slavery updated

(let's add the legal consideration that Social Security is not among the enumerated powers of the Constition, per Supreme Court decision mentioned in Bork's pixalted idea of "original intent")

SLAVERY UPDATED

On February 26, 2003 there was a demonstration about reparations for slavery at the federal courthouse, prior to a hearing on the national, consolidated lawsuit against several corporations over benefitting from slavery. Several dozen people were there, from across the country, some holding a large banner demanding the millions owed black people. Conrad Worrill, Northestern Illinois University professor and local reparations organizer, was talking to some attorneys as I approached. I asked if he knew photo IDs were required to enter the building. Yes, he said, and I told him I was not allowed in the building the previous week because I did not have a photo ID. "We’ll give you a full report," he said, in front of the banner, He went on to tell the demonstrators at least twice to have photo IDs ready to get in the building.

I later gave one of the attorneys an affidavit about my exclusion and asked her to give it to one of the attorneys not there. Also, a copy of a conversation in the Reconstruction Congress, that white people could have been enslaved through unjust state convictions prior to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. I also told her and a colleague about the two South African blacks on the David Susskind show, who said that at age fifteen or sixteen they had to get a book at a government office, that they had to get it signed by both employers every time they changed jobs, and that all the information was duplicated in a computer in the capital. Put in a guy’s number and his life history spits out. That sounds a lot like Social Security to me, I said, also that I was fired from a job some years ago for not showing a Social Security card, and that you have to give an SS number to get a photo ID. You have to live, the colleague said later, as he headed into the courthouse, and I reminded him of the spiritual, before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.

If any of them were the least bit scandalized over this, it entirely escaped me. Heaven forbid this bunch should have to take advice from an essentially white movement, but "registration leads to confiscation," as the anti-gun control mantra goes. Isn’t there a bit too much "registration" by Social Security number as it is, without requiring it for entry into public buildings? In particular, for court proceedings, whose very nature requires them to be open? Heaven forbid again that anyone should defend bad, old-fashioned South African apartheid, but, beyond the sheer, utter hypocrisy of venting on its "influx control" passbook laws while tolerating this, there is the sheer, utter stupidity of blissfully, blithely allowing the same control mechanism to sneak up on us.

Heaven forbid likewise that anyone should defend white racism, but there is no point in acting out a stereotype and tempting it either. Is the reparations movement solely or primarily concerned with fabulous moola? In that case, how does it dispel the gibes that slavery ended a over century ago and that reparations are just more welfare?

If the primary concern is abuse of power the gibes discredit themselves. There are abuses of power continuing into this day and age not far removed from slavery, fully considered. Having taken two cases to the U. S. Supreme Court, both dismissed without the key arguments considered, I have a lawsuit over "badges and incidents" of slavery, outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Slaves were not allowed to sue, own property, make contracts, take part in public proceedings, etc. Does that ring a bell? Modern social security was instituted by Chancellor Bismarck in Germany for the explicit purpose of making people manageable. See Sheldon Richman, Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, 2001.

How many bells does that ring?

William F. Wendt, Jr

Bork's pixalated idea of "original intent"

To the editor, Harper’s:

Cass Sunstein was nowhere near hard enough on the halfway originalists. (Harper’s, September 2005) What have all of them missed, just for starters? Robert Bork, The Tempting of America, says it is heresy to deny that judges are bound by the law, i.e., original intent (p4). He then says a lot of New Deal and Great Society cases were decided wrongly on that basis, but have become too much a part of the fabric of society to change now (p158). He accepts paper money. even to the point of questioning judicial sanity (pp155, 157, 158), and the draft (p122), without the slightest examination of original intent.

Why fulminate merely about judges creating rights not in the Constitution, but not powers? Helvering v. Davis (1936) held Social Security to be an emergency power to spend ourselves rich, not an enumerated power. How long before it creates its own emergency?

Former Federal Reserve secretary Bray Hammond wrote in his 1957 Pulitzer prize winning Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War, Chapter 4, quite a complete history of the monetary clause:

"...These decisions removed whatever constitutional inhibitions ever existed upon the power of Congress to authorize anything it wishes as money. Thus, in the course of 150 years, changes in monetary and business habits, in governmental responsibility, in statutes, and in jurisprudence have strengthened the Constitution's ban on issues of money by individual states but have nullified completely the original intent that the federal government should have no power to make anything but the precious metals legal tender. "... One can either consider the departure from the original intent a calamity or hold that the original intent, though wise at the time, could not possibly endure...." (pp109-110)

When the framers said, "raise and support armies," they meant paid professional armies. There is compulsory military service, but under the militia clauses,. It is certainly not intended to reduce American citizens to mindless tools of the government, nor to send them halfway around the world, whether or not they are needed for emergencies at home, such as Katrina. This we can see from the Federalist Papers, the debates in the First Congress on the Bill of Rights, and Story’s commentaries. If we know what to look for, the 1980s Perpich v. DOD cases show the National Guard is unconstitutional as a commingling of army and militia.

William F. Wendt, Jr

courts of law or favor?

COURTS OF LAW OR FAVORS?

If it is jury nullification when a jury disregards the law, say, in a marijuana, tax, draft or home schooling case, what is it when judges do it? If jury nullification is a legislative act and a violation of a sworn duty, according to numerous court decisions, what is it when judges do the same thing? What do such ancient legal concepts as stare decisis and binding authority mean when judges ignore plainly cited law that would require a different decision?

If judges can ignore plainly cited law with impunity and even their own self-imposed requirements to examine jurisdictional issues, do we have courts of law or merely highly ceremonial dispensers of favors?

If they can ignore constitutional issues, is the constitution then merely what the judges THINK it is, that in the bicentennial year of Marbury v. Madison, the first case to hold there is no constitution if the judges do not enforce it?

If judges dispose of a lawsuit against themselves without appearing before the court, without ruling upon any of the issues raised, without claiming to have committed a judicial act or claiming their own supposedly ironclad immunity, or even admitting they themselves are defendants, have they violated Title 18, United States Code, Sections 201(c)(1)(B), 208(a) against self-dealing by federal officials?

The first of three cases I have taken to the Supreme Court of the United States in the past three years grew out of a state lawsuit against the state appropriation to the University of Illinois to wipe out the historic Maxwell St. market. The state courts did not rule on the state constitutional issues presented. I filed a federal civil rights lawsuit that I was deprived of my right to sue (a badge and incident of slavery), and my right to an open court. It was dismissed on "Rooker Feldman doctrine," based on two Supreme Court decisions, that you cannot appeal a state court decision to a federal trial court. Never mind that this decision met none of the qualifications in both decisions and that reopening void decisions is a trial court function.

The second attacked federal funding of local transportation projects as unconstitutional and reconstruction of existing systems without considering other technologies as violating the environmental laws. It was dismissed without ruling on either argument nor upon the motion for summary judgment that the government’s motion to dismiss admitted just that. After waiting months for a final ruling on the motion to alter or amend the judgment, I filed a motion for relief from judgment, void on several counts. On appeal the government said I could not attack the underlying judgment and that no legal discussion was possible with me. I took this as an attempt to coerce the court and cited cases on the vulnerability of supposedly life tenured judges to government intimidation. The 7th Circuit affirmed on grounds that no substantial issues could be raised.

In both cases I repeatedly objected to actions beyond the power of the court, that this was wrecking the Anglo-American legal system, and that I would sue over it. The complaint against the judges was little but the arguments they have yet to rule upon. It accused them in each case 1) of commiting a legislative, not a judicial act, 2) of denying due process to the point of usurpation, 3) of denying the right to sue under the Civil Rights Act of 1966 (which banned the badges and incidents of slavery), and 4) of denying access to the courts. The government attorneys in the second case were accused of conspiracy with the judges to commit these wrongs.

The federal rules allow 20 days to amend a complaint without leave of court. Less than a week after that deadline, the federal trial judge, Charles Kocoras, with no notice or defendant before the court, dismissed the case on his own motion as "factually frivolous." My motion to alter or amend the judgment cited numerous cases against such dismissal and a Supreme Court definition of "factually frivolous," delusional or irrational. When confronted with this question in open court, about matters of record in the complaint, he only said the appellate court is two floors up.

On appeal the panel consisted of two senior judges not named in the lawsuit and one active judge who was, the circuit’s black woman, incidentally. The summary affirmance was the same form letter as before, holding the issues that could be raised were insubstantial. There was no mention of any issues in the case nor even a caption by which one might discern appellate judges were named as defendants. There were also motions for adjudication in a spirit of patriotic self-sacrifice, regarding coercive and financial influences on judges, for priority over cases enforcing unconstitutional, overly Hamiltonian laws overloading the courts (in particular the "spend ourselves rich" decisions of the 30s and 40s), and for entry to the courthouse without having to show a photo ID requiring a Social Security number to obtain. They were denied without explanation.

The petition for rehearing en banc argued the issues that "could be raised" were those in defense, that if they were "insubstantial" the decision should be reversed, that there was no mention of the court’s own members being sued, that the decision was void as denying the opportunity to appeal, that there was cause for another lawsuit if there was no ruling on law and facts, and that self-dealing by federal officials was a criminal violation. It added excerpts of an essay criticizing Oliver Wendell Holmes’ philosophy of deference to power, basically what I see wrong with federal jurisprudence such as it is. It also asked for "equal menace of law," citing a 7th Circuit decision on frivolous relitigation, that is, if the courts were not simply trying to keep certain matters below the radar. The petition was first denied without explanation by an order from the two senior judges, the active judges disqualifying themselves, then by an amended order four days later from the original panel with the other judges taking no part.

The Supreme Court petition also argued that courts are required to rule on legal points, that jurisdiction is presumed if not, that the meaning of "reason" needs to be clarified, if indeed the judicial system is based on that, not fiat, that it seems the Constitution is what the judges think it is, and that Luke 18 showed how to deal with crooked judges, to keep pestering them. It was denied without comment.

Marbury v. Madison (1803), the first case to hold an act of Congress repugnant to the constitution, is overdue for much more than a barely observed bicentennial. Is it still the emphatic duty of the courts to say what the law is? Is the essence of civil liberty still the ability to claim protection of the laws when one suffers an injury? Is there still a constitution if the judges do not rule on it?

Will we have to wait for the bicentennial of Joseph Story’s commentaries on the Constitution, another three decades, before we juxtapose his observation that a government descends into imbecility without a judicial department with Holmes’ infamous decision in Buck v. Bell, that three generations of imbeciles are enough?

William F. Wendt, Jr.