S.T.

Welcome to the Sober Thinking Forum.

This is the continuation of the Renewable Revolution Forum, with the same categories and boards arrangement. In order to provide topic thread continuity, this post will be duplicated in frequently viewed topic threads along with selected posts from that topic at the Renewable Revolution Forum. I will gradually, as time permits, copy pertinent articles posted there, update them, and post them here for your convenience.

I have no intention of closing the Renewable Revolution Forum, so any links you have to posts, articles and graphics there are valid for the time being. Nevertheless, I advise you to 🦉 copy and save any posts, articles and graphics that you wish to preserve for posting somewhere else on the internet. I am 75 years old. As long as my spirit hasn't permanently left my body, the Sober Thinking Forum will be kept open.   

Although guests are encouraged to post and become members, this forum is mostly a library reference of important historical information and timeless articles that you are encouraged to pass on, with or without attribution.

In addition, relevant recent news will be posted almost daily, so be sure to 🧐 stop by often.

I have changed the title and the front page background graphic for two reasons:

1. My purpose, nearly a decade ago, of convincing most reality based people everywhere that human civilization, in order to stop and reverse (i.e getting back to 350 PPM of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide is sine qua non) the multiple extinctions causing biosphere degradation (i.e. the Sixth Mass Extinction Event now upon us), must VERY rapidly transition away from Hydrocarbon Energy Sources to Renewable Energy Sources, has been largely achieved. I have been one small voice among many that have made it clear that clean energy must be made available to everyone, not just the wealthy, if we are to survive Catastrophic Climate Change.

2. Celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey asked, "Is there a way to capture what (to the detriment of human civilization) is going on now"?

My answer: YES.

It's the SOCIAL DARWINISM, stupid!

"In human society, the amount of inequity is directly proportional to the amount of iniquity." -- A. G. Gelbert

No matter how much progress we make in cleaning up the biosphere, as long as the egocentric, morally bankrupt, empathy deficit disordered, Social Darwinist Ideology continues to be embraced by TPTB, we do not have a snowball's chance in Hell of surviving our Existential Crisis.

Social Darwinists believe that ethics based principles are 'limitations pretending to be virtues'. To them, ethics are 'feel good illusions' that humans invented to pretend our species has empathy. To Social Darwinists, empathy is irrefutable evidence of inexcusable weakness. To them, all who are guided by ethics are deluded fools that should be eliminated from the human 'apex predator' gene pool for the "good" of our species.

The ideology of the Social Darwinist is indistinguishable from the despicable ideology of NAZI Germany, clearly exemplified in their brutally enforced morally bankrupt concentration camp law: “Eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor.”

Social Darwinism is actually based, not on "survival of the fittest", but on fear of tomorrow, a morally bankrupt excuse for rejecting altruism and empathy and embracing a selfish greed dominated hoarding modus vivendi.

"One who fears tomorrow does not offer his bread to others. But one who is willing to divide his food with a stranger has already shown himself capable of fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born." -- Primo Levi, author of Survival in Auschwitz

Social Darwinism is the world view that spawned the profit over people and planet neoliberal ideology. Neoliberal intellectuals like Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman were all Social Darwinists long before they renamed laissez-faire liberalism (that had been thoroughly discredited by the Great Depression) with the catchy title of "Neoliberalism".
 
The celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following principle:

"There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective: Those possessed of money shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable."

"In human society, the amount of inequity is directly proportional to the amount of iniquity." -- A. G. Gelbert

Sober Thinking requires that we all recognize the fact that a society that is founded on altruism, not the "invisible hand" of greed, is not optional if we wish to avoid exctinction. Capitalism's "invisible hand" modus operandi is rooted in the ideology of Social Darwinism.

“Capitalism is the astounding belief, that the most wickedest of men, will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” — John Maynard Keynes

 
The main purpose of the Sober Thinking Forum is to convince you, regardless of your religious beliefs or lack of them, to soberly think about these two quotes, embrace altruism, reject greed, and convince as many people as you can that altruism is not optional for human society:

"Look at our world, our country, our interactions with each other……… this is not the mark of a healthy society, and if these are the self-appointed leaders of this flaming meteor…..it’s time to move on to new ideas and new people. Let’s relegate these fools to history. They perpetuate a narrative that it is right to behave in a strictly selfish, exploitative manner towards all. We simply can’t survive it any longer. Things will change because they have to." -- Kathleen Wallace

"Technical knowledge of Carrying Capacity will not save us; Only a Massive Increase in Caring Capacity will." -- A. G. Gelbert

Oct 15, 2018 326,118 views

Library of Congress 257K subscribers

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress convened a symposium that brought together respected scholars to explore the intricate encounters of Africans, Europeans and native people during this significant period in America's history. In 1619, a Dutch ship with about 20 Africans on board entered a port at the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia. This event is known as the arrival of the first recorded Africans to English North America. Their historic arrival, however, marked the beginning of a trend in  colonial 🐀 America, in which the people of Africa were taken from their motherland and consigned to lifelong slavery.

From 1619 to 1650, during the life span of the first arriving Africans, racial discrimination emerged and chattel slavery would be 😈 codified into law. The symposium will ask questions related to the historical importance of these events in 1619. For example, who were the Africans who arrived in Virginia in 1619, where did they come from, what world did they bring with them? What emerged from Africans' engagement with indigenous Native American populations and their spiritual and cultural life ways, and what is the enduring legacy of this encounter today?

The event also featured a display of treasures and historical items from the Library of Congress' collections related to the early Americas. The symposium was held in collaboration with the Middle Passage Project of the College of William & Mary, the Virginia Commonwealth's 2019 Commemoration and Norfolk State University.

Speaker Biography: Joanne M. Braxton is 2015 David M. Larson Fellow in spirituality and health at the John W. Kluge Center and the director of the Middle Passage Project at the College of William & Mary.

Speaker Biography: Robert Trent Vinson is Frances L. and Edwin L. Cummings professor at the College of William & Mary.

Speaker Biography: Cassandra Newby-Alexander is dean of the College of Liberal Arts and director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies at Norfolk State University and co-chair of Virginia's 2019 Commemoration's First Africans to English North America committee.

Speaker Biography: Lynette Lewis Allston is chief and tribal council chair of the Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia, one of 11 officially recognized by the Commonwealth.

For transcript and more information, go here.

Jul 3 2022 By Mark Bushnell

In 1837, Thomas Davenport of Brandon received the world’s first patent for an ⚡ electric motor. It was, in fact, the first patent for any sort of ⚡ electrical device. His wife, Emily Goss Davenport, suggested the use of mercury as a conductor, and tore up her wedding dress to use as insulation. Wikimedia Commons

Thomas Davenport helped create the modern world, but has largely been forgotten by it. 😟

He invented a device that makes possible so many of the trappings of life today: refrigerators and freezers, washing machines and dryers, dishwashers and microwave ovens, air conditioners, hair dryers, electric fans, electric clocks, lathes, forklifts, elevators, garage door openers, subway cars, satellites, electric vehicles — the list goes on. Even the computer, tablet or phone you are reading this on.

But any dreams Davenport harbored of attaining wealth and renown were thwarted by an absurd amount of poor timing, bad luck and disastrous decisions.

His biggest misfortune was that his ⚡ invention was half a century ahead of its time.

Davenport’s biography contains two seemingly incompatible facts: He was a poorly educated blacksmith from the hinterlands of Vermont, and he invented the first electric motor ever patented. That he did so nearly 200 years ago shakes our image of what life was like during the early decades of the 1800s.

“He had a vision of an ⚡ electrified future,” says Dave Hammond, a scientific electronics technician in the University of Vermont’s physics department. Hammond has been immersing himself in the life and work of lately, even building models of his motors.

Dave Hammond, of the University of Vermont’s physics department, reproduced three working models of Davenport’s electric motor. Photo courtesy of Dave Hammond

PhysicsatUVM 617 subscribers

Some of Davenport’s motors still exist — notably at the Smithsonian Institution. Hammond constructed three copies of the motor — one for UVM, one for the Brandon Museum (in the Vermont town where Davenport invented his device), and one for Beta Technologies of Burlington, an aerospace manufacturer developing vertical takeoff and landing aircraft powered by cutting-edge electric motors.

The working model will be on display in Brandon at the inaugural Davenport Electric Fest from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 9, which is the 220th anniversary of the inventor’s birth. The event will also feature hands-on exhibits of various electric vehicles, including electric cards, e-bikes and snowmobiles.

Like Franklin and Fulton

Though he is little remembered today , Davenport drew high praise during his lifetime. One newspaper claimed his name would be remembered alongside such great inventors as Benjamin Franklin and Robert Fulton.

High praise, and much more than his parents might have expected for him when Thomas was born in 1802, the eighth of 12 children in a poor farming family in Williamstown, Vermont. He was apprenticed to a local blacksmith for seven years, starting at age 14. In exchange for Thomas’ labor, the blacksmith would teach him the trade and allow him to attend school for six weeks each winter.

Despite his meager learning, Thomas was curious about the world, even bookish. The boy was said to read sometimes while working the forge’s bellows. After completing his apprenticeship, he was able to establish a blacksmith shop in Brandon, which had an active iron smelting industry.

For nearly a decade, Davenport focused on his trade, but in 1832 gave up his business. He was fascinated by electricity and wanted to study it. He was hardly alone in this fixation; some of the brightest minds in natural philosophy, what we would call science, were trying to understand and harness electricity’s power.

“Electricity was a really mysterious thing to people at these times,” explains Hammond. “They called ⚡ electricity a fluid, since that was what was familiar to them.”

People were, however, familiar with static electricity. To earn money, Davenport visited local schools to teach about ⚡ electricity. Accompanying him was fellow Brandon resident Johnny Johnson, who brought along a tame moose pulling a cage full of animals. This was part science exhibit, part carnival show.

“Davenport would put a silver dollar in the bottom of a bucket of water and tell the children they could have it if they could grab it,” Hammond says. Davenport was in no danger of losing the valuable coin, because the bucket was hooked to a static electricity generator. Anyone trying to snag the dollar got a ⚡ shock instead.

The following year, 1833, Davenport had an epiphany that changed his life. He learned that an iron works in Crown Point, New York, was using ⚡ electromagnets built by Joseph Henry of Albany (future first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution) to pull bits of iron from the rocks extracted there. The magnets were supposedly so strong they could suspend an anvil.

Davenport traveled more than 25 miles by 🐎 horse to the site to see the ⚡ magnets and perhaps purchase one, but discovered that the owner was away. Undaunted, Davenport eventually managed to purchase one of ⚡ Henry’s electromagnets, though at great expense.

Back in Brandon, Davenport took apart the magnet while his wife, Emily, took detailed notes on how it was constructed. Davenport noticed that the magnet was insulated with silk, and assumed he needed to use silk too, though other materials would also have worked. Silk was hard to come by in rural Vermont, so Emily sacrificed her wedding dress, cutting it into strips that furnished Thomas with all the insulation he needed for years.

Davenport created a second ⚡ magnet and used it to test a theory. He believed ⚡ electricity could cause a machine to move. After attaching one magnet to a wheel and a second magnet to the stationary frame that held the wheel, he wired each magnet to a battery. The wheel turned. Though it rotated only half a revolution, the wheel’s movement was revolutionary.

Of course, a half-turn doesn’t get you very far, but Davenport knew he was on to something. He found that, if he reversed the wires to the magnets, the wheel would complete the revolution. His original motor revolved only about one to three times per minute.

He continued to tinker, and with the assistance of his neighbor, a skilled mechanic with the odd name of Orange Smalley, Davenport added magnets to the system and developed a way to reverse their polarity automatically. By the summer of 1834, they had created a motor that could turn 30 times a minute.

Davenport understood the ⚡ power he was tapping into.

“Like a flash of ⚡ lightning,” he later wrote, “the thought occurred to me that here was an available ⚡ power within the reach of man.”

The early 1800s were the age of steam. People used the forces unleashed by boiling water to power industry and transportation, in the form of steamboats and trains. But Davenport saw a major drawback with steam. Under too much pressure, steam would cause boilers to explode, with dramatic and often fatal effect. Davenport sought a safer source of power.

People derided Davenport for his claims. Some said he was boasting of having invented a perpetual motion machine . Others said his machines’ output should be measured not in horsepower but in mosquito power . But Davenport confronted more severe obstacles than mere mockery.

“Everybody, regardless of when they made a motor and how they made a motor, faced the same problem: Where do you get the ⚡ power for this thing?” Hammond explains.
The financing problem

Davenport’s electric motor relied on battery power, which was expensive, though he was confident the price would drop over time. However, Hammond says, “Until the dynamo was invented and perfected in the 1860s, there was no way to generate electricity reliably.”

Davenport needed allies to advance his cause. If his device was going to change the world, he needed money. Elite scientists of the day disdained conducting research for money. They believed it should be done solely to advance knowledge. Davenport didn’t have the luxury to share that opinion.

A sketch accompanying Thomas Davenport’s 1837 patent for an electric motor.
He found a strong advocate in the scientific community when he demonstrated his device to Edward Turner, a Middlebury professor of natural philosophy, in fact the only one teaching science at the school at the time. Turner grasped the revolutionary nature of Davenport’s motor and urged him to secure a U.S. patent, even drafting wording for a patent application.

In 1835, Davenport made the arduous journey to Washington, D.C., to apply in person, stopping en route to visit eminent men of science and demonstrate his motor. When he arrived, he discovered that the cost of a patent application, which included hiring a draftsman to sketch his machine as well as other expenses, was more than he had left in his pocket. He didn’t even have enough money to return home.

He could, however, make it as far as Troy, New York. There he called on Stephen van Rensselaer, founder of an esteemed polytechnical school. And was immediately set upon by the man’s dogs. 😨 While a kitchen maid mended his clothes, Davenport showed Rensselaer his motor. Rensselaer bought the device for his institute, so Davenport had enough money to get home.

He returned to Washington the next year to submit his patent application, complete with a working model. That December, a 🔥 fire at the U.S. Patent Office destroyed both his ⚡ model and paperwork. He returned in January 1837 to apply yet again.

Middlebury professor Edward Turner was enthusiastic about Thomas Davenport’s electric motor and suggested he patent it. Turner even drafted a description of the machine Davenport could use in his patent application. The motor for which Davenport eventually won a patent was a modified version of the one he showed Turner. Above is a copy of Turner’s draft, which appeared in an 1891 edition of the journal The Electrical Engineer.

The third time did the trick. In February he received his patent. “It was the first electrical patent ever granted,” Hammond says, “and probably the broadest patent ever issued.” He notes that the patent granted Davenport the exclusive right to “the idea of ⚡electromagnetically moving anything.”
 

The Patent Act of 1836 gave Davenport that sole right for 21 years. He had plenty of time to make a fortune. If things hadn’t gone terribly wrong.

Money would pour in

By this point, Davenport had another partner, Ransom Cook, who ran a successful cabinetmaking business in Saratoga, New York, and shared an interest in the new science of electricity. Cook’s design expertise and skilled workmen helped improve the motor.

The two men met when Davenport was touring with his motor, charging admission for the privilege of watching it spin. Many audience members viewed the device as a novelty, but Cook saw the practicality of it.

Now that Davenport held a patent, he could get strangers, not just friends and neighbors, to invest in his⚡ motor. The men set up a business in Manhattan to search for investors. Edwin Williams, the head of an organization that promoted invention, approached them about launching a joint-stock company, the precursor of the modern corporation. Williams’ lawyer would draw up the papers.

The arrangement would let Davenport and Cook focus on improving the motor, while money poured in to support the venture. The prospectus for their stock offering quoted enthusiastic praise from New York City newspapers. “(A)n ⚡ electromagnetic engine, constructed on this principle, will cost only one-tenth the expense of steam power, and only occupy one half of the space,” the New York Herald declared. “There can be no doubt, in our mind, but the days of steam power, and animal power, and water power, are gone for ever.”

The New York Evening Post predicted that “The application of this new principle of motion … is one of the most wonderful inventions of the age , and will hand down the name of its discoverer to future times along with those of Franklin and Fulton.”

The Baltimore Daily Gazette estimated that the patent rights in America alone would be worth the astronomical sum of $600,000. Davenport had also secured a patent in Britain, which was far ahead of the United States in terms of industrialization.

The Daily Gazette’s estimate was wide of the mark. If there was a time to start a new company, 1837 wasn’t it. A financial panic gripped the country and few investors found an electric motor company irresistible. Whatever money came in, little reached Davenport and Cook. The men took Williams to court, but failed to gain satisfaction.

If no one else believed in his invention, Davenport didn’t lose faith. He demonstrated that it could be used to power a drill to bore holes in iron and steel, and to power a printing press. Fittingly, the press printed America’s first ⚡ electrical journal, “The ⚡ Electro-Magnet and Mechanics’ Intelligencer.”

In early 1842, Davenport seemed to catch a break. An investor gave him $3,000 in notes, drawn on an Ohio bank, to support his work. Davenport cashed a $10 note, with plans to draw the rest later, but typical of Davenport’s luck, the bank folded before he could cash any more. 🤦‍♂️ 

By the fall of 1842, Davenport had had enough. He moved with his family back to Brandon, where he died nine years later , never having realized his dream of seeing electric motors supersede steam power.

The electric motor was, of course, an invention whose time would come. Davenport just had the great misfortunate of understanding its potential long before its time.
https://vtdigger.org/2022/07/03/then-again-fame-eluded-brandon-man-who-invented-the-electric-motor/

AGelbert LAMENT: If only Davenport had realized in 1840 that he didn't have to rely on expensive battery power for his motor, but could get all the juice he needed to market the profitable use of his motor as a drill (which he had demonstrated) by using mechanical means, like a water wheel, to turn his motor into a dynamo to power many motors, history would be quite different.

March 2, 2023

By Nancy Altman, Social Security Works


Social Security is the most popular and effective program in America. That’s why Wall Street has spent 40 years on an insidious campaign to undermine the people’s faith in the system.

Think we’re exaggerating? The right wing called for a “Leninist Strategy on Social Security” back in 1983. And reading it today, much of that strategy looks just like reality.

Social Security Works is pushing back against the Wall Street lies. But they have a head start. Chip in $7 to fight back!

In 1983, Social Security was in a real crisis, but the system’s popularity protected it from destruction, much to Wall Street’s disappointment. Wall Street sees our Social Security system as a cash cow that they can’t access. They would give anything to get their hands on Social Security’s $2.9 trillion trust fund, which is instead invested in US Treasury bonds.

So Wall Street-funded conservative think tanks got to work, outlining a long-term strategy to chip away at the public’s confidence in Social Security. And it was extraordinarily successful.

The right-wing Cato Institute published a plan in 1983 called a Leninist Strategy, designed to 😈 “neutralize” elderly voters while continuing to 🐍 undermine confidence for Social Security among the young. Their model was the Leninist movement's "success in isolating and weakening its opponents." (Yes, they really were taking cues from V.I. Lenin, even in the depths of the Cold War. )

This strategy of undermining Social Security is exactly what Rick Scott and Mike Pence are doing to this day! Chip in $7 to fight back against opponents of Social Security. Together, we will expand and defend Social Security!

The strategy had two main prongs: Make younger Americans lose faith that Social Security will keep its promise to them, and create an alternative in the form of private accounts that could be gambled on the stock market, similar to 401ks.

The strategy took a decade to be mainstreamed by the Republicans.

In 1988, a presidential candidate sharing their views about Social Security appeared on the scene. Former Delaware governor Pierre S. “Pete” du Pont IV, an heir to those who had thrown money at any FDR-hater they could find, sought the Republican nomination for president and ran on a platform of privatizing Social Security.

But George H. W. Bush won the Republican nomination and the election that year. As president, he showed his understanding of the program, when he said, “In my budget plan, I say we’ve got to control the growth of . . . mandatory programs, but set Social Security aside. It’s not a welfare program. It’s sacrosanct.”

In 1994, the House of Representatives returned to Republican control for the first time in over 40 years, the first time since Eisenhower was president. The Republicans had run in support of the “Contract with America,” drafted and promoted by Congressman Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Unfortunately for those opposing Social Security, the Contract with America expressed implicit support for the program by proposing only minor modifications.

However, in 1994, as the law had required since 1956, the Secretary of Health and Human Services appointed 14 members to serve on Social Security’s quadrennial advisory council. The trustees had begun to project a long-term deficit in Social Security’s financing occurring somewhere more than 35 years in the future. Included in the report was an appendix, entitled “Developments Since 1983,” which addressed the causes of the projected shortfall. The appendix began by debunking the myth that the inexorable tide of aging baby boomers had anything to do with the projected deficit.

The report clarified: “the fundamental ratio of beneficiaries to workers was fully taken into account in the 1983 financing provisions and, as a matter of fact, was known and taken into account well before that.”

The report then explained that the shortfall resulted from a variety of factors. By the time the advisory council reported, almost 31 million workers participated in 401(k) plans, which contained assets of over $1 trillion. As the stock market went up and up in the 1990s, these arrangements became more and more popular.

This was the opportunity the Leninist Strategy envisioned. More and more Americans were becoming used to private accounts for retirement income.

The Cato Institute, who had first called for this 😈 Strategy, formed the Project on Social Security Privatization on August 14, 1995. A co-chairman of the project was José Pinero, the Pinochet minister of labor who had designed the Chilean system of private accounts. Just as supporters of private accounts had been doing since almost the moment Chile had privatized its Social Security program, Cato touted the Chilean system as a model for the United States, despite its decidedly mixed results.

The new 🐘 right-wing project fueled privatization talk with publications and conferences. In less than a decade, the project could proudly boast that it had “published more than forty books, articles, and reports” criticizing Social Security and advocating private accounts.

Conservative think tanks have spent decades working to undermine Social Security. Stand with Social Security Works today to protect and expand Social Security and invest in our future!

During these years, Social Security produced large surpluses, as it had been projected to do when the 1977 and 1983 amendments had been enacted—but the federal deficit produced record deficits.

On March 7, 1999, the wealthy governor of Texas had announced that he was forming a committee to explore a run for the presidency. Despite his limited political experience and his weaknesses as a speaker, he had one huge asset. He happened to be the son of a former president, and the two men shared the same first and last names, George Bush.

Well before Bush formed his exploratory committee, he had been thinking about the presidency and had been thinking about Social Security, as well. He had a long history of hostility to the program. As a student at the Harvard Business School in the early 1970s, he had railed against Social Security and other New Deal programs. In his losing bid for a congressional seat in 1978, he had ventured that “people [should] be given the chance to invest [Social Security] the way they feel.”

The patience of the anti-Social Security forces seemed to have paid off. They finally had a president who seemed to see the world their way.

Just as in the Bush years, Wall Street continues to try and get their hands on our hard-earned Social Security benefits. Donate to Social Security Works today to fight back against attempts to privatize this critical program.

Despite Social Security’s absence from the campaign, President Bush established a presidential commission on May 2, 2001, to study and make recommendations about Social Security.

Naturally, the members consisted only of people who were dedicated to destroying Social Security’s universal promise, and it resulted in Bush’s privatization scheme.

Unlike most presidential commissions, which are given broad guidelines within which to work, this commission was to be tightly constrained. Among the stipulations dictated by Bush was that the commission’s recommendations “must include individually controlled voluntary personal accounts.” It was not a commission to consider what should be done; rather, it was a commission to advise the president how to do what he had already made up his mind to do.

At the same time, Bush used the administration of government to sow distrust in Social Security. Though Trustees Reports between 2001 and 2004 grew slightly more optimistic, with the projected year of exhaustion of the trust funds slightly further into the future, Social Security Administration publications became more alarmist. No longer confirming that Social Security faced “no immediate crisis,” the publications now warned that the program was “unsustainable,” and “underfinanced.”

Most disturbing was the change in the annual statement sent to all of the 125 million workers age 25 and over who pay into the trust funds. This statement, completely unsolicited, simply arrives in each worker’s mailbox. The 2001 statement proclaimed, “Will Social Security be there when you retire? Of course it will.”

This reassurance was gone by 2002, and in 2005, the unsettling remark “Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time” was now in the mailing, just in case workers were feeling too secure.

The same tactics are being used today: Republicans in Congress are systematically underfunding the Social Security Administration, forcing office closings and longer wait times to receive the world class service Americans are promised.

Social Security Works is dedicated to fighting back against these 💵🎩🐘🐍🦍🐉 schemes that  fly 😈 under the radar. Donate $7 to support our work!

George W. Bush set the agenda for 🐘 today’s Republicans: Pass a massive tax cut, and then try to cut Social Security in the name of fiscal discipline.

This isn’t a new fight―it is the same thing we have been fighting for nearly a century. With our voices together, we beat Bush’s privatization scheme, we beat President Obama’s fiscal commissions, we beat Paul Ryan’s supercommittees, and we beat Donald Trump’s defunding attempt

Now, Republicans are holding the global economy hostage in exchange for unspecified budget cuts. While many of them claim not to have Social Security and Medicare in their sights at the moment, they are also quick to feed the same false narratives that the Leninist Strategy demands.

The way we win is to go on offense: We need to EXPAND Social Security, never 🔨 cut it.

We’re rallying members of Congress behind a bill to expand our Social Security system, which will protect and expand benefits for millions of Americans and keep Social Security strong through the 21st century and beyond!

We need to stand together to fight back against efforts to undermine confidence in Social Security. Donate to Social Security Works to ensure Social Security thrives for future generations!

Thanks,

Nancy Altman
Social Security Works

P.S. Can’t donate right now, but still want to help? Cast a vote for Social Security Works in CREDO’s donation pool for this month!

Social Security Works leads the fight every day to expand and protect our Social Security system. Become a member today.

Social Security Works for Everyone!
From SSW's co-founders, Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, this book builds on the success of 2013's Social Security Works: The Book, updating and expanding its argument that Social Security is the best way to protect and expand the insurance Americans love and count on. Order your copy today!

Contact info@socialsecurityworks.org

🕯️ Letters from an 🦅 American 🗽

August 19, 2023 By Heather Cox Richardson

Various constitutional lawyers have been weighing in lately on whether former president Donald Trump and others who participated in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election are disqualified from holding office under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The third section of that amendment, ratified in 1868, reads:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

On August 14 an article forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Law Review by William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School and Michael S. Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas School of Law became available as a preprint. It argued that the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment is still in effect (countering arguments that it applied only to the Civil War era secessionists), that it is self-executing (meaning the disqualification of certain people is automatic, much as age limits or residency requirements are), and that Trump and others who participated in trying to steal the 2020 presidential election are disqualified from holding office.

This paper was a big deal because while liberal thinkers have been making this argument for a while now, Baude and Paulsen are associated with the legal doctrine of originalism, an approach to the law that insists the Constitution should be understood as those who wrote its different parts understood them. That theory gained traction on the right in the 1980s as a way to push back against what its adherents called “judicial activism,” by which they meant the Supreme Court’s use of the law, especially the Fourteenth Amendment, to expand the rights of minorities and women. One of the key institutions engaged in this pushback was the 💵🎩😈 Federalist Society, and both Baude and Paulson are associated with it.

Now the two have made a 126-page originalist case that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits Trump from running for president . Their interpretation is undoubtedly correct. But that interpretation has even larger implications than they claim.   

Moderate Republicans—not “Radical Republicans,” by the way, which was a slur pinned on the Civil War era party by 👿 southern-sympathizing Democrats—wrote the text of the Fourteenth Amendment at a specific time for a specific reason that speaks directly to our own era.

When 👿 John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, Congress was not in session. It had adjourned on the morning of Lincoln’s second inauguration in early March, after beavering away all night to finish up the session’s business, and congressmen had begun their long journeys home where they would stay until the new session began in December.

Lincoln’s death handed control of the country for more than seven months to his vice president, Andrew Johnson, a former Democrat who wanted to restore the nation to what it had been before the war, minus the institution of slavery that he believed concentrated wealth and power among a small elite. 😈 Johnson refused to call Congress back into session while he worked alone to restore the prewar system, dominated by Democrats, as quickly as he could.

In May, Johnson announced that all former Confederates except for high-ranking political or military officers or anyone worth more than $20,000 (about $400,000 today) would be given amnesty as soon as they took an oath of loyalty to the United States. He pardoned all but about 1,500 of that elite excluded group by December 1865.

Johnson required that southern states change their state constitutions by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting enslavement except as punishment for a crime, nullifying the ordinances of secession, and repudiating the Confederate war debts. Delegates did so, grudgingly and with some wiggling, and then went on to pass the Black Codes, laws designed to keep Black Americans subservient to their white neighbors.

Under those new state constitutions and racist legal codes, southern states elected new senators and representatives to Congress. Voters put back into national office the very same men who had driven the rebellion, including its vice president, Alexander Stephens, whom the Georgia legislature reelected to the U.S. Senate. When Congress reconvened in December 1865, Johnson cheerily told them he had reconstructed the country without their help.

It looked as if the country was right back to where it had been in 1860, with legal slavery ended but a racial system that looked much like it already reestablished in the South. And since the 1870 census would count Black Americans as whole people for the first time, southern congressmen would have more power than before.

But when the southern state delegations elected under Johnson’s plan arrived in Washington, D.C., to be seated, Republicans turned them away. They rejected the idea that after four years, 600,000 casualties, and more than $5 billion, the country should be ruled by men like Stephens, who insisted that American democracy meant that power resided not in the federal government but in the states, where a small, wealthy minority could insulate itself from the majority rule that controlled Congress.

In state government a minority could control who could vote and the information to which those voters had access, removing concerns that voters would challenge their wealth or power. White southerners embraced the idea of “popular sovereignty” and “states’ rights,” arguing that any attempt of Congress to enforce majority rule was an attack on democracy.

But President LIncoln and the Republicans reestablished the idea of majority rule, using the federal government to enforce the principle of human equality outlined by the Declaration of Independence.

And that’s where the Fourteenth Amendment came in. When Johnson tried to restore the former Confederates to power after the Civil War, Americans wrote into the Constitution that anyone born or naturalized in the U.S. was a citizen, and then they established that states must treat all citizens equally before the law, thus taking away the legal basis for the Black Codes and giving the federal government power to enforce equality in the states. They also made sure that anyone who rebels against the federal government can’t make or enforce the nation’s laws.

Republicans in the 1860s would certainly have believed the Fourteenth Amendment covered Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of a presidential election. More, though, that amendment sought to establish, once and for all, the supremacy of the federal government over those who wanted to solidify their power in the states, where they could impose the will of a minority. That concept speaks directly to today’s Republicans.

In The Atlantic today, two prominent legal scholars from opposite sides of the political spectrum, former federal judge J. Michael Luttig and emeritus professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School Laurence H. Tribe, applauded the Baude-Paulsen article and suggested that the American people should support the “faithful application and enforcement of their Constitution.” 🦅 🗽

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-19-2023/comments
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Notes:

https://newrepublic.com/article/174977/baude-paulsen-trump-14th-amendment

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/19/politics/donald-trump-fourteenth-amendment-2024-race/index.html

https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1865?amount=20000

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4532751

Geopolitical Economy Report 169K subscribers 5.3K 58,694 views  Dec 26, 2023

Is Israel's war on Gaza expanding into a regional conflict? Why is Yemen attacking ships in the Red Sea? What are the roles of Iran and Saudi Arabia? Journalist Ben Norton discusses the geopolitics of the crisis.

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By 🕯️ Glenn Greenwald / System Update

The latest installment of Glenn Greenwald’s System Update show dives into the career of former Congressman Paul Findley, who authored of the recently discussed War Powers Act that governs when a president can deploy military forces without Congress in an emergency, and the bombing of Yemen. Greenwald also goes into how that recent of Findley’s time in Congress can be revealing of our current political dynamic.