, the need for all citizens and voters to be alert, hard working and diligent in their scrutiny of the facts and their pursuit of the reality in regard to our pressing problems is particularly intense. If we are lazy or duplicitous the entire matter may slip out of our hands. Powerful forces seek to neutralize the power of workers, farmers, students, homemakers, and aggrieved minorities of many stripes, most acutely by manipulation of the narrative concerning this historic moment and then the actual results of the hard vote on November 3rd.

Your task is to see to it that this does not happen and to flex your political muscles with your vote for change. Remain safe and strong as we nonviolently walk the path of power to victory.

A well regulated militia . . .

John Karl Fredrich
Militia Man Massachusetts 1775

This excerpt from the Postscript of the Second Edition of my book, Delusion and Abandonment, is pertinent to the issue of the place of firearms in American society and rights of the citizens as guaranteed in the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution:

The nation cries out for remedy to the plight of about 100 fatal gun deaths a day and many mass shootings over the years, and still they (the Congress) refuse to act. The Second Amendment is quite clear about the matter of ‘a well regulated militia’, and Congress could artfully pass a Well Regulated Militia Gun Registration Act to obliterate the ill-conceived notion of unregulated firearms, to require that war weaponry and assault weapons be stored in public armories, and to create a data base and survey for all guns and owners in the United States for the simple purpose of public safety and national defense. They could require not just the inventory of all weapons in private possession but whether the owner is willing to serve in the militia. Even a world-class sophist such as Antonin Scalia, the champion of a very suspect concept of originalism about the intent of the writers of the Constitution, would be hard-pressed to delineate how this exceeds the charge of Congress to act in behalf of the general Welfare and to insure domestic Tranquility.

100 Years and Counting

Simple enough — The text of the 28th Amendment !

Women in the United States won the right to vote 100 years ago when the 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920; but challenges to removing the vestiges of second class citizenship remain. Although the 14th Amendment went a long way in trying to eradicate the denial of ‘the equal protection of the laws’, ever since it was ratified in1868 there has been a struggle to fulfill its promise. When the 15th Amendment was ratified less than two years later it inserted gender into the document for the first time, and, as Eric Foner has noted, Elizabeth Cady Stanton warned, “If that word ‘male’ be inserted, it will take us a century at least to get it out.”

That century is more than over, and the time is now long overdue for women no longer to be subjugated to any remnants of their chattel status. With the passage of a 28th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing gender equality, the state legislatures and the courts will not be able to apply their tortured reasoning to the issues of comparable pay, reproductive rights and other traditional and historical patterns of patriarchal abuse and denial of rights. This will not only help women, but will improve the status of children and men, increased dignity and integrity being only a few of the beneficial side effects of this action.

I believe that this change is supported by a large majority of Americans. Simple justice requires that it be done now.

Hiroshima . . . 75 Years Ago

The Atomic Bomb was born during World War II, first tested in July, 1945, and then dropped on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 & 9, quickly leading to the end of the war.

Nuclear weapons are preeminently genocidal by intent and design and are primarily weapons of terror as their use in war has been avoided since then. Their seductive power was once again revealed when President Barack Obama authorized the next generation of nuclear weapons before leaving office after pledging in Prague in 2013 to rid us of them. The logic of their deterrent power comes from the happy fact that they haven’t been used since 1945, but the nations who believe that they are acceptable and necessary have large storehouses of them and do not want “to take them off the table” when conflicts develop. These atomic arsenals represent a tremendous investment in what could otherwise go to humane use of our resources. They are the ultimate example of the immorality of war and should be condemned and rejected because of that.

I believe that as the only country to use these weapons against other people we have an obligation as a country to lead on this issue. Our position should be one of unilateral, incremental disarmament and rejection of first use. We should lead by signing all the international protocols for non-proliferation and any money spent on them should be for their reduction and elimination. That is the perfect place to begin the United States’s 25 % cut in military spending, monies that are much better directed to the real social and economic needs of our nation and world.

Ota River, Hiroshima after the blast.

Further information on the impact of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings can be found  here.

A video of the events surrounding the bombing and a discussion with William Perry as to whether any one person should be given the power to deploy these weapons can be found here.

90 days to go

By this time in three months it should be more obvious to most Americans what kind of a county they live in and in what direction their country is headed.

Last week in the funeral services for John R. Lewis, one of the true heroes of the fight for human rights for all in the United States, the charge to all who were listening was to answer the call to move forward in creating a society that actually lives up to its word and promise. The response from the Electoral College winner of the 2016 election was a resounding doubt as to whether the country can even hold an election on November 3rd. Never mind that Donald Trump has sworn an oath that entrusts him with the responsibility to see to it that just such an event occurs, and that he should be working mightily in behalf of all for that to come off without a hitch, his trial balloon was a bald admission of the fact that he is not qualified to hold the position, not now and not in 2021. It is unlikely that someone who cannot even manage the United States Postal Service is able to discharge the other more taxing responsibilities of office; we do know, however, that the vote will take place and that it is the duty of the states to count and report honestly and accurately the results. It’s our duty to register and to vote by one of the various methods the law allows. Not to do so would be distinctly unpatriotic.

Moreover, moving beyond patriotism and this year’s vote, now is the time to respond to former President Barack Obama’s clarion cry to advance the cause of democracy through the restoration of the Voting Rights Act, renewed by both Presidents Bush, and  blatantly subverted in the 5-4 Supreme Court decision of Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. With these rights reinsured, the importance of the principle of one person/one vote can be further actualized by passage of the 29th Amendment to the Constitution — the elimination of the Electoral College and the direct election of the President of the United States by a majority of its voters. Improved Democracy should be our goal and the President should be elected by a majority.

School & The Covid

Of all of the seemingly intractable problems associated with public health and the broad effects of the pandemic on society and the economy, re-opening education from pre-school to university looks to be the one that will require the greatest amount of imagination, compromise and risk. The strategy of ‘just do it’ has been disgraced by the post-Memorial Day blow out that set the country back three months and the righteous fear that harm would occur to teachers, staff, and children if such a free-wheeling approach were taken with going back to school. Governments incapable of providing PPE and testing on a national basis are not likely to have the skill to manage a task with so many moving parts as 20,000 school districts,  colleges and universities. Putting health and safety first and going forward deliberately would appear to be the wisest course while providing wide variance for local particulars.

As a retired teacher who spent between my years as a student and  an instructor nearly a half century in the classroom I would offer a number of suggestions as to how to proceed slowly. The starting point is asking what our near term objectives are and remembering that schools need to be institutions governed by rules and that they need to model the behaviors that they seek to instill no matter what the nature of the content  being taught. In that sense, the affective and kinesthetic objectives are more pertinent to the plan than the cognitive ones because every site must support the emotional and physical safety of all involved while precluding the possibility of spreading infection to the families of those who go to school. These considerations mean that impetuous and risky approaches should be ruled out at the start and those that say ‘do it now, no matter what’ need to be gaveled silent.  We must take the time to do it right.

Women’s Lives Matter

“We shall not be safe until the principle of equal rights is written into the framework of our government.”              Alice Paul     1923

Alice Paul

In the 100 years since women got the right to vote in the 19th Amendment, and the 150 years since ‘the equal protection of the laws’ was guaranteed in the 14th Amendment, women have had their legal status in the United States challenged by the fact that the original Constitution did not take them into account. That omission in the basic plan of government bedevils women to this day and allows for legislative mischief, such as states creating impediments to their reproductive rights, and employer slights, such as unequal pay and the denial of specific benefits unique to their gender, such as leave and help for their children. The concept of One Nation requires that all be equal before the law. The failure of the national government to protect the interests of woman throughout the land is much like that of the lack of federal oversight in national elections; they are problems in need of legislative solutions.

Shirley Chisholm

I advocate executive action to issue the Preliminary Equal Rights Proclamation, after the manner of Lincoln’s 1863 Preliminary  Emancipation Proclamation, with the injunction for the 117th Congress to expedite as quickly as possible the ratification of ERA as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. Alice Paul’s advice is as right today as it was 100 years ago.