Gay Marriage and the Constitution

The argument over gay marriage rages on, and attempts to “define” marriage as a union between one man and one woman (i.e., the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA), are still being debated in the public forum because of the recent activities of states sanctioning gay marriage (IA, MA, etc.). 

Let me say clearly:  DOMA is unconstitutional.  Why? Because it discriminates between one citizen and another, conferring unequal rights and privileges to the majority and infringing the rights and privileges of the minority.

One of the social conservative arguments against gay marriage is that we are giving legal recognition to the gay lifestyle.  This is patently untrue.  We are not giving legal recognition to any lifestyle by allowing gays to exercise the constitutional rights they already have, including equal rights and equal protection under the law.  DOMA, however, did recognize and attempt to give special legal recognition to the heterosexual lifestyle.   This is in direct conflict with the Founding Principles of our country even if it is the history, tradition and practices of the American people.

The Founding Principles of our government are clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

“Inalienable” rights are rights that cannot be taken away by man or endowed or conferred by man to any citizen.  Likewise, the right to marry would surely fall under the “Pursuit of Happiness” principle.

http://www.defendmarriage.org/defendmarriage/fma_qa.cfm
Whether Americans like it or not, the Supreme Court in June 2003 placed the issue of marriage in the Constitution. In Lawrence v Texas, the Court ruled that state legislatures cannot treat homosexuality any differently than heterosexuality. The Court stated that “our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, [and] procreation” and “persons in a homosexual relationship may seek autonomy for these purposes, just as heterosexual persons do.” Relying on Lawrence, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts thereafter forced that state to legalize same-sex marriage. The mayor of San Francisco and other municipalities now say that state and federal constitutions demand the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses.

The finding in Lawrence is interesting, because, like abortion,  it treats marriage as a privacy right. And then there’s the “Justice is blind” principle.  The Court should not treat any citizen differently from any other citizen, at least, not according to the Constitution.  The Constitution does not specifically support or reject any lifestyle.  DOMA is a statute, and is virtually useless in determining rights, because it is not a part of the Constitution or an Amendment ratified by the states.

http://www.defendmarriage.org/defendmarriage/fma_qa.cfm
Since the courts have construed state and federal constitutions to include a purported “right” to same-sex marriage, it is incumbent upon Congress to ensure that the definition of marriage throughout the United States reflects the will of the people. This can only be done through the established amendment process….

As Justice Scalia noted, Lawrence “dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned.” Accordingly, marriage is no longer a decision that the people of the several states can determine for themselves.

And this is appropriate, because our Founders were smart enough to know that government by public opinion poll would lead to great instability and the oppression of the minority.  Majority rule with protection of minority rights is the model they chose.  The same evangelicals and social conservatives who have been wringing their hands over “judges legislating from the bench” lo these many years now want judges to legislate from the bench and uphold DOMA, which is clearly unconstitutional.  Ah!  The ironies of life!

http://www.defendmarriage.org/defendmarriage/fma_qa.cfm
… There is not nor has there ever been a civil right to same-sex marriage. You cannot take away a right that does not exist.

Although I disagree with that logic, let’s reverse that — the same can be said of heterosexual marriage: a civil right to marry has never been specifically defined, heterosexual or homosexual.  The reality is that our Constitution and Founding Principles do not provide for unequal treatment of a minority in contrast with the majority.  Either it is a right for everyone, or no one. 

Distinguishing between civil unions and marriages is also a non-starter, because it again treats one group differently from another. Additionally, it must be resolved at the Federal level, because it will create a situation where one state confers the right to marry to homosexuals and other states may not recognize the marriage.  Once again, it’s either all or nothing at all.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/dixon_02.htm
Article Four of the Federal Constitution states:

“Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

Clause 1: The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.”

In other words, no State has the right to ignore civil agreements reached in other States….

What this essentially means is that State Defense of Marriage Acts (DOMAs) are unconstitutional, plain and simple….

… it also is unconstitutional by virtue of the Tenth Amendment, which states:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Because the Constitution does not explicitly give the Federal Government jurisdiction over marriage, the right to regulate marriage is, by default, given solely to the States to decide.  Therefore, Congress had neither right nor power to pass DOMA in the first place….

The solution, some may argue, is to amend the Federal Constitution, which is what George W. Bush endorses.  There is one problem with that:  Article Six reads:

“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

Boiled down, this means that the Constitution is barred from contradicting itself.  Thus, a Federal Marriage Amendment that would deprive a singled-out populace of any rights runs in clear contradiction to Article Four and Amendment Nine of the Constitution.  Amendment Nine states:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

The Constitution says in Amendment Fourteen:

“Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

What this basically means is that the States do not have a right to pick and choose the people to whom it will grant rights and privileges.  If one group of people is allowed to marry, all groups are allowed to marry. …  Plainly, it is discriminatory, and the Fourteenth Article clearly states that selective granting of privileges is not allowed in the United States.

Some may say, “Gays have the right to marry just as everyone else—a right to marry someone of the opposite gender.”  Similar arguments were made in the days of miscegenation in the 1950’s and 1960’s:  “Blacks have the right to marry just as whites do—the right to marry someone of their own race.”  Such a stance is clearly a form of hypocrisy and oppression, and has no place in the America our forebears envisioned, and contradicts the very basis of the repeal of the miscegenation laws.  Albeit slowly, Americans have striven over the years since Brown vs. the Board of Education to uphold that ruling socially; separate but equal is not equal.

One of the arguments for gay marriage is based on the special tax breaks and privileges enjoyed by legal spouses.  Perhaps the best way to “fix” this would be to remove all the government benefits and tax breaks allowed for only married couples.  Then everyone will be equal again.  This would also address the problem that single people are always treated differently in our tax code, etc.

http://www.defendmarriage.org/defendmarriage/fma_qa.cfm
Whatever the Constitution said (or did not say) about marriage for the past 215 years, whatever the history, traditions and practices of the American people confirm (or do not confirm) about the meaning of marriage, marriage is now in the Constitution. The Founders did not do it. But the courts have. Without a constitutional amendment, the judiciary – and not the people – ultimately will determine what marriage means.

If you, as a judge, consider “the history, tradition and practices of the American people” in your deliberations when reaching a decision, you are not a strict constructionist judge by definition. It is interesting that “strict-constructionist-judge-loving” conservatives all of a sudden want judges to legislate from the bench and rule in favor of DOMA, in effect declaring marriage a right only to be enjoyed by heterosexuals.  The Founders did not specifically define marriage, but they did say that all men were created equal and that the majority could not infringe the rights of the minority. So based on the Constitution, DOMA is out. 

The bottom line is that the Constitution does not assert the right to establish a definition of marriage that distinguishes between the majority and the minority to any entity — be it Congress, the several States or the people — thereby infringing the rights of the minority.  The historic and existing definition of marriage is not diminished or disregarded; it is a social construct, not a legal one.  There is no law preventing religions or social groups from using the definition of marriage that suits them within their own practices, so long as they realize it is not a legal construct that can be imposed on other citizens outside their group.

No citizen can be treated differently from another, and, based on that, the DOMA is unconstitutional.  Homosexuals can and should enjoy the same rights and privileges as heterosexuals.  And it is improper for any state to even allow the voters to hold an election to decide to infringe the rights of the minority.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/dixon_02.htm
The religious argument, however, is moot, thanks to the First Amendment, which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…“  It is thus that our forefathers sought to protect all Americans from the religious zealotry of a few, or even many; only 52% of Americans claimed to be Christian of any denomination at the last Census.  Should the other 48% of the American people be made to honor a conception of the Creator they don’t agree with?  Of course not; this is why we have separation of Church and State.

Our Founding Fathers were well-acquainted with religious tyranny and, consequently, went to great lengths to avoid the possibility of creating a theocracy or a democracy wherein the majority could oppress the minority. Keep in mind, they had been the minority before escaping religious tyranny and coming to America. The spirit of individualism was in the room at the Constitutional Convention. The idea that a democracy must empower individuals and balance majority rule with minority protection, that Federal law must supercede State law without encroaching on its purview, and that, above all, the Rule of Law must prevail against the Rule of Man are all important principles that protect us even today.

But the attitude among social conservatives and evangelicals is that they want to impose their beliefs and their lifestyle on the rest of us. And this is neither acceptable nor constitutional, thank God. Those heterosexuals that don’t have strong feelings regarding gay rights are reluctant to enter the fray of public debate. I am not gay either, but I am concerned about having anyone’s rights infringed, because if it can happen to them, it can happen to me on some other issue.

MLK said it best: “If one of us is not free, then none of us are free.”

This issue may not apply to me directly on this particular issue, but the concept does. Equal rights and equal protection under the law must be precious to all of us. The Constitution is the blueprint for our representative democracy. We cannot stand idly by and watch our rights be taken from us and the original intent of the authors of the Constitution betrayed. By definition in the Declaration and the Constitution, only God has the right to confer or take away or infringe rights. As far as man is concerned, it’s not his job to decide which rights his peers have. Our rights are inalienable, and that includes everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, culture, background, gender and/or sexual preference. You don’t have to approve of someone’s lifestyle to recognize that they have the right to make their own choices.

God chose to give us free will. Knowing this, it has always amused me to watch evangelicals arrogantly work so hard to “undo” what God did by trying to limit the choices others can make, but never themselves….

It’s all about the integrity of the process…

When our founding fathers wrote the Constitution of the United States, they were writing this document from the worldview of immigrants who had fled their home country because of tyranny.  Tyranny came to our founding fathers  in many forms, but most often in the form of lack of religious freedom and the enslavement of the “common” man (not nobility) primarily via indenture (debt bondage) and forced labor. 

Contemporary forms of slavery includes: debt bondage, serfdom, forced labour, child labour and child servitude, trafficking of persons and human organs, sexual slavery, children in armed conflict, sale of children, forced marriage and the sale of wives, migrant work, the exploitation of prostitution, and certain practices under apartheid and colonial regimes. As a legally permitted labour system, traditional slavery has been abolished everywhere, but it has not been completely stamped out. There are still reports of slave markets. Even when abolished, slavery leaves traces. It can persist as a state of mind- among victims and their descendants and among the inheritors of those who practised it –long after it has formally ended. (http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/slavery/rapporteur/index.htm)

Additionally, the ascendacy of individualism left its mark on the authors. 

In political philosophy, the individualist theory of government holds that the state should protect the liberty of individuals to act as they wish as long they do not infringe on the liberties of others. This contrasts with collectivist political theories, where, rather than leaving individuals to pursue their own ends, the state ensures that the individual serves the whole society. The term has also been used to describe “individual initiative” and “freedom of the individual.” This theory is described well by “laissez faire,” which means in French “let [the people] do” [for themselves what they know how to do]. This term is commonly associated with a free market system in economics, where individuals and businesses own and control the majority of factors of production. Government interferences are kept to a minimum.

Individualists are chiefly concerned with protecting individual autonomy against obligations imposed by social institutions (such as the state). Many individualists believe in protecting the liberties of the minority from the wishes of the majority. Thus, individualists oppose democratic systems without constitutional protections existing that do not allow individual liberty to be diminished by the interests of the majority. These concerns encompass both civil and economic liberties. For example, they oppose any concentration of commercial and industrial enterprise in the hands of the state, and the municipality. The principles upon which this opposition is based are mainly twofold: that popularly-elected representatives are not likely to have the qualifications, or the sense of responsibility, required for dealing with the multitudinous enterprises, and the large sums of public money involved in civic administration; and that the “health of the state” depends upon the exertions of individuals for their personal benefit (who, “like cells”, are the containers of the life of the body). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism)

This is why the authors of the Constitution made sure of two things that: 

1. The system of government they set up could be dynamic (change as needed)  with a peaceful transfer of power and well-defined line of authority and reporting structure, and
2. The rights of all citizens, particularly the minority, could not be infringed by the will of the majority. 

That’s why we have a representative form of government with a well-articulated Bill of Rights. It prevents what we now call “government by polls,” of the Rule of Man in majority “group” form.  In a pure democracy, a vote to determine the will of the people really only reflects the will of the majority — the minority never wins unless they can build a coalition with other minority groups.  If the rights of ALL individuals in a society cannot be protected, the result is a tyrannical rule by the majority based on current public opinion, which lends itself to instability and uncertainty.

The authors of the Constitution knew the difference between the Rule of Law and the Rule of Man.  They understood that a pure democracy was not practical.  The Rule of Man — whether by one man or a group of like-minded men —  is fickle and unstable — there is no consistency or continuity between rulers.  There is usually not a peaceful transfer of power.   Living under the Rule of Law means our founding fathers set up a system with integrity — one that could maintain continuity of government during the transfer of power and consistency regardless of who sat in the White House Oval Office or which party was in power at any particular moment in time.

The best example of how ruling by opinion polls can undermine equal rights and equal protection under the law — in a society supposedly based on the Rule of Law — is California.  I believe that it would have been unthinkable to our Founding Fathers that any state vote could infringe on a minority’s rights, as has the defeat of California’s Prop. 8, which has been held up by the California Supreme Court.

The loss of the sanctity of the writ of habeas corpus (requiring a warrant for arrest, search and/or seizure of persons or property) is the most alarming, because it also involves the loss of due process, meaning that the government (thanks to the Patriot Act) can deem individuals to be enemy non-combatants, arrest them, detain them without arraignment or trial, torture them, and even refuse to give them access to an attorney until they have signed a confession written by the government. Our current president, who campaigned on restoring individual rights that had eroded during the last administration, is now considering the concept of preventive detention, where our government can arrest and detain individuals who have not actually committed an act of terror, but are considered to be potential terrorists.  One of the cornerstones of our system of justice was the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” [by a jury of peers]. 

How can a constitutional scholar and professor not be troubled by the concept of detaining someone BEFORE they commit a crime or even make an attempt to commit a crime?

Oscar Wilde once said “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.” (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/imitates.html) In the case of this issue, Steven Spielberg’s film, Minority Report, may be closer to our new reality than we think..

When I was growing up, the Soviet Union and Red China were the “boogey-men” who committed these types of human rights atrocities.  America was the country that protested this kind of treatment of individuals.  Now we torture detainees. Now we are the “boogey-man.” I have not doubt that, in years to come, our behavior in reaction to terrorism will be deemed as a shameful time for Americans, much like our treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

Are America’s better days behind us?

Paddy Ashdown, in a speech given at the 2009 Guardian Hay festival entitled “The end of western hegemony” basically declared America to be “yesterday’s news” among the superpowers ( http://u.tv/News/The-end-of-western-hegemony/21f93f82-c918-4c1f-86a3-36382f2aa00b), but is this the truth? Ashdown’s obvious bias may lie in his professed faith, Islam:

Nezavisne novine. 29 October 2002. (http://www.oscebih.org/public/default.asp?d=6&article=show&id=177. Retrieved on 2007-11-23.)
”I am from Ireland, where society is divided too. In my school children were separated on Catholics and Protestants, but I said that I am a Muslim, because my father was a catholic, my mother a protestant. That’s not a reason why I was so bad student. My teachers told me that knowledge is gaining through whole life, and man is learning all the time. That changed my life. That’s why, this start of education campaign in BiH is the most important, since I came to BiH”, said Ashdown.”

This multiculturalism is a mask for Islamic domination promoted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR, founded by a Hamas leader), the American Muslim Council (AMC, funded by the Saudis, whose founder supports Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda; http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Defensewatch_100903_Wahhabi,00.html), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA, which funds Hamas), the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF, which funds Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist groups), the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (which funds both Hamas and Hezbollah), the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS), the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). etc. in many ways, it is far more serious an attack. The goal is to establish Sharia law throughout the nations of the world, which, in effect, establishes a worldwide Caliphate, as Muslims are instructed to do in the Qur’an.

This is frightening on many levels because many extreme left liberals, blinded by their multiculturalist utopia, are suggesting that we “roll over and play dead” rather than commit ourselves to learning from our mistakes AND our successes, then moving forward cognizant of those lessons. We have reached a point in democratic societies where our attempt to be politically correct is infringing our right to freedom of speech. The recent incident with Geert Wilders being refused admission into the U.K. because they feared it would rile the Muslims is very concerning. And our friend Ashdown was very much a part of that effort to keep him out. Other countries in the U.K. are caving to the Muslims’ demands as well. We must find a balance between being respectful of others’ views and speaking our mind freely, without fear of reprisal from any government. But that is a discussion for another day….

On the other hand, we seem to have forgotten over the last eight years that being a world power does not entitle us to be a world bully. Regardless, our place in the world depends on having a strong, stable economy. And we must deal with a two-headed monster: the national debt and our failing industries that produce tangible goods.

So, what should we have learned?

First, we know that deregulation does not work, or, conversely, regulation does work. Whether financial, environmental, social or other, the times when our nation has been most stable is when we had a solid set of enforceable, manageable rules in place, a clear line of authority and agencies empowered with the authority to act. Over the past few decades, “free marketeers” and “free-traders” have been buying their way into the political scene and using their influence to convince politicians of their ideology. It is a siren’s song that we find very seductive, because we Americans are an independent, free-thinking bunch, and anything that has “free” in it sounds like it must be tailor-made for us. But this is not the case.

As for free markets, the laissez-faire (French for “let [the people] do” [for themselves what they know how to do] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez_faire) theory may work beautifully in a laboratory setting where all factors are easily controlled, but in the real world, it has failed miserably. Why? Because man is foible, and you can’t expect the market (run by greedy, unethical men) to police itself. Every time we tried to deregulate, it ciomes back to bite us in the butt. In the ‘80s, it was the Savings & Loan debacle and Michael Milken’s junk bonds; today it is the investment bankers, corrupt credit rating analysts, junk mortgage bundlers, junk derivatives and Bernie Madoff’s fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Hedge funds and derivatives have turned our stock market into a casino where nobody wins. There is not just one piece of deregulation legislation that acts as the dagger to the heart, but rather a thousand paper cuts that finally caused our economy to bleed to death.

As for free trade, we should have learned by now that there is a happy place between free trade and protectionism called fair trade. We are not yet living in a truly global society. America has been far too generous with our markets, with far too few restrictions, or at least enforceable ones. As a result, we find that foreign goods made cheaply, and often without the consumer protections and quality assurance we need, are nevertheless making their way to a store near you. However, this is not reciprocated in kind with many of our trading partners. This must be changed in a reasonable, rational manner to include enforceable consumer, environmental and labor standards. No more lead in children’s toys and no more poison in pet food. No more of our labor force trying to compete with slave labor and child labor in foreign countries.

But the current financial crisis is not just fixing the mortgage industry and the credit crunch or revising trade agreements, it is deeper than that. The U.S. has moved from a self-sufficient nation that produced tangible goods and services to an economy based on consumer spending, paper wealth and banking products that are parasitic and exploitive in nature. In the IT business, we call the current banking model vaporware, because our investment and commercial banks don’t really exist to provide customers with a needed service anymore, but to create a perception of wealth via derivatives, hedge funds and bundling and reselling paper.

In the ‘90s, with the IT industry in overdrive combating the Y2K problem, we envisioned an information economy, but as is the case with all bubbles, that bubble soon burst, because, in the final analysis, IT work is in large part can be a remote service at which other nations like India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia and Japan can excel and provide greater value due to cheap well-educated and well-trained labor. We have also lost our clothing manufacturing to third-world countries with cheap labor, often slave labor or child labor. We now see even our flagship industry – automobile manufacturing – losing steadily to foreign imports and on the verge of not just bankruptcy, but complete collapse.

Why?

It’s time to set some priorities. First, it is a matter of national security for us to free ourselves of foreign oil. Foreign oil is draining our economy of billions of dollars daily. A politician said during the campaign that we borrow money from China to buy oil from Saudi Arabia. This cannot continue! High-priced oil and petroleum products are the single-most factor that drives up cost of tangible goods. When the items necessary for daily life are more expensive, labor cost goes up, which raises the cost of domestic goods even further. It is a vicious spiral. Big Business and their benefactors, primarily Republicans and conservatives, try to sell us the idea that it’s all union labor’s fault, but logic tells us otherwise. Ask any union members if they would take a lower salary (if it was truly a living wage) if accompanied with corresponding cuts in prices of consumer goods, and you might be surprised to find that they would accept that. Why? Because it’s not how much money you make, it’s what your money’s worth (what you can buy with it)! that counts! And that’s why a weak dollar hits the middle and lower classes far worse than the privileged class.

We must cure our need for immediate gratification and short-term thinking and challenge ourselves to value stability and steady growth over immediate “windfall” or unreasonable profits. We need to wake up and realize that all bubbles burst, and feeding frenzies in the Stock Market generally don’t pan out, certainly not for the companies who are victimized by them. What we need is stable, steady growth, not bursts of profitability with long gaps of decline, which is where we have been since the 1980s and the Reagan Revolution with the supply-side economics and trickle-down theory. The “voodoo economics” of the 1980s that GWB warmed over in the last eight years has not worked for the 21st century thus far. Actually, it didn’t really work in the 1980s either.

How to we fix this?

We all heard in the last campaign that it’s about jobs, jobs, jobs…. Well, guess what! It IS about jobs, Jobs, JOBS! We must create jobs. There are two ways to create jobs:

1. We can borrow more money, increase our national debt, exacerbate inflation and put people to work based on government projects, and/or
2. We can find other ways (i.e., tax breaks and incentives, guaranteed loans) to encourage the private sector to create jobs.

The above is a short-term strategy to stop the bleeding of jobs moving overseas. But we also need a long-term strategy. Every time we increase our national debt, we give away a larger and larger portion of our annual budget to the payment of interest on the national debt: money we might as well be flushing down the toilet. And, normally, I would not support increasing the national debt, but this is a critical moment with a window of opportunity that is quickly closing….

The Green Economy and Energy Independence

The buzz word during the last election was the green economy. Unfortunately, this seems to be the one good idea that has been put on the back burner. It is due, in large part, to special interest groups and undue influence on politicians to maintain the status quo — the influence of Big Oil on our politicians. But the lack of progress and lethargic public support is more likely due to the fear of the unknown — we have lived with an oil-based economy for over a century now. Oil, for us, is much like heroin for a junkie; it may give us the temporary “high”/feeling of security, but the reality is that we are killing our economy with foreign oil. It seems unreasonable and unlikely that the U.S. government should start its own energy company, so it is far more likely that providing tax incentives and guaranteed loans for private energy companies who are willing to commit to creating jobs (as well as providing a green energy product and/or service).

Rebuild Our Infrastructure

The equally important issue where the solution will help solve two problems – our crumbling infrastructure and jobs – is government-funded or subsidized innovative projects that repair roads, bridges, tunnels, sewers, waste disposal and recycling, water pipelines, utility lines, etc. Our energy grid is almost maxed out. We have witnessed the tragedy of collapsing bridges.

In addition to wind energy, solar energy, nuclear energy and biofuels obtained from crops, we could address our nation’s waste disposal problems with innovative energy plants using garbage. Right now, we have barges and floating mountains of trash that are killing sea life and polluting are oceans by design simply because we have nowhere to put all this waste. And that doesn’t even cover the waste illegally disposed of in our lakes, rivers and streams.

The answer to our economic crisis need not be elegant, just doable. The problem is we have to light a fire under our politicians and convince them to grow a pair and get this done.

Pay OFF National Debt

If we regain economic stability, we must then seriously pay off our national debt. An old Tennessee Ernie Williams song was “I owe my soul to the company store.” There is much truth in that. As long as China, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries own our debt, they effectively own us. We dare not try to enforce our human rights policies on China unless we want them to call in our loans. Likewise with Saudi Arabia and their human rights issue or their support of Islamic terrorist: should we fall into disfavor with Saudi Arabia, they have the entire Middle Eastern oil cartel at their disposal, and our oil could be cut off overnight if they so chose to exercise that power. Notice that every time we show strength against Muslim nations, particularly Sunni Muslim nations, they cut production. If you doubt that our debt is not an issue of national security, imagine waking up to a world with no electricity in your house and no gasoline to put in your car.

Peace!

Unfortunately, the Beatles song, “All you need is love!” is a utopian, naiive theory that does not work in the time of global jihad . The next component to our economic recovery is to end the war in Iraq and win the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan quickly and efficiently. Conservatives want us to believe that it is “entitlement” programs like welfare, Medicaid and Food Stamps that have bankrupted us. They even include the government-sponsored indivudal retirement investment fund called Social Security as an entitlement. This is a bold-faced lie. The Aghanistan and Iraq wars have almost single-handedly caused our national debt to skyrocket exponentially. We can no longer be policeman for the world. And we must demand that our allies take care of themselves (i.e., Germany, Japan and South Korea, in particular).

Economic Policy and Monetary Policy

The last item of business is regarding currency management. We must have far more transparency in the Federal Reserve System. The idea of creating a hybrid system that would prevent banking panics and balance privatization with government regulation was important. No one would argue that our system needs elastic currency and liquidity, but, Greenspan’s (and the presidents in office during his tenure) reliance on monetary policy to manage the economy (by raising and lowering interest rates) rather than managing the nation’s monetary supply is one of the components of the financial crisis. We have simply not had an effective Treasury Secretary in place to create effective economic policy. Managing the economy by interest rates in place of real economic policy does not work Lance Taylor’s 2004 Reconstructing Macroeconomics maintains that the sources of inflation must be found in the distributional structure of the economy. The Fed was never intended to supplant the Treasury Secretary. And one the Fed’s biggest failures in this current crisis is that it did not “protect the credit rights of consumers” or “contain systemic risk in financial markets” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System). We need a comprehensive economic plan and policy.

Our Founding Principles

The idea that the U.S. should resign itself to obscurity is neither acceptable nor inevitable. We will have just as much relevance and power as we aspire to have, providing we back up our aspiration with perspiration and determination.

It’s not just a question of dominance that drives America, it is a question of whose values will the world respect and follow. Leadership is not solely dependent on a powerful economy or a powerful military; those are secondary to our founding principles of individual equality, freedom and responsibility, a citizen-run government and political process, well-regulated capitalism where everyone is free to participate and grow wealth, and, lastly, the transparency and integrity of our government and political system, which is the Constitution. Our present failure is due not to the weakness of our values, but our failure to observe them. We cannot allow our recent failure in leadership to cause the world to reject our values, rather, we must “clean up our own back yard” and continue to promote our values.

We have been and must continue to be the shining beacon of light in what is now a very dark world.

More about flu vaccines

What are vaccines and toxoids?

When you are exposed to a live virus in nature, your body tries to fight it by building antibodies. If your body is successful, you develop immunity much as if you have been vaccinated. If your body is not successful, you contract the disease (become symptomatic).

Immunity can be acquired naturally or artificially. In either case, the host is exposed to an antigen (foreign protein), the antigen is recognized, and the host builds a complex immune response to neutralize the antigen.

Vaccines artificially expose the host to antigens which then elicit an immune response. There are two types of vaccines: killed vaccines and modified live [attenuated] vaccines (MLV). Killed vaccines are composed of agent antigens but not living agent. Modified live vaccines are composed of non-virulent, living strains of the agent [virus or antivirulent bacteria].

Toxoids are harmless derivatives of microbiologic toxins that simulate an active immune response to toxins released by pathogens and other poisonous sources (i.e., tetanus toxoid). (http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/gerstman/hs161/hint-vaccines.htm)

Modified live (attenuated) vaccines (MLV) are quicker acting and more immediately effective.

Killed vaccines may be killed viruses, killed bacteria called bacterins, or killed toxins called toxoids that were created and killed by either heat or chemicals.

In killed vaccines an adjuvant is added to the solution of killed organisms to help it stimulate the immune system. Dead virus or bacteria are not as easily recognized by the immune system without an adjuvant. The adjuvant also holds the killed organisms at the injection site. This allows time for the immune cells to respond to it. (http://www.productionvalues.com/ProductionValues/vaccine_basics/vaccine_basics.html)

…[A]ntibodies made in response to vaccination with one strain of influenza viruses can provide protection against different, but related strains. A less than ideal match may result in reduced vaccine effectiveness against the variant viruses, but it still can provide enough protection to prevent or lessen illness severity and prevent flu-related complications. In addition, it’s important to remember that the influenza vaccine contains three virus strains so the vaccine can also protect against the other two viruses. For these reasons, even during seasons when there is a less than ideal match, CDC continues to recommend influenza vaccination. This is particularly important for people at high risk for serious flu complications and their close contacts. (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/season.htm)

How are these vaccines made and who decides which strains to put in the yearly flu vaccine? 

Each year, three strains are chosen for selection in that year’s flu vaccination by the WHO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Influenza_Centers”>Global Influenza Surveillance Network. The chosen strains are the H1N1, H3N2, and Type-B strains thought most likely to cause significant human suffering in the coming season (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#cite_note-102#cite_note-102).  

…[A]ntibodies made in response to vaccination with one strain of influenza viruses can provide protection against different, but related strains. A less than ideal match may result in reduced vaccine effectiveness against the variant viruses, but it still can provide enough protection to prevent or lessen illness severity and prevent flu-related complications. In addition, it’s important to remember that the influenza vaccine contains three virus strains so the vaccine can also protect against the other two viruses. For these reasons, even during seasons when there is a less than ideal match, CDC continues to recommend influenza vaccination. This is particularly important for people at high risk for serious flu complications and their close contacts.  http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/season.htm)

The composition of virus vaccines for use in the 2008-2009 Northern and Southern Hemispheres influenza season recommended by the World Health Organization on February 14, 2008 (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/vaccine_north2008_9/en/index1.html) was: 

• an A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1)-like virus;
• an A/Brisbane/10/2007 (H3N2)-like virus (A/Brisbane/10/2007 was used at the time);
• a B/Florida/4/2006-like virus (B/Florida/4/2006 and B/Brisbane/3/2007 (a B/Florida/4/2006-like virus) were used at the time).  (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/recommendations2008_9north/en/index.html) and http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/recommended_compositionFeb08FullReport.pdf)

 

The composition of virus vaccines for use in the 2009-2010 Northern Hemisphere influenza season recommended by the World Health Organization on February 12, 2009 http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/vaccine_north2009_10/en/index1.html)  was:

an A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1)-like virus;

• an A/Brisbane/10/2007 (H3N2)-like virus;
• a B/Brisbane/60/2008-like virus.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#cite_note-101#cite_note-101 and (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#cite_note-102#cite_n)

H1N1 influenza-A is actually a hybrid or re-assortment of human, H5N1 avian virus and swine flu strains.