Billy Martin

Billy Martin was a major league baseball player in the late 40's and 50's.  He achieved his greatest renown in managing several major league teams and in particular the New York Yankees.  He grew up in West Berkeley, California, the poor side of Berkeley.  He reached the Yankees as a player in time to make friends with Joe DiMaggio in 1951 and his girlfriend Marilyn Monroe.

He was a fighter, literally, never avoiding fisticuffs, sometimes known as a "sparkplug."  Though certainly not a traditional intellectual, he enjoyed talking about Gettysburg and debating Lee's choices during that battle.

He became fast friends with Mickey Mantle.  The two of them were like teenagers doing silly things.

He was the hero of the deciding game of the '53 World Series when the Yankees won their 5th straight Series.

I am enjoying this new biography of Martin written by sportswriter Bill Pennington.

Carol Berkin - The Bill of Rights

Today we revere the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.  The BOR is the cornerstone of our rights as Americans.Yet these first additions to our parchment were birthed in political controversy..  This book tells that story.

Professor Berkin is professor of history at Baruch College.  She has written a book on the Constitutional Convention which I shall read now.  She writes narrative history in a clear and focused manner.  I hope her history passes muster from fellow historians.

The majority of the men who crafted our Constitution did not believe a bill of rights was necessary because they did not envision the new national government has having enough power to warrant citizen protection against governmental overreach.  James Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution did not favor a bill of rights.   It turns out he and they were wrong.

As the Constitution moved to state ratification in September of 1787, supporters of the new document came to be called Federalists.  Opponents were called Anti-Federalists.

Anti-Federalists fought against the Constitution being ratified.  Once it was ratified, they desired a second constitutional convention to correct what they believed were deficiencies in the document.  Basically the Anti-Federalists believed in state sovereignty which came to be known as states-rights, with little power left to the new national government.  Federalists like Madison and George Washington believed, correctly no doubt, that a second convention would destroy the constitution that was hammered out thru much compromised during those hot months in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia.  Federalists desired a strong national government to ameliorate the problems in the country produced by the inert Articles of Confederation.  They wanted a national government with the power to tax.  Anti-Federalists tended to be happy with the Articles.

Despite the Constitution springing into action, Madison feared that the new document would remain under continuing attack and was therefore vulnerable.  Though he initially didn't think a BOR was necessary, he decided to propose one in order to head the Anti-Federalists at the pass.  His thinking was that a BOR would separate the leader Anti-Federalists from the rank and file Anti-Federalists and cool the call for a second convention.  It turned out he was correct.  So how much of Madison's action was conviction that a BOR was a good thing for the new country, and how much was political to protect the Constitution from dismemberment?  No way to know for sure.

Madison tried to get the convention at the very end of its existence to consider a bill of rights, but he was rebuffed.  P. 5

Federalists who did not want to consider amendments took the position that getting the new government into operation took precedence; amendments could be dealt with later.  Madison got the amendment wagon rolling anyway and after long and contentious debate 12 amendments were passed and rectified with the Senate.  Only 10 became law.  P. 61

The author says that Madison and Hamilton parted ways over Hamilton's economic proposals. P. 131

"What, then, separated Federalist from Antifederalist?  The most fundamental difference was this: supporters of a new constitution believed a strong national government would best serve the country; defenders of a continued league of friendship believed the people would be best served as citizens of their sovereign states.  Localism thus clashed with nationalist---and the compromise devised by the Philadelphia convention satisfied no one fully."

"The delegates to the Philadelphia convention called that concept federalism.  It was born out of a realistic assessment of what the voters would tolerate and what the sovereign states might be willing to accept: a federal system, granting certain explicit powers to the central government, leaving other powers and responsibilities to the existing state governments, and authorizing some powers to be shared by both.  At the convention, Alexander Hamilton declared it unworkable---and eight decades later , the Civil War almost proved him right."  P. 133-34

Madison disarmed the Anti-federalists who wanted to eviscerate the powers of the national government by proposing the amendments which came to be called the Bill of Rights.  It was a political move to save the new Constitution.  P. 135

The essence of what I take from this book is that the Constitution was a product of enormous compromise.  The future Bill of Rights was an afterthought and indeed, thought unnecessary by most Federalists.  By the end of September the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were ready to go home.  Even though the new document was ratified and the new government commenced its business, Madison correctly perceived that the national government was still vulnerable to Anti-Federalist attempt to shrink its powers.  He introduced and pushed thru what became the Bill of Rights in order to protect the Constitution from attack by a possible second convention.  Madison culled through numerous state suggested amendments and whittled it down to 12.  Some Anti-Federalists wanted the Congress to consider all state sponsored amendments.We should all be grateful that Madison prevailed as only 12 were passed.

How the Republican Party Dies Based on History

Sunday, May 10, 2015 05:00 AM CST

This is how the right wing dies: The GOP has rigged the game for the rich, again

Reactionaries have a hammerlock on power, now. Last time GOP rewrote rules for the 1 percent, trust-busters emerged

Heather Cox Richardson

Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio (Credit: AP/Reuters/David Manning/Jacquelyn Martin/J. Scott Applewhite/Photo montage by Salon)

If the past is any guide, a new, progressive Republican Party is taking shape.
We just can’t see it yet. For now, the party still seems glued to the Movement Conservative idea, rooted in a long-standing ideology that business can do little or nothing wrong, that promoting the economic well-being of a few wealthy men will advance American society as a whole. Those few leaders are the “makers,” Paul Ryan explained in 2010; the majority of Americans are “takers.” The more it becomes evident that the “trickle down” theory of wealth has not worked– that rather than trickling down, wealth has rushed upward since 1980– the more leading Republicans insist that the problem is not their theory. The problem, they say, is that it has not been adopted fully enough.
One Republican presidential hopeful after another promises to push for the full implementation of Movement Conservative economic ideology. They all back continued corporate tax cuts and the social spending reductions those cuts require. Rick Perry has already touted the “unparalleled prosperity” he brought to Texas and dismisses the fact that that prosperity has mostly gone to the wealthy and benefited from federal help. Darrell Issa, whose personal wealth approaches $450 million, explains that America’s poor are “the envy of the world.”
It looks like Movement Conservative Republicans have a lock on the party and, for the moment, Congress. Americans have soured on supply-side economics, but that hasn’t changed who runs the country. When opponents demand economic fairness, Republicans respond by accusing them of being anti-American “Liberals” or minorities looking for a handout. When rhetoric isn’t enough, Republicans gerrymand districts and manipulate the electorate to stay in power even without a popular majority. When it could have limited the power of the wealthy to control the government, a Republican Supreme Court threw its weight behind the idea that limiting the flow of cash into elections and political debates would infringe on the rights of wealthy individuals.
Is the game so rigged it’s over?

It wasn’t in the 1880s, when the country was in the same position. Just the opposite: It was the reactionary Republican Party’s monopoly on the government that led to the rise of the Progressive Republicans.
The Republican Party formed in the 1850s to reclaim the government from the wealthy slave owners who controlled the country. Members of the fledgling party created national taxation and passed legislation to give every hardworking man land and an education to make it possible for every one to rise—a believe that undergirded the party’s opposition to the spread of slavery. After the Civil War, the Republican Party’s focus on widespread economic growth transformed into protection for the nation’s burgeoning industries. By 1880, Republicans insisted that nurturing business was the key to a healthy economy, for the wealth that industrialists produced would trickle down to workers and farmers. Those who complained that the system was unfair were lazy or improvident; they had “extravagant notions” and wanted the government to take care of them.
Not all Americans agreed. By 1884, even the staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune complained, “Behind every one of half of the portly and well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation.” The Senate, Harper’s Weekly agreed, was “a club of rich men.” It included a man worth a cool $30 million, equivalent to more than $1 billion in the twenty-first century.
Americans disgusted that the government appeared to be up for sale to big business rebelled. In 1884, they elected a Democrat to the White House. Grover Cleveland promised to clean up the system by which rich men bought laws. He promised to return fairness to the government.
When voters put a Democrat into the White House, big business Republicans panicked. Immediately they launched a campaign to convince voters that Republican pro-business policies were the only ones that would keep the economy healthy. When a leading Republican hinted he might be willing to compromise with Democrats on key legislation, party kingmakers bypassed him for the presidential nomination in 1888 and instead gave the nod to the unremarkable Benjamin Harrison, who promised to do as he was told.
The election was remarkably corrupt. Republicans launched a new system of campaign financing that tied businessmen all over the country to the party war chest, warning them that the reelection of Cleveland would destroy the economy. Republicans took the House and Senate in 1888. Harrison lost the popular vote by about 100,000 votes, but his managers swung the Electoral College behind him. When the pious Harrison commented that Providence had given them victory, a key operative grumbled “Providence hadn’t a damn thing to do with it. [A] number of men were compelled to approach the penitentiary to make him President.”
Once in power, Harrison’s men set out to make sure Democrats could never again threaten Republican legislation. They bought a leading newspaper, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, and installed the president’s son as editor, using the formerly moderate organ as an administration mouthpiece. They admitted six new states to the Union in a year to game the electoral system. North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho each brought the Republicans two Senate seats, as well as extra votes in the Electoral College. Republicans also tried to guarantee that party officials could oversee all elections in contested districts, although this measure raised such hackles even within the party that it didn’t pass. Nonetheless, Harrison’s men were convinced they had swung the government their way for the foreseeable future.
They were wrong. While they had made it hard for Democrats to press their policies successfully, Old Guard Republicans had created the space for a rebellion within their own party. Younger men looked at the inequality around them and insisted that this was not the America promised in the Declaration of Independence. They looked at men, women and children working in sweatshops and on shop floors with little hope of rising, and wondered what had happened to the idea of economic and social mobility. They looked at a political system in which the will of the majority couldn’t override the money of the few. And they began, quietly, to push for reform.
In the crisis year of 1884, when many disgruntled Republicans jumped ship and backed Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette and Albert Beveridge stayed in the party. From within, they began to advocate the end of reactionary support for big business against the rest of the nation. They recalled the vision of Abraham Lincoln and insisted that America was not a zero-sum game in which rich and poor fought over limited resources. If the government regulated the abuses of the industrial system, promoted education, and kept the economic playing field level, it would create a prospering society in which every individual could rise. Restoring fairness to America would restore American greatness.
In 1884, Old Guard Republicans laughed at the young reformers who, they chuckled, applauded “with the tips of their fingers, held immediately in front of their noses.” But they weren’t laughing in 1900, when Lodge and Beveridge were senators, Roosevelt was governor of New York, La Follette was governor of Wisconsin, and the latter two were turning their states into laboratories for government regulation.
The election of a Democrat in 1884 had convinced the younger men that the old party was out of step with modern America. While their elders rode their ideology into caricature, the younger men remade the Republican Party and brought the nation into a new era. Today’s younger Republicans may not be ready to follow in the footsteps of those progressives, but the bigger question is whether they are willing and able.

A Review of the new Joseph Ellis Book

Sunday Book Review

‘The Quartet,’ by Joseph J. Ellis

By R. B. BERNSTEINMAY 5, 2015

Inside

Photo

George Washington Credit The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Associated Press

When and how did the United States ­become a nation? This question is the core of “The Quartet.” In his customary graceful prose, Joseph J. Ellis, the author of such works of popular history as the prizewinning “Founding Brothers,” argues that the United States did not become a nation with the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Rather, he says, American nationhood resulted from the creation, ­adoption and effectuation of the United States ­Constitution.

Ellis declares, “Four men made the ­transition from confederation to nation ­happen. . . . George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison” (along with three supporting players: Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Jefferson). He writes that “this political quartet diagnosed the systemic dysfunctions under the Articles, manipulated the political process to force a calling of the Constitutional Convention, collaborated to set the agenda in Philadelphia, attempted somewhat successfully to orchestrate the debates in the state ratifying conventions, then drafted the Bill of Rights as an insurance policy to ensure state compliance with the constitutional settlement. If I am right, this was arguably the most creative and consequential act of political leadership in American history.”

Photo

Alexander Hamilton Credit New-York Historical Society

This passage distills the strengths and weaknesses of “The Quartet.” Ellis rightly expands his focus beyond the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to consider the process of reform leading to the Convention and the process of decision making flowing from the proposed Constitution. The weakness of “The Quartet” is that it does not look past the figures standing center stage in Ellis’s story.

As a result, Ellis omits or plays down the politics that led to the Convention and the Constitution — the institutions and processes that gave rise to and sustained the movement to reform the government of the United States, as well as the debates on framing, ratifying and implementing the Constitution. Ellis’s “quartet” are constitutional superheroes, the Fantastic Four of American nationalism. Though his portraits of them show his sure touch — highlighting Washington’s dignity, Hamilton’s energy, Madison’s learning and Jay’s diplomacy — he miscalculates the balance between them and the context in which they worked, overstating their ability to orchestrate the “second American ­Revolution.”

Political processes can be uncooperative, unpredictable and wrongheaded. That was the case with politics in the United States in 1783-89. For example, Hamilton wanted a consolidated government that would hold the nation together, but he did not get what he wanted. He failed despite seven years of demanding constitutional reform, and hours at the 1787 Convention expounding his design for a strong central government. Aware of his failure, Hamilton even shared with Madison his own draft for a constitution to show what he thought an adequate document would look like. Similarly with Madison. In 1789, he became the leading advocate in the First Federal Congress of adding rights-protecting amendments to the Constitution, but encountered bitter opposition that almost overwhelmed him. Pro-Constitution representatives spurned his proposed amendments as unnecessary, while unreconciled opponents of the Constitution rejected them as inadequate. All the members of Ellis’s quartet grumbled regularly, frustrated at the opposition facing them and the likelihood of failure; this was the frustration of skilled politicians warily assessing the maze of ­institutional, political and personal obstacles standing between them and their goal.

“The Quartet” also raises larger ­questions challenging assumptions undergirding Ellis’s book. First, when he writes about an American nation, what does he mean? Is an American nation the same as a national government uniting all 13 states as one entity? That is not what the Constitution creates; ­federalism’s presence in the Constitution complicated issues of sovereignty, union and ­nationhood, then and after. Further, Ellis neglects the complicated relationship between a nation’s identity and its form of government, a commonplace of Enlightenment thought well known to the ­founding fathers. Though nationalism may be linked to a particular type of government, a people’s sense of identity is not the same as a nation’s political arrangements.

Ellis sees American nationhood as the creation of a few politicians working from above. But what of sentiments of ­national identity among the American people? ­Ellis rejects the idea that American ­nationalism existed before 1787, even reproving Abraham Lincoln for making that claim; his endnotes airily dismiss scholarship arguing otherwise. Nonetheless, currents of nationalism before 1787 helped make possible both the American victory in the Revolution and the Constitution’s adoption. The Continental Army fought for the independence of the American Union, not of 13 sovereign states. Thomas Paine and other pamphleteers agitated for an independent America. And those backing the Constitution (including three of the four members of Ellis’s quartet) invoked the danger of losing the Union if the Constitution failed — suggesting that they were fighting not to create but rather to preserve the Union, and that they saw the Constitution as the means to do so. The debates over ratification would also not have been possible without an incipient American nationalism working beneath the surface.

Another large question concerns Ellis’s understanding of politics itself. The path to the Constitution was studded with pivotal choices, critical decision points and balking institutions. In February 1787, for instance, the Congress that was operating under the Articles of Confederation adopted a resolution calling a convention — but giving it a limited mandate, empowering it only to devise amendments to the Articles, not to write a new constitution. The clash between this mandate and a broader informal mandate adopted in 1786 hung over the Constitution throughout its framing and ratification. So, too, in September 1787 the Confederation Congress wrestled with what to do about the proposed Constitution. Madison and Hamilton wanted Congress to endorse it; congressional opponents of the Constitution wanted it condemned. After eight days of bitter debate, Congress sent the Constitution to the states, silently blessing its legitimacy. These and other choices resulted from political decisions by the Confederation Congress, the state legislatures and the state ratifying conventions, all outside the control of Ellis’s four heroes.

Ellis dedicates “The Quartet” to his friend and colleague Pauline Maier, one of the finest historians of the American Revolution and the Constitution’s origins. He writes movingly of her in ways that bring her to life for all fortunate enough to have known her. And yet Maier’s work cuts against “The Quartet.” She focused on politics and political processes; her deft illumination of them produced a story more persuasive than that of “The Quartet.” In addition, Maier taught that those responsible for creating the United States, declaring independence and ratifying the Constitution included Americans at all levels; her books have no constitutional superheroes. She insisted that the ­politically active and quarrelsome Americans debating the Constitution in 1787-88 were animated by competing visions of a shared national identity and that the Constitution’s origins were part of a process of preserving American national identity preceding its adoption, and continuing for decades afterward — up to and beyond the Civil War.

Ellis’s depiction of how the American nation was created, and the roles played in that effort by the story’s “usual suspects,” leaves too much out. Perhaps the most important lesson that the history of this period teaches is that — along with heroic individuals — the political process genuinely matters.

THE QUARTET

Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

By Joseph J. Ellis

290 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.

R. B. Bernstein, who teaches at the City College of New York’s Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and at New York Law School, is completing “The Education of John Adams.”

Smiling

“When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.”
―Thomas Hardy
Here far from the madding crowd I smile like Farmer Oak for I have much to smile about.

On Huckabee

FROM JOAN WALSH:  But only Huckabee, among Republicans, is trying to craft an economic pitch that might appeal to this new cornerstone of the GOP. Everyone else is hoping that warmed-over Reaganism, blaming the poor for their poverty and assorted dog whistles will do the trick, even as Republicans remain the party of the top 1 percent.

The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

This is the best book I have read in a while.  It is a New York Times bestselling true story about how family, accountability, chance, and fate influence our lives.  Considering the racial tension in the news recently, it was a timely read.

The author is Wes Moore.  He was raised in poor, inner city Baltimore.  His father died when he was young.  As a teenager, his mother moved him to the Bronx, where they lived with his grandparents. Wes was in and out of school.  He spent time on the streets with other kids and getting into trouble, including encounters with the police.  Eventually, these problems led his mother to send him to Valley Forge military school.  He resented this, but without any way to leave, military school grew on him. Wes learned responsibility.  He became a military officer.  Ultimately, he graduated and went to Johns Hopkins University, was a Rhodes Scholar, a veteran of Afghanistan, and a White House Fellow.  He also spoke in Denver at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, just hours before Obama accepted the nomination.

In 2000, Wes read a story in the Baltimore Sun about a botched armed robbery that killed a police officer.  They were still looking for two suspects, a pair of brothers, one of which was named Wes Moore.  The police found them.  This other Wes Moore was convicted and given life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Wes Moore, the author, contacted this other Wes Moore.  He learned that the other Wes Moore also grew up in inner city Baltimore, in a similar neighborhood.  Like the author, this Wes was also fatherless, in and out of school, lived on the streets, and had trouble with the police.  He had been arrested multiple times before and got into the drug game at an early age.

The author started a correspondence that resulted in this book.  He interviewed many people to learn the other Wes' story.  Despite the similarities, one became a successful person and husband, while the other is spending his life in Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland.

The author wondered: How did it go wrong? and What made the difference?  His answer:

"And the truth is that I don't know.  The answer is elusive.  People are wildly different, and it's hard to know when genetics or environment or just bad luck is decisive.  As I've puzzled over the issue, I've become convinced that there are some clear and powerful measures that can be taken during this crucial time in a young person's life.  Some of the ones that helped me come to mind, from finding strong mentors to being entrusted with responsibilities that forced me to get serious about my behavior."

The author Wes Moore had a stronger family bond.  He was given hope and taught to see his life beyond his immediate circumstances and to see the possibilities within himself.  In other words, those in his life had better expectations for him.

For the other Wes Moore, when all you know is poverty and violence, education is a joke, your father is absent and your mother has problems too, and your drug gang is the closest thing you have to family, then what choice do you have?  You have to pay the bills and put food on the table.  The money that you can make from drugs, up to $4,000 per day, is better than a real job paying $9 per hour, if that.  Society tends to see inner city blacks as thugs or felons and to fear them.  It doesn't understand what it's really like for them.  My life is too different for me to truly relate or understand, myself.  But it's clear that this environment is not conducive to lifting people toward a better future.  To demonize the people themselves is blind to this reality.

Ultimately, are we products of our environment or of expectations, either ours or others, or is it something else that makes us who we are?  Like the author, I don't know.  But I think sometimes it's the small interactions and the helping hand of others that can make all the difference in a person's life.

Here is a short video from Wes Moore about his book: