Obama is the Seventh President with a Foreign-born Parent
Obama is enduring the controversy that won’t die: according to the Queen of the Birthers, Orly Taitz, President Obama’s election is invalid since he has a foreign-born parent. John McCain also had to endure a fight for legitimacy when it came to whether or not he was eligible for the presidency. The Senate passed a resolution declaring him eligible, and though that resolution was non-binding, it never-the-less silenced the majority of his detractors.
So what happened with President Obama? Is he the only president to have a foreign-born parent?
He is the seventh president with at least one foreign-born parent. It has been 90 years since the last: Woodrow Wilson’s mother was English.
Before Wilson, came Herbert Hoover with a Canadian-born mother.
Chester Arthur and James Buchanan both had Irish fathers. Thomas Jefferson’s mother was born in England, and Andrew Jackson’s parents were both born in Ireland.
Along with McCain, presidential contender Mitt Romney’s father was born in Mexico, and Bill Richardson’s parents were both foreign-born, his father from Nicaragua and his mother from Mexico.
And why are all of these people eligible for the presidency of the United States? Because the Supreme Court, after citing many, many precedents, ultimately decided in US v. WONG KIM ARK (1898) that the 14th Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all persons born in the United States, regardless of their ethnic heritage:
The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: The fourteenth amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born within the territory of the United States of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case, 7 Coke, 6a, ’strong enough to make a natural subject, for, if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject’; and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, ‘If born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle.’
And further,
To hold that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution excludes from citizenship the children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of other countries, would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage, who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.
President Obama is a US citizen. So were six presidents before him. You can believe the Supreme Court or you can believe the Queen Bee of the Birther movement, Orly Taitz, who claims that “in order to be the president and commander in chief he has to be a natural born citizen, so even if he were to be born in Hawaii, he cannot be the president and commander in chief specifically because of his multiple citizenship.”
My money’s on the Supreme Court, but hey, if Orly’s your thing, have at it. She’s **rock solid** for sure!! I’d believe her over the Supreme Court any day!
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Womb Raiders – Orly Taitz | ||||
|
||||
Glenn Beck is a Pot Calling the Kettle Black
Glenn Beck, for all his radical lunacy, has traction with Fox News conservatives and Palin Republicans. On Tuesday’s “Fox and Friends” morning show, Beck was asked about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr by a white Cambridge police officer. President Obama, who is friends with Gates, subsequently made the comment that the officer had "acted stupidly." Beck apparently believes that President Obama sided with blacks, thereby alienating all whites. And so, of course, that means President Obama’s a racist.
Everyone and his third cousin has weighed in on Gates-Gate, but leave it to Glenn Beck to just take it home: Obama hates whites. Of all the ways we could understand what happened when two people, both Gates and the police officer, acted irrationally, only Glenn Beck takes it to the level of white supremacist hatred. Now, in Beck’s twisted world designed to instigate viewers into a frenzy of distrust and paranoia, his viewers and listeners are to understand that the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of all the armed forces, the leader of the greatest country in the world, is a racist. And hates his white mother and grandparents who raised him. Right.
Thanks for clearing that up, Glenn.
Paying for the Healthcare Bill
It’s a fairly well-accepted premise amongst progressives that the United States spends far too much money on the military. The federal budget for defense spending fiscal year 2010 comes in at $618 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office. Not including intelligence funding. That’s about 4% of our GDP. Crazy, huh?
Not even close. Healthcare spending in the US dwarfs military spending at 15% of GDP.
A few facts from the CIA World Factbook, and the World Health Organization searchable database:
- The government of France, a socialist country, pays 79% of its health costs.
- The Canadian government pays 70%.
- In the US, government pays 45% of all health costs.
- For per capita spending in France and Canada, the overall cost of care, comes in at about $3,500.
- In the US, our per capita spending overall is $6,700.
- Out-of-pocket average payments for the US: $873.
- Out-of-pocket average payments for Canada: $532.
- Out-of-pocket average payments for France: $238.
Though many US citizens fear socialized or single-payer systems, they are far more cost-effective than our current public-private system. A series on Frontline illustrates the costs and benefits of public systems in the UK, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland as compared to the current US system. In the graphs, quality of care is represented by life expectancy (nearly equal for all), infant mortality (the US is shamefully high), the number of MRI machines and CT scanners per million people (we do well on equipment after Japan).
The bottom line is that we pay too much. We get quality care, but we also pay a huge price, an unsustainable price according to the Congressional Budget Office, “The federal budget is on an unsustainable path, primarily because of the rising cost of health care.”
The current system requires reform. Conservatives who object on the grounds that we’re socializing medicine, thereby restricting free market forces, fail to understand that our government already pays 45% of healthcare costs. By broadening and restricting coverage, the new system should stop the worsening cost spiral. Some conservatives have even signed on to support HR 676, a single-payer proposal.
If you’ve got the time, read the text for the Health Bil here, but for a quick understanding of why we haven’t embraced healthcare reform before now, just follow the lobbying dollars at OpenSecrets.com.:
The health sector boosted its campaign contributions compared to the last presidential cycle, to $167.7 million in 2008 from $123.7 million in 2004. The various health industries have also steadily increased their lobbying efforts, from $448.1 million in 2007 to $484.4 million in 2008. So far this year, the sector has paid lobbyists $126.8 million to do its bidding on Capitol Hill.
Why Cheney Was So Wrong
About four months ago I flew to London on a red eye. In economy. I know a thing or two about stress positions. They do make you hostile to others. And combative. Definitely combative.
Joking aside, the issue of torture and detainment is a serious one. We kept people imprisoned at Guantanamo, some of them completely innocent. We did not give them access to lawyers or even contact with their families. We tortured them. And now we learn that the CIA was operating a terrorist assassination program with the program kept secret from Congress. On Dick Cheney’s orders.
Dick Cheney alone did not reduce our country to something we don’t want to be, but he did some significant damage. Oddly, since he was not the president, he seems to have wielded extraordinary power in the executive branch. Though his signature authorizes the assassination program, Bush is as silent and complacent now as he must’ve been as president, letting Cheney throw the hardballs and make the tough decisions. For those of us who thought the Bush presidency was a low point, this seems all the more a miscarriage of American government. After all, we elected George W. Bush, not Dick Cheney, to lead our country.
And the problem is where Dick Cheney seems to have led us.
Extradition and torture, and now assassination, all seem like reasonable treatment for terrorists. Terrorist organizations operate by definition outside of the bounds of sovereign nations and are therefore not protected by the same international law or general respect. The United States cannot always request extradition from the countries who host these terrorists, especially when the host country does not have an operating judicial system or is hostile to the US. But here’s the problem: the entire purpose of the court system is to ensure justice for both the guilty and the innocent. The US response to terrorism skirted the entire judicial process and sought to carry out a vigilante program of retribution. While most of us can get behind that when we’re sure the target is guilty, how many of us can support this approach when we’re not sure? Vigilante justice is illegal because you might kill the wrong guy.
Most of us want to remain Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.” We want America to represent all the good a democracy can offer: citizens ruling together in a benevolent manner with a robust justice system that protects its people and an executive branch kept always in check by the courts and Congress. I just watched a video clip of Fox News’ Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly joking about torturing Democrats, those leftist Marxist loonies who want to hurt America — and felt ill. This is not the America I want to be. This is not Ronald Reagan’s America.
America’s greatness comes from the balance of all its powers, the shifting and change between Liberals and Conservatives is part of that balance. Both are represented and the sum of the two is our democracy. It could be argued that Cheney took extraordinary measures after 9/11 to keep our country safe, that he cannot be faulted for this. I don’t agree for the simple reason that we have laws and balances in place to keep us safe from dictators. I believe in our country enough to know that no one needs to break the law of our land to ensure our safety. This is its own danger.
The rhetoric today is that Obama is using the economic crisis just like Cheney used 9/11: to expand government powers into areas the public would never accept if circumstances were different. In a robust economy would we accept the massive debt the Obama administration is taking on? Maybe not, but it is legal and approved by Congress. In our country the rulers are powerful, but they remain citizens. They are expected to remain within the lawful boundaries of their positions. This is what separates us from dictatorships. No matter the threat, this is a fundamental tenet of our country and can’t be sacrificed even when terrorists wreak their havoc. Especially when terrorists wreak their havoc. America will remain the shining beacon.
A Second Stimulus? Really? Maybe for Small Businesses
According to the NYT, calls have begun for a second stimulus (or the third, if you count the Bush/Paulsen bailout) since the first, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of Feb. 2009, has produced lackluster results. The Obama Administration told the public the stimulus should produce 600,000 jobs by summer, and create or save a total of 3.5 million jobs over two years. Job creation estimates have come in around 150,000 so far.
The debate over whether any stimulus should have been passed continues from fiscal “invisible hand” conservatives who argue that no one should expect government spending to solve a severe downturn. And from political conservatives who claim it’s all just a big grab for a massive expansion of government, which naturally is the overriding goal of the Obama Administration. (Next, they’ll just start screaming COMMIES!!)
Would it be so bad to be Sweden? It certainly would require a tectonic shift in culture.
So what is the correct response? Republicans and fiscal conservatives argue that the stimulus was a mistake and that more tax cuts are needed to free up the economy to fix itself. The White House says wait and see. A number of prominent economists thought the stimulus was too small to begin with and call for another. According to a Bloomberg report, $12.8 trillion has already been committed to date, an amount nearing the country’s GDP for an entire year. Still, on Thursday, billionaire Warren Buffet called for a second stimulus. He feels the stimulus has done too little and gone to too many politician’s pet projects. MSN Money summarized the economy today:
The unemployment rate is at a 26-year high of 9.5% and is expected to reach 10% before the year’s end. More than 14.7 million people are unemployed. The number of folks struggling to find work jumps to 25.5 million after adding all the Americans who have either given up looking for work or are stuck in part-time or temporary jobs due to the unavailability of full-time employment.
Without a recovery in consumer spending, the economy will continue its downward spiral. The GDP declined about 5.5% in the first quarter of this year, due in large part to consumer cutbacks.
The government is hoping that private money will follow its public investments. In theory, funds for stimulus projects should flow to businesses spurring them to increase spending and create more jobs, ultimately leading to a recovery in consumer spending. But, so far, the economy hasn’t seen much in the way of a consumer spending boost
If we reach the point where a second stimulus package is required, if we take the nation and our citizens even further into debt (currently at $668,621 per household and $11.5 trillion in national debt), make sure the funds go to the sector where we’ll feel the biggest impact. Not to the banks. Not to state or local governments. Fund new and small businesses in green innovation, new technology, energy innovation, and the myriad businesses that create and maintain communities. Fund the everyday people who don’t work for large corporations or government, the small businesses that make up 50% of US GDP. Spend the money where it matters.
Upcoming Posts
Hi duhpookie readers, I’ve been hanging out with the kids for a summer break, but it’s time to get back to serious around here! Look for upcoming articles on green energy policy and the evolution of Obama’s controversial spend-us-into-a-new-kind-of-hell administration. We’ll explore California’s imploding budget insanity; Gavin Newsom, and Meg Whitman’s governorship possibilities, and of course, we’ll continue to look into the macroeconomics of banking and politics, with an eye to a sustainable economic model and the possible development of a sustainability party in the United States. Could it happen? You betcha!
You can now follow duhpookie on Twitter (aren’t you so glad?), or read my more journalistic articles at Examiner.com. Send me your comments!
-
-
About
Welcome to duh pookie where we work hard to bring you sparkly new thoughts.
-
- RSS Feed
-
Visit Political Voices of Women Community
