Obama: You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the courts, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples -- so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order, and as long as I could pay for it I'd be OK. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted.  And one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that. 

 

Caller (Karen): The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn't terribly radical with economic changes. My question: is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically, and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place? 

 

Host: You mean the courts? 

 

Caller (Karen): The courts, or would it be legislation at this point? 

 

Obama: Maybe I'm showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. Y'know, the institution just isn't structured that way.  You look at very rare examples where during the desegregation era where the court was willing to, for example, order changes that cost money to local school districts, and the court was very uncomfortable with it. It was hard to manage, it was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, y'know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.  The courts just not very good at it, and politically it's very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So, I mean, I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally, y'know I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.   

 

Link to audio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck  (Listen for yourself.) 

 
    

Related information:

Tax Foundation Data   (as of July 18, 2008)

Who Pays	What they pay
Top 1%	Pay 39% of all taxes
Top 5%	Pay 60% of all taxes
Top 50%	Pay 97% of all taxes
Bottom 50%	Pay 2.99% of all taxes

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/250.html

Frank Marshall Davis: Obama’s Communist Mentor
(according to Obama's book: "Dreams of My Father")

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-communist-mentor/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Marshall_Davis George McGovern’s article “My Party Should Respect Secret Union Ballots” (but it doesn’t)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121815502467222555.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

 

Dean: One-Party Rule would Rule

http://www.rollcall.com/news/29568-1.html 
 
Obama Took Millions in in Illegal Foreign Donations
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_illegal_donors/2008/10/29/145612.html?s=al&promo_code=6F6F-1 

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Other links:

  

False Profits - False Prophet

Barack Obama's "neighbors"

Require Obama to produce proof of citizenship

 

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It's up to the people to spread the word. The media is corrupted by a blinding partisanship and a need to conceal their own incompetence.

Posted by restorerepresentation@gmail.com