Friday Potpourri: May 18th - Plessy V Ferguson, Repeal of the Debt Deal & 88 Billion Slaps in the Face

As will be the case from now on, Fridays will serve as a post to cover random subjects from the week. Most weeks the topics will have something to do with democracy, politics, government and/or civic engagement, but I make no guarantees as my interests are all over the place.

Plessy v. Ferguson: Today marks the 116th anniversary of the 1896 landmark ruling in which the Supreme Court said it was constitutional for states to have racially separated public facilities. This rule came to be known as "Separate But Equal". History will say that this ruling was struck down nearly 58 years later on May 17, 1954 in the landmark case ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. Separate but Equal was proven as logical idea in theory and yet impossible to uphold.

From this ruling the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement was forged (although quotes from MLK Jr. suggests it was founded in the earlier work of Ghandi's Movement in India) and subsequent policy leading to Integration and the end of Jim Crow law in the South. And yet, some could argue that the state of minorities in general have not improved, but worsened. Before Integration, the Black community (perhaps more out of necessity) was just that, a community. Blacks pooled their finite resources together to ensure the betterment of their race. Whether through business, the establishment of Black Colleges, professional baseball "The Negro Leagues" or merely pride in caring for their neighborhoods, the Black community knew the success or failure of one affected the progress of the race. Now, Blacks (when accounting for inflation) earn less per capita than the same year of the Civil Rights Act and are more likely to die due to violence/poverty or become incarcerated than they are to attend college or graduate from high school.

Yes, there is an African-American who sits as the President of the United States and by proxy, the leader of the free world. This is a wonderful accomplishment and should not be marginalized in any way, meanwhile a significant number states refuse to recognize homosexual citizens as equal to heterosexual citizens. California, the bastion of liberal america (if you believe popular media), actually beat North Carolina to that punch with Proposition 8 in 2008. It took North Carolina until May of this year to legally cement the inequality of homosexuals in their state.

I guess this whole time we've been overlooking the fine print within the statement "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" If we look real close there must be something written in invisible ink between the comma after the word "equal" and the word "that" which says, "unless they look, believe, or speak differently than a majority of their elected representatives."

Repeal of the Debt Deal: So, this week the House voted to amend the sequestration agreement within the Budget Control Act of 2011. If you don't remember why the BCA of 2011 is important, here's a refresher.

Last year, Congress  stared down the double barrel need to increase its debt ceiling (BTW, we're the only developed nation that actually created a need to vote on its ability to increase what is a superficial debt limit). House Republicans, in an unprecedented move, used this need as an opportunity to demand budget cuts that they deemed necessary. Senate Democrats stubbornly railed against what they characterized as holding the country's ability to pay its debt hostage with unrelated budget cuts.

As a compromise, they created a "Super-committee" of House and Senate members from both parties to create a resolution to this impasse. They failed and kicked the problem back to the House, where it began in the first place. The result of all this was discussions of financial nightmare scenarios, talk of a government shutdown and most importantly, the loss of the country's AAA credit rating by Standard & Poors. The silver-lining in BCA of 2011 was an immediate debt ceiling increase and a renewed bipartisan spirit created from the compromise . Both sides agreed to swallow difficult cuts in the case that there were unable to reach a balanced budget by the end of the 112th Congressional session.

Fast forward back to this week. The house, voted to avoid the cuts (specific to the defense budget) that were supposed to automatically occur if no balanced budget was created and approved by Congress. So, let me get this straight. Not only can the congress play wild west showdown with its financial obligations, it can take forever to do it, and  while doing it fight in such a way that the country loses the sterling credit rating that it has had for decades, but they can also decide (again at the last minute) to scrap the compromise it made to kick the debt can down the road?

I bet if I played Monopoly with any of them and begun winning to the point that they started owning me money, they'd probably yell "look out" and as I turned to see what was going on, I'd find the whole game board upside down with pieces, property and money all over the place as they walked out the door.

88 Billion Slaps in the Face: And here's the kicker! Today the House approved a defense budget of $642 Billion. Never mind that once again, Congress gave defense more money than they requested. The real problem for me is that public opinion continues to disagree on what $88 Billion of this generous budget will be used for, U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

Since the second half of last year, a majority of public opinion about the U.S. military's involvement in Afghanistan says it doesn't understand why we're still over there and wants the operations to stop. I won't get into the justification of staying or leaving the region and what might be the ramifications. What I will say, is that in a time where every domestic penny is being scrutinized and efforts are being made to look at Medicare cuts among others, the fact that we continue to fund military operations that the country doesn't understand or agree with is a slap in the face. Make that 88 million slaps in the faces of the American people that these Congressmen swore an oath to represent.