Rights and Duties of "Natural Persons"

 Apparently there's an environmental/legal movement to grant/recognize rights of natural features, such as rights.  I'd guess it's an attempt by lawyers to sue on behalf of such entities against pollution, etc.  There's controversy, as might be expected, including conflicts with the LBGQ community, which seems to be the subject of this politico post.

But what intrigued me was the phrase in the post--"natural persons".  I thought of the granting of rights to "legal persons"--corporations which has recently been expanded.

Why couldn't we have a constitutional amendment to the effect that nothing in the Constitution requires that "natural persons" and "legal persons" be treated the same?

What History Should Include

 Bob Somerby comments on a news commentary show where one participant noted he hadn't been taught the Tulsa massacre and just recently learned about the Birmingham church bombing which killed four young black girls in Sunday school. 

I think it seems to Bob (who's maybe 7 years younger than I) and to me that obviously modern kids should be taught both.  

But that's a knee jerk opinion--both Bob and I lived through the reporting of the bombing so it's something of a landmark in the progression of the civil rights movement. We didn't live through Tulsa; not that it matters because the massacre did not, I believe, make any national impression--media is very different now. Given the limited time a teacher has, I'm not sure which events need to be covered--letter from a Birmingham jail, Woolworth counter sit-in, Albany Georgia, Pettus bridge, Shwerner, Chaney, and Goodman?  The laws which were passed, the Rochester riot, the Kerner commission, RFK on MLK's assassination? 

I suppose for most teachers the details have dropped out so their decision making is easier than it would be for me or Bob.

Selma

Finally got around to watching the movie Selma Friday night. It was well done. It's been criticized for the portrayal of the LBJ-MLK relationship as more confrontational and less collaborative than it was.  

The DVD included two newsreel clips from the time of the marches.  There was an interesting contrast between what the movie showed and what the newsreels provided.  

• In the first newsreel, the focus was on the death of Rev. James Reeb, a white minister, was beaten and died after participating in the first march.  He became a martyr and triggered an  influx of whites to participate in the second march.  The movie shows him, his beating, and the results very quickly; understandably because the focus is on MLK. The newsreel people likely didn't have access to the internal deliberations of the marchers so they went with the most drama.
• The second newsreel shows the second march.  Where the movie portrays the marchers approaching the line of troopers, the withdrawing of the troopers, and MLK's prayerful decision to turn around very dramatically, the newsreel says there was a consultation between MLK and the major commanding the troopers and a previous agreement that the march would not proceed.  In this case the movie went with the drama, possibly or likely distorting the true history.

How Soon We Forget--the White Freedom Riders

There was a good bit of commentary, some here, on the protests after George Floyd's death about the number of white faces in the crowds. 

So I was struck today by the photo in this piece on the Freedom Riders. It's easy to forget that the civil rights movement was diverse. Including whites was strategic--whites had the money, better connections to political leaders, and, when assaulted, got more publicity.

1968 and Now--a Subtle Difference

I remember 1968 well, so well I've tried to avoid most coverage of the riots over the past few days.

There is one subtle difference I notice between then and now: the rioters are integrated.  In 1968 the rioters were all black.  Now they seem to be the majority but there's some whites (and perhaps Latinos and Asians, but I don't know that) shown as well.

I think that's a significant detail showing the distance between then and now.

Memories of MLKing

This article documents an April 1961 speech by Martin Luther King at Cornell University's Bailey Hall. From there I found this:

•  On April 14, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Cornell University's Bailey Hall, calling for continued action to obtain Black Americans' full participation in society, North and South, and asking for funds to aid the effort.  2,500+ people attended, and the Ithaca community raised $6,000 for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's efforts in the South. Here is a quote from his speech as reported by the Ithaca Journal:
  
  "Some people say 'Slow up, adopt a policy of moderation', but we cannot afford to slow up. There are too many people in this nation today without the rights this government has guaranteed them. ... It is not enough to decry a Negro being lynched in the South. You must rise up when a Negro is not permitted to live in a neighborhood, join a club, or a fraternity or sorority."

• News media reported thoughtfully upon MLK's speech and the community's response
  Link to Ithaca Journal article, Sat. April 15
  Link to Cornell Sun article, Mon. April 17
  Link to Cornell Chronicle retrospective article, with additional archival research

The articles note an overflow crowd in Bailey, and that money was raised for the SCLC.

I was one of those attending.  My most vivid memory of it was that King was preceded by another speaker.  I don't know who it was, perhaps Rev. Lowrey who's described as appealing for contributions after the speech.  The Sun, at least, got his name wrong, I think.--the Rev. Joseph Lowery was one of the founders of the SCLC.  For many years I suspected King of being rather ruthless.  Why?  Because the initial speaker was very disappointing, so there was a big contrast when King came on with his very polished speaking. King by himself would have been outstanding, following the initial speaker gave the audience an emotional "arc" (at least for me, but I suspect my emotions were respective of a good number of the audience).. 

That contrast has been my strongest memory, overshadowing King's message. (IIRC he was preaching to an audience who was anxious to be converted.) But today I finally researched it, with the results above, and I conclude I've been unfair to King.  If it was Lowery who spoke, then he and King were among the founders of the SCLC and if this was a fundraising trip then it made sense for Lowery to speak just as an organizational prerogative..  The contrast  between the two may well have been accidental, not intentional.

A Reminder from the Civil Rights Era

Breach of Peace has a post on an exhibit of the mug shots of the Freedom Riders.

The artist likes the part which shows 120 Riders  in profile, facing right.  A portion below, from the post.





I'm reminded by these pictures of the youth of the protestors and also by the number of whites included.

MLK Remembered

Kevin Drum posts a chart showing Gallup's results for approval of Martin Luther King.  He notes the rising approval over the years from 1966 to the present. 

I was reading newspapers by the time of the Montgomery protests over segregated buses.  As I commented there, it's been interesting to see the evolution of his image. 

• when he was alive, there were a number of major figures who were competing and cooperating in civil rights.  Malcolm X, Stokeley Carmichael, Roger Wilkins, Julian Bond, and many others.  In the beginning he was just one voice among many, gradually emerging as the preeminent voice. His competitors did not always welcome his contributions or support his efforts, and vice versa.  With his death he became the martyred figure we know today whom no one remembers disliking.
• he had more failures (Albany, GA, and Chicago, among others) than we realize today

Vox has a post/interview with Jeanne Theoharis from which I'll quote this:

[Reagan (and America) created a fable of MLK which included these features:]

The first is the focus on courageous individuals, not movements. The second is the idea that King and figures like Rosa Parks shone a light on injustice, and [said injustice] has since been eradicated. The third is the act of putting the movement and the problem of racism in the past. And the fourth is the idea of American exceptionalism — the belief that the civil rights movement demonstrates the power of American democracy.

My Alternative for the Hamilton Cast

Much discussion about Pence's attendance at the Hamilton musical performance, some boos from the audience and a post-show statement from the cast.  My position:  no big deal, I wouldn't have done either, but it's within the realm of civil society.  But it is a bit too self-righteous for my taste.

I'd rather have seen the statement after the show say something like: " the cast members in the spirit of supporting diversity....blah blah.. in today's world, are donating their pay for the night to [some charity]."  That would have been a stronger statement IMHO.

Schafly: Losing the War?

I first became aware of Phyllis Schafly from her anti-LBJ diatribe.  Needless to say, I was not impressed.  She is widely credited with stopping the Equal Rights Amendment in the 70's, and pulling the Republican Party to the right.  Corey Robin has an interesting take here.

I won't speak ill of the dead, but I'll muse on the significance of the ERA defeat.  It seems to me that American society has essentially evolved to where it would have been had ERA been passed. Yes, it's been a piecemeal progress, but progress it has been.  If I'm correct, it makes you wonder about the circumstances under which a constitutional amendment is vital, and when it's not.   

USDA and Civil Rights

The Jefferson Auditorium is the big meeting room in USDA's South Building at 14th and Independence.  Lots of ceremonies there, usually the audience filled the middle seats first, then the rear and lastly the front seats.  Apparently that's changed since I left.  Here's the blog post  bragging about the improvements the Vilsack leadership has brought to USDA in the area of civil rights.

Historical Ironies: War on Poverty and the South

As I remember the War on Poverty, it started with people (like Robert Kennedy and LBJ) paying attention to West Virginia and Mississippi,  finding examples of extreme hunger among the rural poor and the elderly.  Then there was a famous book on the subject, was it called Poverty in America--no, it was "The Other America" by Michael Harrington.

So LBJ picked up the War on Poverty as part of his Great Society.  Medicaid and Medicare were part of it, probably the most enduring part, but food stamps, which had been revived as a pilot program under Kennedy also got expanded.

LBJ famously said that the Civil Rights Aid had delivered the South to the Republicans. (A quote which may be too good to be true* but certainly represents reasonable fears at the time.)

What I want to note is that the results of the War on Poverty, plus other factors, like spending money on defense and space, the expansion of air conditioning, etc. have been good for the South.  This map shows that the biggest share of improvements in poverty since 1960 has been in the South.  Perhaps most important for the South has been the reduction of the civil rights issue: race relations are no longer a Southern problem, they're a national problem.

Discrimination in Colleges

This Post piece goes into the reality of discrimination on the basis of gender in private colleges.

"Given that girls generally outperform boys in high school—girls earn better grades and account for 70 percent of valedictorians—you’d expect acceptance rates for women to be higher than for men.

Bottom line is admissions are more equal between the sexes than that implies.  Part of the fear is that after a 60-40 ratio, students will avoid the college.  

The Receipt for Service II

I've got a problem with the Receipt for Service implementation. Just in terms of bureaucracy and system design, county employees are asked to dual-task, do the work to support what the customer wants or needs plus as a separate operation record the history of the encounter. The extra work isnot likely to please the employee and the fact it's separate increases the likelihood it won't get done, undermining the validity of the statistic

A separate problem arises when it's the producer/farmer herself going online to do the work, as for example the new NRCS process.  How are those transactions going to be tracked?

USDA "Receipt for Service" Initiative I

USDA's Office of Advocacy and Outreach published an FR notice of a June meeting on USDA's "Receipt for Service" initiative.

What is the initiative?  Damned if anyone could tell from the notice.  There's no description of what it is, beyond a reference to a paragraph in the 2008 farm bill, and an amendment in the 2014 farm bill.  No links, no nothing.

But I've belatedly discovered that one can highlight a phrase, right click, and get an option to use Google to search for the phrase.  So what did I discover?

Three years after the 2008 farm bill, in 2011, OCIO published a department reg requiring the field agencies to issue AD-2088 when requested.  In January 2012 FSA issued a notice on it, NRCS issued the equivalent, RD apparently didn't issue anything, at least unlike the first two they don't show up on the first page of Google results.  The AD-2088 basically provides blanks for a narrative description of what service the farmer requested, and what happened to the request.  Importantly, the 2008 provision only required the AD-2088 be issued if the farmer requested it. Also important--the Department reg didn't require any reports.  I suspect, without researching it, that reports were never required.

 Exploring further, it seems Congress, in their wisdom, in 2014 amended the 2008 provision to require issuing a receipt in all cases.  As a result, NRCS, FSA, and RD got together and did an on-line app, one which requires a 27-page manual: "Web Receipt for Service (webRFS) User’s Guide".  FSA issued a notice, CM-753, which includes a memo signed by the Food and Agriculture council, to the state directors plus the Q&A's for FSA. [Note to self: how'd I miss it last fall?]

Apparently webRFS is the front-end to a database, which is searchable, and presumably will support statistical reports.

Now, back to the meeting:  the material on the webRFS says that it's "Phase I" and that there will be an evaluation of the webRFS and the need for any additional action.

Rights, We Have Rights

Two interesting bits on the rights front today: 

• A district court judge in Alabama issued a decision comparing regulation of abortion clinics to regulation of gun shops.  Both relate to constitutional rights, so shouldn't the balance between restrictive regulation and protecting rights be similar in both cases?
• And Missouri appears to have incorporated the "right to farm" into its constitution by referendum.

Parker on the Past and USDA Sensitivity Training

Kathleen Parker, the conservativish columnist for the Post, writes mocking the sensitivity training at USDA.  I understand the mockery, but she grew up in a very different America than I did, when she writes:

There was a time when such lessons, otherwise known as manners, were taught in every American home [emphasis added]. Said homes were not privileged in most cases but they were occupied by a mother and father who, though they perhaps did not adore each other every waking moment, were at least committed to the mutual task of rearing thoughtful, well-behaved children.

The WASPy upper middle class was taught to be considerate of people's feelings; we would use "Negro" rather than "colored", at least to people's faces, and the "n-word" was reserved for the locker room.  But those "good manners", if they were such, are not sensitivity to others.

USDA Sensitivity Training Gets Attention

From the right, see this Daily Caller article.  It brings back memories of my past sensitivity training sessions.  As described, it sounds as if the instructor kept the session lively enough so no one went to sleep. I've mixed feelings about the worth of such session.  On the one hand I feel superior to them: of course I'm above average in sensitivity so why would I need training (a Lake Woebegone trait Mr. Keillor skipped), on the other hand occasional bits stick--I remember being told by the instructor in our ADA training that everyone was only temporarily able-bodied.

It's easy to mock this stuff, and hard to do it well.

Congress: No Negative Earmarks

One of the things Congress likes to do is the "negative earmark", by which I mean sticking a provision in an appropriation act stating that no money shall be spent for such and such purpose as authorized in an existing statute.  It's like an earmark, because it scratches some specific itch, and it's done through the appropriation process which means, usually, there's no up and down vote, but because it bans spending of money it's negative, not positive.

Well, the gun nuts have used the negative earmark to make it impossible for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to review any application for relief from provisions of the law, including the complete ban on ex-felons possessing firearms.  This provision has now bitten former Representative Randy Cunningham, who is nearing release from  prison (for bribery) and would like to be able to hunt. The link is from a TPM post, containing the letter written by the federal judge back to Cunningham.

It's so funny, I could cry. 

[Updated: changed title and added clause to last sentence of first paragraph.]

Cultural Transformation

FSA issued a notice on how to deal with customers, including a long list of do's and don'ts.  When I joined the agency they had a series of training packages for county office employees, including one called "counter skills", since the usual setup for the offices included a counter, like that in banks back then, over which the farmer and employee conducted business.  I've no idea what the package included, whether it was mostly the sort of communication skills included in the current notice or whether it was more content oriented.  I'd guess the later.  The current notice reflects, I think the change in the culture over the past decades.

Unusually for me I'm not quibbling or nitpicking the instructions, they're good, at least for the case where there's an arms-length relationship.  [Second thought: to some extent it's the same sort of thing as the procedure for developing individual development plans or the script for a play.  If the actors put their heart into it, it can be great; if they just read it, it's lousy.]