The “little guy’ in America is average Joe
citizen. It has not been a good
year for him. What this year
in American history has seen is a number of significant events which have
arrived, like comets hurtling through space on a collision course, at this same
moment in time to significantly change the basic concept underlying the entire
framework of living in America, the ‘land of the free’. The reference to the latter phrase has
become at this moment the constitutional equivalent of a bad joke. First, we earlier this year discovered
that our government has us under surveillance. I don’t mean under surveillance like a traffic cop hiding behind
a bill board in a speed trap, I mean surveillance as in hard core monitoring of
our phone calls, text messages, e-mails, and internet activity of every person in
these United States. The National
Security Agency’s indiscriminate surveillance of American citizens contradicts
the Constitution’s moral cornerstone.
The right to be left alone is the most cherished right among civilized
peoples. On paper, at least, the
Fourth Amendment exists to create and protect this basic right, but the actions
of our government has effectively nullified this right in its very
essence. And in 2013 we found this
out due to the heroic actions of a man named Ed Snowden who has had to flee the
country to avoid prosecution for revealing this information to America. Think about it. Are we to be a society where our
government secretly monitors every damn thing we do and say and punishes anyone
who tells us about it?
While we talking and thinking about this abrogation
of one of our cherished rights, let’s talk about the Citizens United Supreme
Court decision which, for the first time in history, declared that corporations
are persons within the meaning of the First Amendment and can secretly spend as
much money as they want to control and determine outcomes of elections of
critically important issues and people.
Yes, I know this decision was a couple of years ago, but its practical
effect of overwhelming the rights of the ‘small guy’ were felt for the first
time this year as untold millions of dollars secretly appeared in the coffers
of politicians whose only mission appears to be the dismantling of our system
of government. We wonder from afar
how assholes like Ted Cruz can hold center stage in an effort to cripple the
basic good faith and credit of the United States until we realize that what is
backing him and others of his ilk is big money, real big money submitted by a
virtual handful of fat cats whose only loyalty is the acquisition of wealth and
power.
Now we find that another basic fabric of our society,
the social contract, is gone. Section
24 of the Michigan Constitution contains the following provision. “The accrued financial benefits of each
pension plan and retirement system of the state and its political subdivisions
shall be a contractual obligation thereof which shall not be diminished or
impaired thereby.” A bankruptcy judge, Steven W. Rhodes, casually threw aside
that constitutional protection this week, ruling that pension benefits could be
reduced in a bankruptcy proceeding. This decision involves only the pensions of
the retired public workers of Detroit but has significant impact on the rest of
the country as a pattern for giving distressed cities leverage to backtrack on
their promises. This action
must be taken in the context that most public employees have undertaken public
employment often at the cost of receiving a lower wage than in the private
sector. However, they did have the
constitutionally protected guarantee from their employer (i.e., the state and
its subsidiary units) that their pensions were inviolate. All that has changed. Another important aspect of this
decision is that these pensioners are thrown in with a group of fat cat monied
interests, i.e., banks and other lending institutions who made financial
decisions and undertook to loan the city of Detroit money over the years. From my view, it probably goes without
saying that any lending institution always assumes the risk of lending anything
to anybody. To equate
constitutionally guaranteed pensions with risky lending practices is unfair and
destructive of the social contract of our society on its face.
When these cornerstones are flouted, liberty withers
and dies. We’ve had a sad year in
this regard.
Just saying . . .
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