The hysteria is in high gear over the Confederate battle flag. The controversy began with the the shooting of nine people in the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC by a schizophrenic young man. South Carolina is, of course, the first state to secede from the union after Lincoln’s election in 1860. Since the Civil War, South Carolina has been ruled by the Democratic Party until the past few years when Republicans have elected the governor and legislature. In 1962, in an act of defiance, Governor Fritz Hollings (D) presided over the placing to the Confederate flag on the capital building. The flag was subsequently moved to a Confederate memorial on the capital grounds by a Republican governor.
Meanwhile, Fox News’s Special Report noted this fact during one of the show’s “All-Star Panel” segments with host Bret Baier alluding to it as well as how a Republican was in office when the flag was taken down from the dome and moved to the Capitol’s grounds as a compromise in 1998.
The shooter appears to me to be a paranoid schizophrenic who lived in appalling conditions with a weird father who seemed to care little about his welfare.
The hysteria about the Confederate flag seems to be a planned assault on southern states and on conservative politics. The fact that the South was ruled by Democrats until very recently is also an issue for these people who resent the recent appeal of the Republican Party. The cry of “Racism” seems a bit exaggerated when there is a trend recognized even by the leftist New York Times of black families moving back to the southern states.
The percentage of the nation’s black population living in the South has hit its highest point in half a century, according to census data released Thursday, as younger and more educated black residents move out of declining cities in the Northeast and Midwest in search of better opportunities.
The share of black population growth that has occurred in the South over the past decade — the highest since 1910, before the Great Migration of blacks to the North — has upended some long-held assumptions.
Both Michigan and Illinois, whose cities have rich black cultural traditions, showed an overall loss of blacks for the first time, said William Frey, the chief demographer at the Brookings Institution.
If racism is rampant in the South, why would they do this ? Maybe they recognize something the leftists in the northeast do not.
In America 3.0 the authors suggest that there may eventually be some realignment of states by preference or affiliation by common institutions. Several states might share a university, for example. I see it possibly going beyond this but only after a major crisis, possibly a revolution.
The Supreme Court decisions this week have moved that day closer. The Obamacare decision is less important because the Obamacare medical reorganization is not economically viable and will collapse. The gay marriage decision is far worse because, as Justice Scalia put it,
Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact— and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.
There will be a reaction and it is not clear to me what it might be. Perhaps Texas and a few other states will decline to enforce some laws.
“Renewing and reinforcing that promise is all the more important in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. The government must never pressure a person to abandon or violate his or her sincerely held religious beliefs regarding a topic such as marriage. That sort of religious coercion will never be a ‘compelling governmental interest,’ and it will never be ‘the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.’”
“With these obligations in mind,” Abbott continued, “I expect all agencies under my direction to prioritize compliance with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Article I of the Texas Constitution, and the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act. All state agency heads should ensure that no one acting on behalf of their agency takes any adverse action against any person, as defined in Chapter 311 of the Texas Government Code, on account of the person’s act or refusal to act that is substantially motivated by sincere religious belief.
That may set up a conflict between the Obama DoJ and the state or between the state and a federal judge. It may not be the only state to do so. Arizona might decide to do something similar. That was last year.
The Housing decision is worse. Justice Kennedy has opened the door wide for abuses of the doctrine of “disparate impact.”
Part of the real estate bubble that collapsed the economy in 2008 was based on the lawsuits that forced banks to make mortgage loans to those unable to repay. That was a consequence of the “Community Reinvestment Act” that appeared in the Clinton administration, was expanded by Carter and reached lunatic status after the Democrats took Congress in 2006.
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (the Department) has only so many tax credits to distribute. If it gives credits for housing in lower income areas, many families—including many minority families—will obtain better housing. That is a good thing.
But if the Department gives credits for housing in higher income areas, some of those families will be able to afford to move into more desirable neighborhoods. That is also a good thing.
Either path, however, might trigger a disparate-impact suit.
This is not mere speculation. Here, one respondent has sued the Department for not allocating enough credits to higher income areas. But another respondent argues that giving credits to wealthy neighborhoods violates “the moral imperative to improve the substandard and inadequate affordable housing in many of our inner cities.”
The lawsuits will make things worse as the state cannot satisfy all plaintiffs. I have seen this as a member of the Planning Commission of the City of Mission Viejo. “Affordable Housing” is profitable for developers who build these subsidized projects and then subsidize the “public interest law firms” that file new lawsuits.
Even Kennedy recognized the danger.
Without adequate safeguards at the prima facie stage, disparate-impact liability might cause race to be used and considered in a pervasive way and “would almost inexorably lead” governmental or
private entities to use “numerical quotas,” and serious constitutional questions then could arise.
His decision, however, does nothing to solve the dilemma. Maybe the only solution is to move to a red state and hope they are better governed. That may be a trend but we shall see. I could see this doctrine of Nullification taking hold in other states, mostly in the South and West.
The reductions were too little for South Carolina, and on November 24, 1832, a state convention adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared that the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and unenforceable in South Carolina after February 1, 1833. Military preparations to resist anticipated federal enforcement were initiated by the state.[6] On March 1, 1833, Congress passed both the Force Bill—authorizing the President to use military forces against South Carolina—and a new negotiated tariff, the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which was satisfactory to South Carolina. The South Carolina convention reconvened and repealed its Nullification Ordinance on March 15, 1833, but three days later nullified the Force Bill as a symbolic gesture to maintain its principles.
I certainly don’t see Democrats, infuriated because southern voters have abandoned them, agreeing with this but something like this could happen at some level.