Life in the Third Layer

Webb

Originally uploaded by Thirdlayer.

Photo from the rally on Thursday morning – I was at work and couldn’t go, but Kim posted photos!

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Originally uploaded by Thirdlayer.

Churches under the constitutions of the United States and of Virginia enjoy a tax exempt status. They relinquish that status when they become political action committees and tell people how to vote.

It may be good that churches are getting into this, since there is significant property and income there, and if it were taxable we might have a hope of paying off the bill for the Iraq war in the lifetimes of our children’s children.

Maybe that is what they mean by “protect the children.”

From the New York Times, Republican Woes Lead to Feuding by Conservatives By David D. Kirkpatrick:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 — Tax-cutters are calling evangelicals bullies. Christian conservatives say Republicans in Congress have let them down. Hawks say President Bush is bungling the war in Iraq. And many conservatives blame Representative Mark Foley’s sexual messages to teenage pages.

I guess it is possible they could all be right, right?

If someone gave me an old piano and it did not work and I had to hire someone to haul it off, I would call that paying someone to haul something off, not selling a piano at a loss. But nobody ever gave me stock options. How much would you expect to pay someone to haul off some old stock options that somebody gave you? Reported on Yahoo news, AP: Allen didn’t disclose stock options by Sharon Theimer and Bob Lewis, AP writers:

Allen’s office said he sold his Xybernaut stock at a loss and has not cashed in his Commonwealth options because they cost more than the stock is now worth. The senator also said he saw no conflict going to work for companies shortly after assisting them as governor.

Then there is the one that did work:

In interviews, Allen and his staff sought to play down his corporate dealings, saying they were a good learning experience but did not lead to extraordinary riches — except for a quarter-million-dollar windfall from Com-Net Ericsson stock.

I hear that Allen said this was really not a lot of money, but I would like to point out that it is just over 23 times the annual income of a person working at minimum wage and about 14 times the annual income for a family of 4 living close to the top edge of the poverty level in Virginia. Lets see, that is 56 people for a year– housing, food, clothing, transportation, school supplies, health insurance, medical care, Christmas presents…
I guess the perspective changes depending upon where you are on the L Curve.

For people who can’t find or don’t have time to look up the current Virginia law on same-sex marriages, here is the current law now in effect, quoted from the Code of Virginia:

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+20-45.2
§ 20-45.2. Marriage between persons of same sex.
A marriage between persons of the same sex is prohibited. Any marriage entered into by persons of the same sex in another state or jurisdiction shall be void in all respects in Virginia and any contractual rights created by such marriage shall be void and unenforceable.
(1975, c. 644; 1997, cc. 354, 365.)
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+20-45.3
§ 20-45.3. Civil unions between persons of same sex.
A civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage is prohibited. Any such civil union, partnership contract or other arrangement entered into by persons of the same sex in another state or jurisdiction shall be void in all respects in Virginia and any contractual rights created thereby shall be void and unenforceable.
(2004, c. 983.)

Here is the new proposed amendment to the Constitution:

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgibin/legp504.exe?061+ful+HJ41
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 41
Offered January 11, 2006
Prefiled January 6, 2006
Proposing an amendment to Article I of the Constitution of Virginia by adding a section numbered 15-A, relating to marriage.
Patrons– Marshall, R.G., Byron, Cosgrove and Nixon
Referred to Committee on Privileges and Elections
WHEREAS, a proposed amendment to the Constitution of Virginia, hereinafter set forth, was agreed to by a majority of the members elected to each of the two houses of the General Assembly at the regular session of 2005 and referred to this, the next regular session held after the 2005 general election of members of the House of Delegates, as required by the Constitution of Virginia; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the following amendment to the Constitution of Virginia be, and the same hereby is, proposed in conformity with the provisions of Section 1 of Article XII of the Constitution of Virginia, namely:
Amend Article I of the Constitution of Virginia by adding a section numbered 15-A as follows:
ARTICLE I
BILL OF RIGHTS
Section 15-A. Marriage.
That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.
This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage. Nor shall this Commonwealth or its political subdivisions create or recognize another union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage.

I am not a lawyer, but I can read. I will vote “No” to the proposed amendment.
First of all, the proposed amendment does not guarantee a right to anyone, and is therefore not properly placed in the Bill of Rights section of the Virginia Constitution. If you read that section of the Constitution, you will see that it does not belong there. Article 1, the Bill of Rights, deals with equality and citizens’ rights: insures free elections; prohibits excessive bail and fines and cruel and unusual punishment; guarantees due process of law, rights of people to assemble, freedom of religion, and the actual rights of people that democratic government is supposed to guarantee. It states what government cannot do to citizens. It does not in any case or in any way impose any sectarian or dogmatic agenda except that of democracy — representative government and rights of citizens. This proposed amendment is something different. It is a legal definition of marriage and a restriction upon the rights of citizens. It is a point of law, and, since it has been properly passed by the elected officials of the state, it is already included in the laws of Virginia in the two articles that are quoted above. There is not a place in the Constitution for matters of this sort. Terms and definitions of contractual and customary relationships between people are properly a part of the Code of Virginia, the law of the Commonwealth, and (quoted above) the Code already contains the provisions of the proposed Constitutional amendment.
In view of the fact that the law already exists in Virginia, I think it is necessary for Virginians to consider why their elected officials are spending so much time and money trying to enact a law that is already on the books.
I am voting “No” also because the proposed amendment extends the definition of prohibited relationships beyond the current law, which prohibits only same-sex marriage and civil union. The proposed amendment says that the state may not “recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage.” Now help me out here, folks. There are domestic partnerships that are not one man and one woman married to each other for life that in fact need legal recognition: an unmarried mother with children, an unmarried father with children, an elderly parent with an unmarried (or married) child, two elderly people of the same sex who pool their resources to maintain a better lifestyle and look after one another, two elderly people of opposite sex who pool their resources and look after one another (and may on occasion, shall we say, approximate the design of marriage in other ways like going out to Hardees for breakfast). The proposed amendment calls into question whether statutes that apply to families and households regarding health care, domestic violence, and other domestic considerations would be held to apply to these domestic arrangements. The proposed law in fact prohibits the state from recognizing or giving any legal status to these households.
I would also like to point out that most of the households that are not within the proposed narrow definition of a family (one man and one woman, married to each other) are headed by women. The proposed law is therefore more likely to do harm to the social and economic well-being of women as a group — many of them caring for minor children or elderly parents — than to have any impact upon the gay and lesbian community, who are already disadvantaged by the law in its current form (quoted above).
I stand as well with the majority of Virginians who do not support discrimination against gays and lesbians. I fully believe that the sacrament of marriage is the province of religion, and government should leave it alone. Good government, serving the interest of all citizens, should approve civil unions. I have been unable to understand from the outset how it benefits a society to proscribe and attempt to prohibit stable arrangements between citizens who happen to be gay or lesbian. A church creates its own dogma from its own resources — scripture, talks with God, etc. — and under the Bill of Rights has a right to do so. Under the same Bill of Rights, no church can be “established,” which means that the dogma of a particular church cannot be made the law of the land. The sponsors of the proposed amendment do not name the Southern Baptists in their proposed legislation, but they do propose to make into law a definition of family that is distinctly Southern Baptist and distinctly not derived from any other source.
I always vote, and on this issue my vote is “No.”

I have been listening to the fear campaign that accompanies the approach of elections, and it appears that our government actually believes that terrorism is the biggest threat to human civilization.
I decided that I was willing to bet that there were bigger threats to human beings than terrorism. Just off the top of my head, I came up with the notion that probably the number one worldwide killer of human beings was poverty and its associated mix of poor living conditions and lack of access to medical care. In this frame of mind, I went to my Google guru and put in the phrase “death toll of poverty,” and up came a whole raft of more or less associated information.
One of the links went to a geocities home page for Donald McBride. I kept skating around his reference links, particularly the ones on death rates , and I discovered that in 2002 worldwide terrorism was not in the top 20. Road traffic accidents was number 10, and number 14 was self-inflicted.
Here at home in the USA, the top ranked cause of death is disease, with 749 deaths per 100,000 in 2001, and we are allowed to note that death from disease is possibly poverty-related. Number 4 is natural disaster with 0.2 per 100,000, and as we saw in New Orleans, natural disaster is not an effect of poverty, but death from natural disaster is related to poverty. War is blamed for 5.7 deaths per 100,000 from 1941 to 2004. Terrorism hits the chart at 0.06 deaths per 100,000 from 1982 to 2004.
So I am going to go out on a limb here and state that terrorism is not our biggest problem. Too bad we couldn’t get a government that was obsessed with getting everyone medical insurance or planning evacuation procedures for people who can’t hop in their SUV.
Much thanks to Donald McBride for the site!

A couple of days ago I met two Virginians who hadn’t even heard that George Allen — in a stump speech, no less — used a common racial slur in speaking about and to a dark-skinned young photographer in his audience. Information on the topic abounds, but they only watch FOX. I was already a Jim Webb supporter, and I was already a George Allen opponent before Jim Webb was a candidate, so I can’t say the incident cost Allen my vote. It was never his to lose.
Still, I am always amazed at the persistence of ignorance and always grateful to those who will not only seek out information but will share it.
Jeffrey Feldman at the the Frameshop has done the Google research on the word Allen used:

‘Macaca’ or ‘macaque’ is a nasty racial epithet alright. It is often used by American white supremacists to describe black people. In Belgium, it is a racial slur for ‘dirty arab.’

The article is worth reading in its entirety, along with the comments that have been posted. It concludes:

The term ‘macaque’–also pronounced ‘mukakkah’–is a commonly used racial slur on par with the word ‘nigger’ in the united states.
In Europe, the word ‘macaque’ is largely a racial slur used to insult people of North African descent. It is roughly synonomous with ‘dirty arab.’
Most of the results that came back in these searches took me to well known white supremacy websites–and to posts from the past two or three years. So this is a phrase that is still in use.

We heard George Allen say that he used the word innocently, claiming that he did not know what it meant. I don’t believe this is possible.
Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger agrees:

If Allen had a sterling record on civil rights, perhaps he’d be given the benefit of the doubt. But he doesn’t — we’re talking about the same George Allen who revered the Confederate flag during his political career, opposed a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King, referred to the NAACP as an “extremist group,” issued a Confederate History Month proclamation, calling the Civil War “a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights,” and kept a noose alongside a Confederate flag in his law office.

And now, quoting from Bob Lewis, Associated Press, on the CBS website, after we have all seen the video that “shows him [Allen] pointing to Sidarth and singling him out for derision” and we have seen that he “smiled as he needled Sidarth, seemingly enjoying the moment, ” George Allen has sought out this young man and apologized personally. The GOP thinks this is enough:

GOP strategists agreed that Allen has damaged himself, but the incident need not doom him politically.
“Senator Allen needs to make it clear that he made a mistake, that this was obviously something he should not have done,” said Mike Mahaffey, a former Iowa Republican Party chairman.
Iowa’s nominating caucuses rely on one-to-one politics, giving Allen a chance to personally appeal to voters and convince them the incident was an aberration.
“If he can come across as sincere in that regard, it will not hamper him in Iowa,” said Mahaffey, a GOP activist with a law practice in Montezuma, Iowa.

As mistakes go, this is the kind kids in fifth grade make, and we ask them to apologize and we forgive them. We even hope the kid they pointed to will forgive. But George Allen isn’t in the fifth grade. His disregard for people who are not of his own class and color is apparent. To forgive this kind of “mistake” in the context of a Senate race is an error in judgement.
And as for the GOP activist Mahaffey, note well that he is not asking George Allen to give a sincere apology. He is only asking him to “come across as sincere.” He knows as well as I do that an “appearance” is the best Allen will be able to give.