President Obama continues to fight to deny human rights

Dear Friends,

This morning on the front page of The New York Times (yes, I still read a paper newspaper), I read with great sadness the headline "An Appeals Panel Denies Detainees U.S. Court Access - A Victory for Obama".  Here is the article.  The first paragraph reads:

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that three men who had been detained by the United States military for years without trial in Afghanistan had no recourse to American courts. The decision was a broad victory for the Obama administration in its efforts to hold terrorism suspects overseas for indefinite periods without judicial oversight.

I do not know if the Appeals Court made the correct legal decision, but the Obama administration clearly is making the wrong decision.  How can a country that supposedly believes in human rights take the position that it can hold people indefinitely without any ability to challenge their confinement? 

President Obama is once again continuing a policy of President George W. Bush that he should have put a stop to as soon as he became President.  To take the position that there is a substantive difference between detaining people indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay and detaining people indefinitely at Bagram Air Base is absurd.  Please contact President Obama (here) and let him know you disagree with this terrible policy.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Why Americans distrust their government, part 1

Dear Friends,

I try to read David Brooks' column in The New York Times even though I seldom agree with him.  He is a thoughtful conservative that is fairly consistent in his views.  Mr. Brooks' column a couple days ago (here) was entitled "The Story of an Angry Voter" contains Mr. Brooks' view of why Americans distrust their government.  Here are a couple of paragraphs:

For Ben, right and wrong is contained in the relationship between effort and reward. If people do not work but get rewarded, that’s wrong. If people work and do not get rewarded, that’s wrong. But Ben believed that America is fundamentally a just society. He loved his country because people who work hard can usually overcome whatever unfairness is thrust in their way.
But when Ben looked at Washington, he saw a political system that undermined the relationship between effort and reward. People in Washington spent money they didn’t have. They just borrowed it from the Chinese. People in Washington taxed those with responsible homes to bail out people who’d bought homes they couldn’t afford.
People in Congress were caught up in a spoils system in which money was taken from those who worked and given to those with connections. Money was taken from those who produced and used to bail out the reckless, who were supposedly too big to fail.

In some ways I agree with Mr. Brooks' assessment, but he slants in a conservative way whereas I would be inclined to slant it in a liberal way.  Essentially though it is easy for the American people to look at what the government does and see that it is not fair.  It was not fair to bail out Wall Street that made lots of money while being reckless and then when they lost their bets, the government bails them out.  That is not fair. 

It was necessary to bail out Wall Street to protect the economy from falling into a terrible depression.  The problem is that when Wall Street was bailed out, the government failed to take all the profits.  In a free market the party that brings the money that saves the day owns the business.  For some reason the Republicans who were in charge when the bailout occurred just gave the money to Wall Street.  So the bailout could have been fair, but it was poorly executed. 

So it is reasonable for the American people to distrust their government when it gives money to really rich people to bail them out of reckless bets that they made that they lost.  If you keep the profits, you need to take the losses.  If you take the losses, you should get the profits.  That is obvious to all so when the government acts otherwise, the people will not trust it.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Americans Distrust the Government

Dear Friends,

The recent primary elections made it clear that Americans really do not like the government.  A recent Minnesota Public Radio/Humphrey Institute poll (here) indicates that

A large majority of Minnesotans lack trust in the federal government and more than half would prefer a smaller government with fewer services

But that doesn't mean that Minnesotans like the tea party movement.  

But the poll shows while tea partiers might be the most vocal, more Minnesotans oppose the tea party movement than support it.
While 20 percent said they support the tea party movement, 26 percent oppose it. Fifty percent said the tea party does not reflect the views of most Americans. The poll also shows that independent voters, who often decide elections, are less likely to cast ballots for tea party candidates.

At first I was surprised by this lack of trust in the government, but upon reflection I can now think of lots of reasons why people do not trust the government.  We barely survived eight years where President George W. Bush etal tried to prove that government was ineffective and incompetent.  Republicans cause the government to be ineffective so that they can eliminate government. 

It seems to me that some of the distrust of the current government is a reaction to the change in the power structure that would permit a black man with the name of Barack Hussein Obama to be the President of the United States, but part of problem is the fault of the Obama Administration and the career politicians and their corporate sponsors.

There is no question in my mind that President Obama can change this distrust of government and should be held accountable if he doesn't reverse this trend.  He campaigned on a message of hope and change, but he has permitted himself to become a part of the Washington establishment dominated by money and politicians that are more concerned about maintaining the current power structure and their individual jobs than they are doing what is right for the people of the United States and the world.

Tonight at the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights awards dinner, the main award was given to Dr. Azar Nafisi, a human rights advocate in Iran and now in the United States.  In her remarks, she talked about Huck Finn and his dilemma of either turning Jim in as a runaway slave or going to hell.  At first he was going to turn Jim in but he decided that he would rather go to hell and do the right thing than avoid hell but do the wrong thing.  Dr. Nafisi spoke of Washington's pragmatism of avoiding Darfur, not talking to the Dali Lama, and not speaking out against and aggressively working against other human rights violations to doing the wrong thing to avoid hell.  What President Obama should do is determine what the right thing to do is even if it means going to hell. 

President Obama has allowed himself and his administration to give the American public reason to distrust the government.  If a candidate that engaged the electorate and sold them on a message of hope and change ends up acting just like President George W. Bush and the career politicians, why should anybody trust the government?

I intend over the next few days to provide a number of examples of things that the Obama Administration has done lately that would cause Americans to distrust their government.  Please feel free to add to my list.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
 

Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights

Dear Friends,

Tonight I went to the annual awards dinner/fund raiser for the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights.  They promote and advocate for human rights in the United States and around the world.  What a great organization!!!  We should all be advocates for human rights.   Here is a link to their website.  What they accomplish is nothing short of a miracle.  They need all the support they can get.  Take a look and get active.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Assassinating American Citizens

Dear Friends,

I have been absent for a few days, in part because I have been traveling but also in part because I have been paralyzed by the number of things that I should be writing about.  But today I decided that I must write again.

It has been reported for months that President Obama has authorized the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who is Muslim cleric believed to be in hiding in Yemen and who "sources" say is a proven threat to the United States.  Here is an early report from Reuters on April 6th.


Eventually The New York Times decided to report on this story (here).  How is it possible that President Obama can even consider permitting this assassination order to exist?  Here are a couple of paragraphs from that article:

Administration officials take the view that no legal or constitutional rights can protect Mr. Awlaki, a charismatic preacher who has said it is a religious duty to attack the United States and who the C.I.A. believes is actively plotting violence. The attempted bombing of Times Square on May 1 is the latest of more than a dozen terrorist plots in the West that investigators believe were inspired in part by Mr. Awlaki’s rhetoric.
“American citizenship doesn’t give you carte blanche to wage war against your own country,” said a counterterrorism official who discussed the classified program on condition of anonymity. “If you cast your lot with its enemies, you may well share their fate.”

In my high school education and my college education and my law school education, I was taught that a person is innocent of a crime until that person is proven guilty and that requires due process of law.  The official says that "the C.I.A. believes is actively plotting violence" and "that investigators believe" that terrorists plots were inspired by Mr. Awlaki.  So if some investigators believe that I have cast my lot with the enemy whatever that means and that they believe that I may be inciting violence or plotting violence that they can just order government employees to kill me.  Where are my rights?  Where is due process?

Here are two more paragraphs from The New York Times article that illustrate the absurdity of President Obama's position.

To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review.
“Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.”

Please write to President Obama and let him know that his extra-Constitution assassinations are not the change and hope that we voted for.  Contact him here.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal