Race Baiting is well contextualized in the Huffington Post in a strategy by National Organization of Marriage

The Right Wing Media wants to speak of the advocacy for justice in the Trayvon Martin case as race baiting. One of the errors of allowing 'loose language' in discussions by the same media is the deliberate misunderstanding of the definition of the words used. Race baiting sounds like a loose and fast way of dividing people based on race. That is not accurate. Race baiting by definition is the making of verbal attacks against members of a racial group.


In the Trayvon Martin case, the plea for justice has cut across racial lines with the discovery of very dangerous laws named, "Stand Your Ground" and "The Castle Doctrine." Trayvon is a black young man who was interrupted in his life by a man with a gun who believed he had the right to kill him after stalking him while police specifically ordered him not to do so.


What has also come to the forefront of the discussion is a social paradigm called, "The Black Male Code." What has come out of that sincere understanding by black men, is an underlying bias within our society against black men of all ages based on hatred and 'genetic violence.' No person is exposed to a violent nature because they are genetically predisposed by skin color. Yet, Black Parents of both gender state their are strategies to prevent false arrest and false identity such as carrying ID at all times in preparation of those very moments. That is a serious infraction of an American social underpinning known as personal safety and security. How can a black person of any age ever be received in the best light possible if there is an underlying bias robbing of that dignity. For an entire populous of the USA to have strategies to protect their youth against authoritarian bias (racial profiling) is a serious paradigm within that society to address. I am grateful this discussion is going forward.


In my opinion, racial profiling happens due to bias instilled by media. There is also the question, and it cannot be ignored considering the profound high number of jailed black people, has racial profiling imposed a quality of life that PRODUCES criminals. 


There is no race baiting in the Trayvon Martin case, there is however an intolerance to let loose guns and loose bias to continue.


Last night the Human Rights Campaign released a slew of previously sealed internal documents from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation's largest, most visible, and most insidious group of marriage discrimination proponents. The documents, marked "confidential," were unsealed yesterday afternoon in Maine as part of that state's ongoing ethics investigation into NOM's campaign finances. NOM, notoriously dogged in its efforts to fight internal disclosures of any kind, had sued in state court to block the investigation, and now we know why: the documents disclosed yesterday reveal the group's vile and repugnant strategy of setting minority groups against each other through the shameful exploitation of race.


Here's how NOM plans to set the Latino and LGBT communities against each other, from page 17 of a "confidential" 2009 strategic report entitled National Strategy for Winning the Marriage Battle:


[B]y searching for these leaders across national boundaries we will assemble a community of next generation Latino leaders that Hispanics and other next generation elites in this country can aspire to be like. (As "ethnic rebels" such spokespeople will also have an appeal across racial lines, especially to young urbans in America). ... [W]e will develop Spanish language radio and TV ads, as well as pamphlets, YouTube videos, and church handouts and popular songs.Our ultimate goal is to make opposition to gay marriage an identity marker, a badge of youth rebellion to conformist association to the bad side of "Anglo" culture.


And from a 2009 report to its board of directors, also marked "confidential":


The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity -- a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.


In that board update, NOM is just as candid about its attempts to divide LGBT and African Americans:


The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks -- two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of his party. Fanning the hostility raised in the wake of Prop 8 is key to raising the costs of pushing gay marriage to its advocates ... find attractive young black Democrats to challenge white gay marriage advocates electorally.


The name of the "strategic project" to which the above passage refers? NOM's "Not a Civil Right Project." Just last week I wrote a column for The Huffington Post in which I said that the movement for LGBT rights and the movement for African-American rights are both part of the same civil rights movement, and that it is crucially important for us to continue asserting so....

I am not impressed.

Burial Insurance is called Life Insurance.


SSI provides $255.00 at the death of a citizen.


Is the best they can come up with to oppose this law? Seriously.


They don't have any, none at all, case law to oppose this, even if it is a shadow of implication? Nothing, huh? Wow.


Commerce of any commodity of any product is not identical to any other commodity simply because it is a commodity. The reference to cars is not a viable argument because when people purchase cars they have exclusive rights to the use of that car. When people purchase health insurance they are absorbing the costs of those uninsured even though the uninsured is not using their health insurance. It is a NOT, ABSOLUTELY NOT, a viable analogy.


I am not impressed.


In purchasing a car, if there are less purchasers the price goes down to attract those fewer buyers. In health insurance if there are fewer purchasers the price goes up because the burden of the pay-out is carried by fewer people. There is no analogy.


This is like a side show and not a legal hearing based in fact. 


Lockner v. New York (click here)

Summary of Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S. Ct. 539, 49 L. Ed. 937 (1905).

Facts (click here)

The Bakeshop Act was a New York state labor law which prohibited bakery employees from working for more than sixty hours per week or ten hours per day. Lochner permitted an employee to work in his bakery for more than sixty hours in one week and was convicted of his second offense and fined. Lochner appealed his conviction on the grounds that the law violated his freedom to contract under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

307 U.S. 533 (59 S.Ct. 993, 83 L.Ed. 1446) (click here)

UNITED STATES v. ROCK ROYAL CO-OP, Inc., et al. NOYES, Com'r of Agriculture and Markets of New York v. SAME. DAIRYMEN'S LEAGUE CO-OP. ASS'N, Inc., v. SAME. METROPOLITAN CO-OP. MILK PRODUCERS BARGAINING AGENCY, Inc., v. SAME.

US v. Rock Royal Co-Op speaks to Commodity Price Fixing (click here)

Scalia and Roberts embark in arguing about the future beyond the law itself. I didn't know they had a crystal ball. I can't believe there are Supreme Court Justices is worried about the degrees this law will be manipulated once everyone is in the market. That is a different lawsuit. What seems to be said is that once everyone is insured they will be exploited in other manners. That isn't this law and there is no mention of the future. The only 'future' noted in the Affordable Care Act are the boards, including members of citizens, that will collect information. There is no dictate to the use of that information.

I  can't believe they are playing with semantics between penalty and tax. The penalty is indeed a penalty. Either a person enrolls with a health insurance policy. It is collected as a tax on the IRS forms because it is a method of revenue collection by the USA. The revenue collected is real for those not subscribing to health insurance. So, it is a taxing principle with a purpose. It is legitimate and if it is called a penalty and written on the tax form as a penalty. It is revenue. Why do the semantics even play into this? It is revenue, undefined revenue year to year based on behaviors of Americans.

CLEMENTE, CARBON

Emergency room visits do not solve the problems of the uninsured; to even consider that as a viable option is hideous. People die under that dynamic. It is crude, cruel and demeaning.

Ginsburg is correct. Social Security is a delayed gratification recognized by law that everyone has to participate in order to provide the benefit. It is a lifetime responsibility for every American. Social Security Insurance is even more 'distant' from any health insurance because the benefit from being a member of a health insurance exchange can be provided now and not at a later age.

Summary of McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 4 Wheat. 316, 4 L. Ed. 579 (1819). (click here)

Facts

Maryland (P) enacted a statute imposing a tax on all banks operating in Maryland not chartered by the state. The statute provided that all such banks were prohibited from issuing bank notes except upon stamped paper issued by the state. The statute set forth the fees to be paid for the paper and established penalties for violations.

The Second Bank of the United States was established pursuant to an 1816 act of Congress. McCulloch (D), the cashier of the Baltimore branch of the Bank of the United States, issued bank notes without complying with the Maryland law. Maryland sued McCulloch for failing to pay the taxes due under the Maryland statute and McCulloch contested the constitutionality of that act. The state court found for Maryland and McCulloch appealed.

Summary of Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, 63 S. Ct. 82, 87 L. Ed. 122 (1942). (click here)

Facts

The Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938 (AAA) set quotas on the amount of wheat put into interstate commerce and established penalties for overproduction. The goal of the Act was to stabilize the market price of wheat by preventing shortages or surpluses. Filburn (P) sold part of his wheat crop and used the rest for his own consumption. The amount of wheat Filburn produced for his own consumption combined with the amount he sold exceeded the amount he was permitted to produce.

Secretary of Agriculture Wickard (D) assessed a penalty against him. Filburn refused to pay, contending that the Act sought to limit local commercial activity and therefore was unconstitutional because it exceeded the scope of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause.

Filburn brought this lawsuit seeking to enjoin enforcement of the Act and a declaratory judgment that the wheat marketing provisions of the AAA were unconstitutional for exceeding the scope of Congress’s commerce power. The court below, a district court panel of three judges, entered judgment for Filburn and the Supreme Court granted cert.

Federalist paper no.45 (click here)

by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and James Madison

Analysis

Having established in previous papers the necessity of giving the national government all the powers described in the Constitution, Madison now seeks to reassure his audience that such a powerful general government will not threaten the remaining authority of the state governments and render them wholly subservient. This paper is further evidence of how suspicious the American people were of the proposed national government....

United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 115 S. Ct. 1624, 131 L. Ed. 2d 626 (1995). (click here)

Facts

The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 (GFSZA) made it unlawful for any individual knowingly to possess a firearm at a place that he knew or had reasonable cause to believe was a school zone. Alfonso Lopez, Jr. (D), a 12th-grade student, carried a concealed and loaded handgun into his high school and was arrested and charged under Texas law with firearm possession on school premises. The next day, the state charges were dismissed after federal agents charged Lopez with violating the Act....

Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) (click here)

---

Historical Background

The McCulloch v. Maryland decision in 1819 fanned the flames of controversy over States' rights and national supremacy. By 1824, Chief Justice John Marshall had reached the zenith of his historic tenure on the Court and was perfectly willing to consider the most difficult areas of law.

As the American frontier moved west and settlers pushed beyond the Appalachians into the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, the question of commercial development became very important. In 1811, the National Government began construction of the great National Road to the west through the Cumberland Gap, and State governments engaged in a frenzy of canal building, capped by New York State's 363-mile wonder, the Erie Canal. Taxation and regulation of commerce through transportation was an important source of State income in the early years of the Republic, and interstate rivalries over rights to license and collect fees from transportation services became heated. Intense economic pressures mounted as some businessmen called for more free trade while other argued for States' rights in the management of internal matters of the State...

PROMOTING Commerce v. Regulating Commerce

That is another case. The Affordable Care Act exists due to commerce that already exists.

I.  GARCLA  AND  DORMANT  COMMERCE  CLAUSE  ANALYSIS (click here)
In  attempting  to  preserve  landfill  space  through  regulations  which  either
discriminate  against or  unduly  burden" consumption  by out-of-state  interests,  a  state  quickly  finds  itself  in  the  midst  of  a  struggle  between  state sovereignty  rights  and  Congress's  commerce  clause  powers.  When  the  Supreme  Court  disengaged  economic  substantive  due  process  rights  from  the fourteenth  amendment  in  1937,16  the  Court simultaneously  cleared  the  way for  the  modern  Court's  expansive  interpretation  df  Congress's  commerce clause  powers.  For  over  half  a  century,  the  Court's  interpretation  of  the commerce  clause  enabled  Congress  to  regulate  activity  in  essentially  any area  regardless  of  the  degree  of  its  actual  impact  (or  lack  thereof)  on interstate  commerce.' Thus,  where  fundamental  notions of state sovereignty
are  allegedly infringed  by Congress's seemingly omnipotent  commerce  clause powers,  significant  disagreement  results...

Justice Sotomayor is correct, there is no class of people identified that would exclusively have the distinction of being uninsured. It is a generalized condition that occurs among all classes. In that is the understanding 'the limiting principle' is not applicable to the ACA.


There are hospitals throwing people out on the street. The emergency room is not the answer for all health problems. If a person with an 'illness' and not an injury enters the ER for treatment there is no continuity of care or any follow up with a primary physician for treatment of an illness. While a bone can be set in an emergency room, a heart condition cannot be forever treated from an ER. It is a ridiculous answer to the health needs of the people of the USA.


? To not purchase health care insurance effects no one.? BUT. Defaulting on health care providers do effect everyone. That is not a legitimate point of view because having health insurance benefits providers that are faced with raising rates to consumers when they are defaulted upon. That is a nonsense argument. 


Carbon does not like the plenary powers of Congress. Congress has to have plenary powers because the problems facing the nation is not limited. Problems can come from every venue with any dynamic. The fact the ACA is a commerce problem cannot be limited as 'exclusively' outside the powers of Congress to address. If that is going to occur, the Plutocracy then is untouchable. It's ridiculous. A definition of sovereignty includes broad plenary powers to address all the venues of a nation. Carbon wants to set health insurance in an independent paradigm outside the reach of Congress. That is an insult to the sovereignty of the USA.

Annan's proposal well received by all Syrian parties to end violence.

Former U.N. Secretary-General and special envoy to Syria Kofi Annan, left, meets with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the Great Hall of People in Beijing March 27, 2012.

...U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes (click title to entry - thank you) said Tuesday there is a basic structure in place to discuss with Russia and China what they can do to support Annan.

"I think we felt like we made some progress with regard to Syria in that, despite the differences that we've had -- and they continue with regard to Syria -- there is the framework for cooperation through the Kofi Annan initiative which, again, at the very least, provides a framework for stopping the violence, initiating greater humanitarian access to the people of Syria and initiating a transition in that country," Rhodes said. "Again, we believe very strongly that that transition has to involve Assad leaving power."

In Istanbul, Syrian opposition groups are meeting in an effort to forge a united front before a major conference April 1.  

Opposition member Bassam Jaara said Tuesday the meeting is an important dialogue between different sides of the opposition as they work to revise their structure....

..."Experts, officials and observers (click here) are unanimous that weapons are being smuggled into Syrian territory from bordering States, including Lebanon," Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said in a letter sent last week to the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

He said there had been multiple "confiscations of weapons, explosives and explosive devices smuggled from Lebanon to Syria by certain Lebanese political forces linked to terrorist groups funded and armed from abroad."

He gave no details about which countries or "Lebanese political forces" were arming and funding Syrian rebels....


Human Right Commission not provided access to Syria to conduct work.

...Yakin Ertuk of Turkey told Reuters (click here) that she felt there was no point in continuing on the panel, whose mandate the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council decided on Friday to extend through the 47-nation body's September session.

"The commission cannot do comprehensive work and investigate (certain) areas because of no access, so I decided not to continue," Ertuk said in a telephone interview.

She made clear her resignation was not a criticism of the work of the panel, which she said had done everything possible under the circumstances to establish the kinds of crimes that the Syrian government has committed over the last year....


It would seem all parties are in agreement with Mr. Annan's initiative.

PARIS—A member of the Syrian National Council (click here) says the opposition welcomes the government's acceptance of a U.N. peace plan.

Bassma Kodmani told The Associated Press by telephone Tuesday that "we welcome all acceptance by the regime of a plan that could allow the repression and bloodbath to stop."

She is a Paris-based member of the opposition Syrian National Council.

She added, "we hope that we can move toward a peace process."...

Syria tops Arab summit agenda (click here)

BY PRASHANT RAO, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE 

MARCH 27, 2012

...The Arab League will have to reconcile a proposal by Gulf countries to arm opponents of Assad with calls from states such as Iraq for a political resolution to the year-long crackdown monitors say has left more than 9,100 dead.

"There is a mounting crisis in Syria, there is daily killing, there is daily bloodshed, there is a stalemate ... in the political solution, what should be done," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters .

Zebari said there "will be a resolution definitely on Syria," but admitted he did not "think there will be a call on Bashar to step aside."

Iraqi authorities have insisted the summit will focus on structural reform of the Arab League to make the organization more active, but Syria remains in the limelight, rocked by protests and deadly clashes, U.S. and European sanctions and a UN rights probe....

The USA has more executions for the death penalty than Yemen.

...Most countries (click title to entry - thank you) do not put criminals to death. Only 20 out of 198 carried out executions last year. That number has dropped by more than a third over the past decade. Many nations have abolished the death penalty and more are abolitionist in practice.

"We are determined that we will see the day when the death penalty is consigned to history," said Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International.

At least 676 people were executed across the globe last year for crimes including sorcery, sodomy and murder, according to a new annual report from the group. Executions rose steeply in the Middle East and North Africa, up almost 50% compared to the previous year....