Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. The majority of five which prevailed on the questions of law before it can not be said to be homogenous, for among them is the Chief Justice John Roberts.
Pundits will of couse (including myself) mark the occasion as a triumph of governance in which the Court sat astride the stallions of the Executive Branch, Congress, and public opinion and brought them in mutual accord, or not.
But the decision preserves the Court's power as an arbiter in ways to resonate down the ages (even help reverse the onus of its politically expedient Bush v. Gore decision of 2000 in which it can arguably be said that the Court elected the President of choice of the majority of Justices on the Court at that time [true or not besmirching the reputation of the Court as a panel of jurists of probity]).
So, the Chief Justice became my Chief Justice today and I will began to see him more subtlely and as a true Chief Justice. That is not to say he will go unscathed in my appraisal of his time on the Court. Then I dare say he perhaps will never know of me or my criticism, good or bad. Such is the fate of the glebewise commentator.
As to the Affordable Care Act, the law of the land, I wish it well and God speed. It is not the universal care (single payer) system which rightly should and ultimately will prevail and is afforded by taxation of the wealth of this land we call our America. Capitalism and its beneficiaries include the rich and poor alike, but it is supremely immoral to conclude that its outcomes are not capricious and self-serving and in many instances vile. Only the income tax fairly imposed on the wealth of the nation can save us from the extremes of socialism or capitalism while incentivizing participatory democracy in profound ways (and not so profound ways such as the expansion of the self serving ways of those who can afford lawyers and lobbyists).
As a Chrisitan and a citizen, anyone who would have my vote must have my confidence that he will regard the premise enshrined in the Constitution in that a government of laws is by consent of the governed. To have my political consent, the "governors" of the land must be judicious which our Chief Justice showed himself to be yesterday (judicious and wise). He has proven himself to be a John Marshall and a federalist of the highest order with a true understanding of the limited government concept, but as well a high regard for legislative made law and executive enforcement of those laws as is required by our Constitution. In other terms, he abides by his own tenet that the Court should in its role advoid being an activist court (a conclusion reached typically by those who disagree with its reversals of past decisions or what is generally known as controlling precedents).
For the medical industry, the Court's decision is now a final peg in its goal in lobbying Congress to have a steady stream of income to procure a high standard of living for care providers (principally doctors) and investors in the industry, including medical device industry. There will be other winners. Time will tell if Congress crafted legislation that will endure. Time will tell if those left out of the solution set for the medical industry includes a sufficient number of losers (which losers would have had coverage under a plan of universal care). I believe the number of losers is a minority by design of Congress (hence by the design of the medical and medical device industry), and only the ACLU will give this minority its day in Court.
A possible loser is the medical insurance industry but no industry is better suited to line the pockets of its executives (the true death tax beneficiaries inherent in the pre-ACA days) for it will seek modification of the ACA with abandon. Their profit taking in the extreme may lose steam for a bit, but just a bit! Trust me the medical insurance industry will own the Republican Party as it must block citizen initiated refinements of the ACA and possibly even supersede or void the ACA by amendment or otherwise. The insurance industry will adjust and recover and even potentially coalesce in the wisdom of the ACA, but only if public pressure is built for universal single payer coverage.
Friday, June 29, 2012
A Time to Die for Little Crow of the Dakota
Year of the Dakota Series.
Today, I begin publication of a series of articles on The Year of the Dakota. Richard J. Hilber
1862, the Year of Months of the Hard Moon
by Richard J. Hilber
In Minnesota in 1862, the farmers among the Dakota people and the Christians among the Dakota people were faced with the crisis in Dakota identity as to the proper means and degree of adapting to European ways. Also, they were challenged by their own dissenters who persisted in addressing the impropriety of adapting at all to European culture. For the dissenters, the split in the bands and people of the tribe had in point of fact led to betrayal of the Dakota way of life. Those who abstained from assimiliation, the traditionalists, had a clear conscience and knowledge of what was required of them, war.
There was a reason a young brave thus should turn away from "civilization" and join a soldier lodge that would fight to the death to recover the Dakota way of life. Deluded perhaps in their quest, but then wasn't America settled by the dissenters, protestants, outlaws, indentured servants, and rebels. I wish to focus on the reason today as a means to generate sympathy and understanding of those who rose in rebellion. I do not provide herein a list of atrocities committed by some among the rebel Dakota (denominated as renegades and criminals), nor the atrocities committed on any Indian who inhabited the State of Minnesota or Dakota Territory (perpertrated by those considered heroic by the Whites of Minnesota and elsewhere in the U.S.).
How did the the bands become so fractured with divided loyaties? The number one reason is that accommodation of the Whites in their lands had led to ouster, deprivation, and starvation (all of this before the period of active genocide of the Dakota of 1862-1864). The enormous conquest of European settlement of the hunting grounds of the Dakota was fast apace as early as the 1840s with missionary attempts to restrict the tribes to civilization and farming. The United States Congress was derelict and immoral in its provisioning of reservation bands of the Dakota people, in essence reneging on the treaty upon which the Dakota were removed from traditional hunting grounds south and west of the Mississippi River in Minnesota Territory.
By 1858, the brand new State of Minnesota essentially was free to treat Indians of any band or tribe as non-citizens, essentially outlaws. Speculators in land, timber, and minerals could expect a hands free non-interference from the federal government and the state governments where the theft of Indian wealth was occurring.
The immediate and "last straw" trigger though for the violence that ensued was deprivation. If the Indians were to be prevented from hunting as widely as accustomed to feed their families, then staples grown on federal land on "reservations" had to suffice along with such meat and related products from hunting on "reservation" lands. The realities of subsistence farming and hunting were coming to bear upon the Dakota and also the Winnibago of the State.
Chief among the Dakota on "reservations" were the Mdewauketon band led by Little Crow. Little Crow adapted especially well to Western trade, dress, culture, and even religion as he was churched Episcopalian although he also insisted on his Dakota culture and spirituality too. He in essence was the bridge between the soldier-bands who resisted acculturation and christianization and the farmer and Christian Dakota.
For the Dakota, members of the same family could find themselves divided by the events leading up to 1862, and the divide in the families and bands would become a gulf as a result of what happened at the Upper and Lower Agencies of the "sioux" reservation lands. In the mix of Dakota were the mixed-blood children of the bands who were treated as family members and for whom separate provisioning had been negotiates in the treaties which preceded the 1860s. A mixed-blood might actually be a soldier-band adherent or a farmer or a Christian.
The ignition of the tinders of deprivation and starvation for the Dakota Uprising turned out to be pride and the hunger of young braves who had failed in the hunt and having been refused by a settler in request for assistance, committed murders upon the settler and his family, and quite simply just took the foodstuffs they needed.
As a result of these murders on a farmstead near Acton, Minnesota, on Sunday, August 17, 1862, there was a division among the entirety of the Dakota. Were the braves guilty of murder to be turned over to the White authorities as criminals or were the Dakota to stand upon their rights and protect their sovereignty and their young braves from criminal prosecution? The last person to hide out on this question of divided loyalties was Little Crow. Why? At his feet was laid the blame for the degradation of the Dakota by the Europeans, and the blame well placed as the warriors knew their leader well. They could shame him into dying with them if die he must. He had afterall signed the treaties, the abhorent treaties of dispossession and betrayal by the government of the United States of America.
The soldier-lodges and their leaders prevailed upon Little Crow to take up the proverbial sword and lay waste the common enemy, the United States of America, the thief and oppressor and its Congress. Thus, after attending Episcopalian Sunday services and returning to his home proximate to the Lower Agency, Little Crow sitting not in his western style house but in his tipi in the yard heard out the leaders who wanted war and had brought word of the killings at Acton to him.
The efforts made by Little Crow in advance of that pow wow in his tipi were sincere efforts at peace and insistently made. He simply had stood his ground that his people were starving to death and that treaty payments which could have averted the crisis for his people had been delayed and siphoned off by creditors who wanted payments from the fur trade days settled up with them first.
Conclusion in Red. It should be remembered that Little Crow did not start the violence and that genocide on his people was already in progress against his people when he did decide to go to war against the U.S. As for all leaders in war, atrocities would result which can be laid at the feet of the leader.
War is not kind. There is no place to hide for George W. Bush, or Barack Obama for that matter, on the innocent killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nobility of the warrior to kill or to be killed by his opponent in hand to hand combat is a nobility that melts down to sundries for Presidents who do not pay the price in blood of their own children in battle. Presidents of course claim the soldier as his son, as his daughter; indeed more sacred is the soldier who needlessly dies for one's policies and directives than your own blood son or daughter who continues to live into the light of day.
No man should ever agree to be President who does not understand the peril in which his soul lies. To wit, Abraham Lincoln, hero and martyre for the salvation of the federal union.
Today, I begin publication of a series of articles on The Year of the Dakota. Richard J. Hilber
1862, the Year of Months of the Hard Moon
by Richard J. Hilber
In Minnesota in 1862, the farmers among the Dakota people and the Christians among the Dakota people were faced with the crisis in Dakota identity as to the proper means and degree of adapting to European ways. Also, they were challenged by their own dissenters who persisted in addressing the impropriety of adapting at all to European culture. For the dissenters, the split in the bands and people of the tribe had in point of fact led to betrayal of the Dakota way of life. Those who abstained from assimiliation, the traditionalists, had a clear conscience and knowledge of what was required of them, war.
There was a reason a young brave thus should turn away from "civilization" and join a soldier lodge that would fight to the death to recover the Dakota way of life. Deluded perhaps in their quest, but then wasn't America settled by the dissenters, protestants, outlaws, indentured servants, and rebels. I wish to focus on the reason today as a means to generate sympathy and understanding of those who rose in rebellion. I do not provide herein a list of atrocities committed by some among the rebel Dakota (denominated as renegades and criminals), nor the atrocities committed on any Indian who inhabited the State of Minnesota or Dakota Territory (perpertrated by those considered heroic by the Whites of Minnesota and elsewhere in the U.S.).
How did the the bands become so fractured with divided loyaties? The number one reason is that accommodation of the Whites in their lands had led to ouster, deprivation, and starvation (all of this before the period of active genocide of the Dakota of 1862-1864). The enormous conquest of European settlement of the hunting grounds of the Dakota was fast apace as early as the 1840s with missionary attempts to restrict the tribes to civilization and farming. The United States Congress was derelict and immoral in its provisioning of reservation bands of the Dakota people, in essence reneging on the treaty upon which the Dakota were removed from traditional hunting grounds south and west of the Mississippi River in Minnesota Territory.
By 1858, the brand new State of Minnesota essentially was free to treat Indians of any band or tribe as non-citizens, essentially outlaws. Speculators in land, timber, and minerals could expect a hands free non-interference from the federal government and the state governments where the theft of Indian wealth was occurring.
The immediate and "last straw" trigger though for the violence that ensued was deprivation. If the Indians were to be prevented from hunting as widely as accustomed to feed their families, then staples grown on federal land on "reservations" had to suffice along with such meat and related products from hunting on "reservation" lands. The realities of subsistence farming and hunting were coming to bear upon the Dakota and also the Winnibago of the State.
Chief among the Dakota on "reservations" were the Mdewauketon band led by Little Crow. Little Crow adapted especially well to Western trade, dress, culture, and even religion as he was churched Episcopalian although he also insisted on his Dakota culture and spirituality too. He in essence was the bridge between the soldier-bands who resisted acculturation and christianization and the farmer and Christian Dakota.
For the Dakota, members of the same family could find themselves divided by the events leading up to 1862, and the divide in the families and bands would become a gulf as a result of what happened at the Upper and Lower Agencies of the "sioux" reservation lands. In the mix of Dakota were the mixed-blood children of the bands who were treated as family members and for whom separate provisioning had been negotiates in the treaties which preceded the 1860s. A mixed-blood might actually be a soldier-band adherent or a farmer or a Christian.
The ignition of the tinders of deprivation and starvation for the Dakota Uprising turned out to be pride and the hunger of young braves who had failed in the hunt and having been refused by a settler in request for assistance, committed murders upon the settler and his family, and quite simply just took the foodstuffs they needed.
As a result of these murders on a farmstead near Acton, Minnesota, on Sunday, August 17, 1862, there was a division among the entirety of the Dakota. Were the braves guilty of murder to be turned over to the White authorities as criminals or were the Dakota to stand upon their rights and protect their sovereignty and their young braves from criminal prosecution? The last person to hide out on this question of divided loyalties was Little Crow. Why? At his feet was laid the blame for the degradation of the Dakota by the Europeans, and the blame well placed as the warriors knew their leader well. They could shame him into dying with them if die he must. He had afterall signed the treaties, the abhorent treaties of dispossession and betrayal by the government of the United States of America.
The soldier-lodges and their leaders prevailed upon Little Crow to take up the proverbial sword and lay waste the common enemy, the United States of America, the thief and oppressor and its Congress. Thus, after attending Episcopalian Sunday services and returning to his home proximate to the Lower Agency, Little Crow sitting not in his western style house but in his tipi in the yard heard out the leaders who wanted war and had brought word of the killings at Acton to him.
The efforts made by Little Crow in advance of that pow wow in his tipi were sincere efforts at peace and insistently made. He simply had stood his ground that his people were starving to death and that treaty payments which could have averted the crisis for his people had been delayed and siphoned off by creditors who wanted payments from the fur trade days settled up with them first.
Conclusion in Red. It should be remembered that Little Crow did not start the violence and that genocide on his people was already in progress against his people when he did decide to go to war against the U.S. As for all leaders in war, atrocities would result which can be laid at the feet of the leader.
War is not kind. There is no place to hide for George W. Bush, or Barack Obama for that matter, on the innocent killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nobility of the warrior to kill or to be killed by his opponent in hand to hand combat is a nobility that melts down to sundries for Presidents who do not pay the price in blood of their own children in battle. Presidents of course claim the soldier as his son, as his daughter; indeed more sacred is the soldier who needlessly dies for one's policies and directives than your own blood son or daughter who continues to live into the light of day.
No man should ever agree to be President who does not understand the peril in which his soul lies. To wit, Abraham Lincoln, hero and martyre for the salvation of the federal union.
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