Debating The Role Of Government #409
By Hank Silverberg
Commentary
The midterm elections are now less than a month away, and early voting is underway in some states. A lot of the debate this year has focused on what role the government should have in our lives. There's a great deal of name calling with the words Communist, Socialist, and Fascist being thrown around loosely and inaccurately, as I wrote a few weeks ago.
Here is what the preamble to the U.S. Constitution says about the role of government:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. "
That has always meant a permanent military, roads, bridges, law enforcement, commerce, and by 20th century standards, a good healthcare system, promoting jobs and a livable wage and helping the poor or disadvantaged.
Some have labeled those items "Socialist" ideas. When Social Security came along in 1935, during the height of the Great Depression, some on the right labeled it "Socialism". The same thing happened in 1965 when Medicare and Medicaid were instituted.
But both are simply promoting "the general welfare" of Americans. So does the Affordable Care Act passed during the Obama administration, and so are government agencies like the EPA (pollution control), OSHA (workplace conditions), FEMA (disaster aide), FAA (regulating airspace), the CDC (health research), and dozens more in the alphabet soup of our government.
When those government functions are attacked by the current regime at the White House, or those running for the House or the Senate, it's because they either don't understand what our government was designed to do, or they care more about lining their own pockets with tax cuts at the expense of the average citizen.
Is there some waste in government? Probably. And that can be dealt with some diligence and control. But this push by the right-wing to gut federal agencies to enable tax cuts will have a huge impact on the daily lives of the average American, the people the Constitution is specifically designed to protect, while benefiting the wealthy who should pay their fair share of the burden simply because this country helped make them wealthy.
This is NOT Communism, this is not Socialism. It IS the American way, and it needs to be preserved.
News You May Have Missed!
The White House And The Press
The dispute between the White House and the Press is growing. Now the Justice Department has opened an investigation of the five major TV broadcast networks which declined to provide pool coverage of President Trump. The New York Times quotes a DOJ spokesman who said the investigation is looking at a violation of antitrust laws. The White House claims such boycotts among commercial competitors violates the Sherman Antitrust Act.
The pool provides coverage of events so that there is not a deluge of media following the President. The networks rotate who handles the pool. The video is then distributed to all news organizations that cover the White House.
The pool has always been controlled by the media, not by the White House.
Amelia Earhart Again!
The search is on again for any sign of Amelia Earhart, whose mysterious disappearance has been a puzzle since 1937.
A U.S.-based team of marine archeologists is now headed for a tiny island in the western Pacific to examine the latest clue. 
(Amelia Earhart)
Purdue University is backing the search. The group is trying to learn if an object submerged near the island detected six years ago by satellite could be the wreckage of Earhart's twin-engine Lockheed Electra 10-E airplane.
It's been speculated for years that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, crash-landed near a coral- ringed atoll and eventually died there. It was hundreds of miles from their planned refueling stop. The archiologists are expected to arrive at the atoll in the remote Phoenix Islands on Tuesday. It's part of the nation of Kiribati Republic.
Dumbest Quote Of The Week!
This week's dumbest quote goes to Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. He announced that the execution of the man convicted of killing 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009 would be by firing squad. Nidel Hasan was sentenced to death for the shootings in 2013. Hegseth wants the execution live streamed.
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
The concept is barbaric and has never been done in the U.S. before, but it is done in places like Iran and North Korea and with terrorist groups. It has yet to get approval from President Trump.
(Your comments and suggestions are welcome)
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