Victims of the 2018 Valentine's Day shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High received upsetting news when a U.S. District Judge ruled police and schools have no Constitutional obligation to protect students. The judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by15 students against six dependents, including the Broward school district and the Broward Sheriff’s Office, that asserted students were Constitutionally guaranteed the right to police protection, thus the bungled response to the shooting represented a violation of their right to Due Process under the Fourteen Amendment. To add insult to injury, the judge proclaimed only those in police custody, such as those arrested, were entitled to such legal protections. Given police are empowered to “protect and serve” their communities, or at least that is why most people accept the empowerment of police, the ruling is outrageous. Unfortunately, it is only one of many examples showcasing the need for a just legal system and criminal justice system that appears to be evermore elusive.
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The US government faces another shutdown in a decades-long series of shutdowns due to the ongoing failures of Congress and the Executive Branch to get the Federal government’s fiscal house in order. This time around, however, it is also the result of a political spat over funding for Donald Trump’s border wall. The President and his supporters want a wall that stretches the entire length of the US-Mexican border. While the pros and cons of building such a wall have been debated for decades, Trump has decided his wall is a deal-breaker. Democrats, who won back control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 Midterms, have every reason to oppose the President’s agenda, especially when it comes an issue most Americans do not prioritize. This shutdown fight, of course, comes on the heels of a federal court ruing that declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional based on the fact the 2017 Republican tax law zeroed the Obamacare’s individual mandate and a 2010 Supreme Court upheld the reform effort based on the tax. Both developments highlight the degenerative nature of extreme partisans and the embrace of mutual annihilation as a political end-game.
The 2018 Farm Bill will cost US taxpayers around $867 over the next ten years. The amount sounds astronomical, but the Farm Bill is not just another spending bill. It is a major piece of legislation with an oversized impact. In many respects, the 2018 reauthorization for the Great Depression-era legislation is essentially a continuation of the status quo. There is, of course, a great deal of buzz surrounding provisions that legalize the production of hemp containing less than 0.3% THC. It is a long overdue change to an unnecessarily broad attempt to regulate controlled substances. The Farm Bill also includes funding for various public works projects. The mainstay of the 2018 Farm Bill, however, continues to be subsidies for farmers and food subsidies for poor Americans. The fact that few Republican-proposed reforms made it into the final bill is a major victory for those who rely on these subsidies, but the five-year reauthorization of the Farm Bill is yet another missed opportunity to address major economic issues.
“Democratic Socialist” is a term that has grown popular since US Senator Bernie Sanders became a national figure due to his prolonged unwillingness to withdrawal from the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary. With the election victories of headline-grabbing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other self-proclaimed democratic socialists, the democratic socialists have certainly emerged on the national stage and inflamed partisan tensions. Somewhat akin to Libertarian Republicans, Democratic Socialists may well represent the future of the Democratic Party. Just as Republicans are shifting toward one extreme, Democrats are shifting to their own. Democratic Socialists could well be a product of this trend. Where Democrats have always criticized Republicans for ignoring the financial freedom and security of Americans through their preference for business and fanatical approach to capitalism, Republicans have always criticized Democrats for their massive social welfare spending. A Democratic shift toward democratic socialism would certainly intensify the partisan bickering, but it could easily be a fad. More importantly, it could just represent a philosophical correction that favors a sort of socialistic capitalism, if such a thing can exist.
Politics is awash in dysfunction. There is a bipolar political divide between those who favor the Democratic Party and those who favor the Republican Party. Although this ideological division is largely a national phenomenon engineered and accented by political elites seeking to exploit partisans, individuals at the local level mirror the extreme polarization in the positions they adopt on various issues. This is especially true when it comes to nationalized issues. When it comes to nationalized issues in general, more Democrat and Republican voters can be expected to align themselves along partisan lines. When it comes to nationalized issues that are also locally significant, Democratic and Republican voters can be expected to converge toward positions that best reflect their local interests. That is with exception to extremist, hardliner Democrats and Republicans. When it comes to the leaders and elected officials of both political parties, identity politics also seem to trump constituent interests more often than not. It is easy to superficially blame political polarization, but the deeper problem is a cultural issue.
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April 2020
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