Full Interview with Cenk

Rocky Anderson, former mayor of Salt Lake City, is running for President as a 3rd party candidate. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks happens to agree with Anderson on most of the major issues. Cenk and Anderson discuss the issues and the failings of the establishment candidates in this interview.

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Luis Rodríguez se une a la, Campaña Rocky Anderson 2012, Como vicepresidencia

El como nos tratamos el uno al otro expressa el como somos.  

El pedir mas recortes de impuestos a los ricos significa menos oportunidades de educacion para personas de bajos ingresos. 

Deportar a mas gente que en cualquier momento en la historia de nuestra nacion significa mas familias separadas y una falta de liderazgo en la búsqueda a largo plazo, de soluciones compasivas.

Comparar A Rocky Anderson, Y luis Rodriguez con las opciones políticas habituales:

Rocky Anderson recibió el perfil por primera vez en el Premio al Valor de la Liga de Ciudadanos Latinoamericanos Unidos (LULAC), la mayor organización latina, y el Premio del Presidente de la Asociación Nacional de Publicaciones Hispanas, debido a que:

Como Alcalde de Salt Lake City, demando y con exito desafio (reto) la ley del estado English-only Law (la ley de solo-Ingles)

Hablo en contra de la persecución y deportacion de trabajadores indocumentados en el Aeropuerto de Salt Lake City y creo el programa familia a familia, aliando familias nativas de Salt Lake City a conocer y trabajar con familias inmigrantes cada vez mas desgarradas por la campaña ani-inmigrante del Gobierno federal.

El se ha levantado contra la intolerancia, y apoya soluciones de inmigracion compasivas, con  un camino hacia la residencia legal y ciudadania para los inmigrantes trabajadores y sus familias.

Rocky trabajo durante 15 años como voluntario en las escuelas Guadalupe, que ofrecen oportunidades extraordinarias para los inmigrantes y para los niños de hogares de bajos recursos economicos. tambien ha defendido vigorosamente las alternativas al encarcelamiento en un sistema de justicia penal que lleva a la carcel a latinos y afroamericanos desproporcionadamente. 

Rocky está orgulloso de anunciar que Luis Rodríguez será su vicepresidente. Lea más sobre Luis aquí. 

Luis es un destacado escritor chicano, orador, experto en pandillas e intervencionista, y activista de la justicia en la paz urbana, las artes y los derechos humanos.

Él es co-fundador de la Red para el cambio revolucionario, que trabaja para llenar el vacío de liderazgo estratégico y unificación entre los pobres, los expulsados, los despedidos, y olvidados. 

Él ha escrito quince libros publicados en poesía, ficción, no ficción y la literatura infantil, incluyendo el más vendido en 1993 memoir Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A y su secuela de 2011, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, y Healing. Sus escritos han aparecido en el New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicano Tribune, The Progressive, La revista Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, L.A. Weekly, U.S News & World Report,  Fox News Latino, y el Huffington Post.

Rocky y Luis se han comprometido a utilizar la campaña de Anderson / Rodríguez para dar a conocer las soluciones a los problemas más urgentes de nuestro país, los obstáculos a las soluciones, y lo que el pueblo de los EE.UU. puede hacer - empujando, la organización y movilización en conjunto para - lograr una sociedad más justa, una nación pacífica, y saludable en el mundo.

Por favor, únase a nosotros en esta aventura emocionante. Con su ayuda, podemos lograr un cambio real y positivo, en el interés público.

Rocky Anderson for LGBT Rights

Luis Rodriguez Joins Rocky Anderson's 2012 Campaign As Vice Presidential Running Mate

Click here for Spanish translation.

Luis Rodriguez, a leading Chicano writer, speaker, gang expert and interventionist, and activist for justice in urban peace, the arts, labor, and human rights, has joined Rocky Anderson's 2012 presidential campaign as Anderson’s vice presidential running mate. "The search for a highly competent, dignified, principled running mate has been arduous," Rocky stated.  "Luis exceeds any expectations I had. He will inform, uplift, and motivate in this campaign, just as he does every day in his inspirational work." 

He is a co-founder of the Network for Revolutionary Change, trying to fill the gap of strategic and unified leadership among the poor, the pushed-out, the dismissed, and forgotten.  He's also co-founder of the nonprofit Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore and its publishing wing, Tia Chucha Press, in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.  He has fifteen published books in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and children's literature, including the bestselling 1993 memoir Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. and its 2011 sequel, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing.  His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicano Tribune, The Progressive, Philadelphia Inquirer magazine, The Nation, L.A. Weekly, U.S. News & World Report, Fox News Latino, and the Huffington Post, among others.  He has lived and worked in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Bernardino, and fifteen years in Chicago.  He's now a resident of San Fernando, CA.

For over thirty years Luis conducted workshops, readings, and talks in prisons, juvenile facilities, homeless shelters, migrant camps, universities, public and private schools, conferences, churches, Native American reservations, and men's conferences.

Luis has received the Inner City Struggle of East L.A.’s “Spirit of Struggle”/Ruben Salazar Award; the “Local Hero of Community” Award from KCET-TV of L.A. and Union Bank of California; “Hero of Nonviolence” Award from Rev. Michael Beckwith and the Agape Christian Center in Culver City, CA; and an "Unsung Heroes of Compassion" Award, presented by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

According to Rocky Anderson, who practiced law (including civil rights and constitutional law), served as Mayor of Salt Lake City for eight years, and founded and served as Executive Director of High Road for Human Rights, “Unlike most candidates for high public office, Luis brings with him a wealth of knowledge and real-life experience, inspirational personal growth, and proven commitment to social, economic, and environmental justice. Such justice is an essential element of a nation committed to equal opportunity, peace, and genuine freedom for all.”

Rodriguez stated, "I'm honored to be on this ticket with Rocky Anderson. It's important to find a politically independent means to voice the real issues of justice in this country. The Justice Party comes at a crucial time, when the truth about who holds power and wealth in this country is daily more evident and the failures of the two-party system become increasingly irreparable. This is a vision for a new America, new ideas, new forms of struggle--of true justice in our time and for generations to come."

According to Rodriguez, "The Justice Party is part of a growing movement in the United States for true peace, justice, equity, and dignity.  People are understanding more and more that to have a healthy and full development for each person we need to have the healthy and full development of all."

"My aim in being part of this ticket with Rocky Anderson in the Justice Party is to help spread the conversation in this country about how we need to incorporate more voices, stories, ideas, and people into how we govern and take care of everyone.  Two directions for true justice are to have meaningful, respectful and healthy relations with the environment, the earth, and its bountiful resources.  And to have meaningful, respectful, and healthy relations with each other. "

The Other Rocky

Featured in The Nation

Sasha Abramsky | December 17, 2006

Standing at the top of the imposing stone staircase leading up to the entrance to City Hall on a blustery late August day, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson finishes his speech denouncing George W. Bush, a man he calls "the most dangerous President the country's ever had," a leader he believes has precipitated an "incredible moral crisis" for America. Then, with no police escort, no men with guns protecting him, he bounds down the steps and descends into the five- or six-thousand-strong crowd. He's instantly mobbed. Hundreds of people, gathered to protest the presence of Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice at the American Legion convention in the nearby Salt Lake Palace, push toward him. Many appear desperate simply to catch a glimpse of the thin, medium-height, silver-haired man in the black suit, pressed white shirt and black-and-white-striped tie. They strain forward to shake his hand, to pat his back, to hug him, to talk with him or simply to throw words at him.

"You've got enormous balls!" a woman cries out. Without batting an eye, Anderson, in his deep bass voice, retorts, "Word's got out."

With his chief of staff, Sam Guevara, running ahead and turning back to snap digital photos, Anderson--who claimed to have spent more than thirty hours hunched in front of his computer honing his speech--joins the back end of the demonstration as the crowd proceeds up State Street to the federal building. He detours briefly to argue with some middle-aged women heckling him with bullhorns (at the urgings of state Republican Party leaders, thousands of the state's residents have been calling City Hall in recent days to protest Anderson's planned participation in the demonstration) and then continues walking. At the federal building, protest leaders deliver a petition to the offices of Utah's senators, urging them to begin impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush.

"You should run for President," people keep telling him, as they mill around in front of the heavily guarded federal building. Mindful that this is his last year in office, Anderson doesn't pooh-pooh the sentiment or issue exaggerated disclaimers. Instead he answers, carefully, that you need money to run, that you need a state machine backing you--which, in a place as virulently conservative as Utah, known until fairly recently as "the Mississippi of the West," is not going to happen for Anderson--that you need to know when to shut up and not speak your mind. Successful national politicians listen to handlers and spin doctors, and that's something he won't do.

Clearly, the 55-year-old mayor, a lapsed Mormon with more than a hint of the charismatic preacher about him, has given serious thought to the possibility of trying to become President Ross "Rocky" Anderson. But he's realized that despite the current unpopularity of Republican machine politicians, given the contours of the contemporary electoral system and primary process, a man such as himself can't win. "I'd be torn to pieces," he replies to one of his supporters. "If I thought I could win, I would. This country certainly needs leadership."

In the mid-1990s Rocky Anderson, a successful local attorney and a longtime community activist who sat on the boards of several leading nonprofit organizations in Salt Lake City, ran for an open Congressional seat. To the dismay of Utah's conservative Democratic Party machine, Anderson, who first made ripples in local politics back in the 1970s, when he worked as an attorney with Planned Parenthood to open up Utah's restrictive antiabortion and anticontraception laws, won the primary. In the general election, however, he lost. Shortly afterward, he decided to run for mayor of Salt Lake City, and in 1999 he achieved an upset victory as a doggedly populist, anti-machine candidate.

Over the past seven years, Anderson has transformed the city. While outsiders who know little of the nuances of Utah politics might assume this nerve center for the Church of Latter Day Saints to be a bastion of conservatism, among those who track urban policy trends the city has become synonymous with some of the most creative urban government thinking in the country. In 2005 Anderson became a founding member of the New Cities Project, a group linking progressive mayors from around the country, and one that holds meetings twice a year on the fringes of the US Conference of Mayors.

There is a sort of Camelot-in-the-Wasatch feel to Salt Lake City these days. Many of the mayor's younger staffers, plucked out of activism and into administration by the activist city government, call to mind the Clean-for-Gene college kids who campaigned for Eugene McCarthy in 1968: Dressed smartly, coiffed to a conservative T, many are having their first experience inside the halls of power.

Like his city, the grandiose religious and civic architecture of which points to ambitions for greatness lacking in most midsize urban centers, Anderson thinks big. He has pushed to implement the Kyoto Protocols locally, mandating that all city buildings use energy-efficient light bulbs, replacing SUVs in the city fleet with hybrid cars--his personal car is a Honda Civic that runs on compressed natural gas--almost doubling the city's recycling capacity in one year and starting a program to recapture and use for electricity generation the methane produced at the city's water treatment plant and landfill. "Global warming," he avers, "is clearly the most urgent issue facing our planet--we have an enormous moral obligation to change government policy and incorporate changes in our business and our government and our individual lives. Kant's categorical imperative has never been more applicable."

Largely because of his policies around global warming and the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions locally, in 2005 Anderson was honored with a World Leadership Award in the category of environmental work. In November the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives brought Anderson to a summit at the Sundance Resort, in Utah, to discuss with other mayors ways to reduce urban usage of fossil fuels.

The Salt Lake City mayor has also changed the way city officials interact with their constituents, making his administration one of the most accessible in the country. Once a month, on a Saturday morning, Anderson and his staff, dressed casually, will walk around different neighborhoods, talking with locals and holding open mikes where residents can air their concerns. On Wednesday evenings every few weeks the mayor makes himself available for "one-on-ones" with his constituents. "He has the ability, if there's a social boundary, to break through it," says community liaison staffer Gwen Springmeyer, a longtime probation officer who initially felt the mayor was too out of kilter with the mainstream but who has since become a diehard fan. During the 2002 Winter Olympics, despite the concerns of security experts, the mayor opened up the third floor of City Hall for parties, bringing together world-class athletes with some of the poorest of Salt Lake City's residents. He also rented out the Jewish Community Center for two more parties for locals. In passing, friends mention that he's been known to invite homeless people to sleep in his house.

Anderson has restructured the city's criminal justice system and, suspicious of the tenets of the war on drugs, thrown the Just Say No DARE program out of the city's schools. Instead of pushing for more and more low-end offenders to be sent to jail or prison, he has built one of the country's most innovative restorative justice programs, for which he was nominated for a second World Leadership Award--in December the judges in London announced that Stuttgart, Germany, had edged Anderson's city for the prize. Mental health courts now channel mentally ill criminals into mandatory treatment programs rather than dumping them behind bars; a misdemeanor drug court similarly replaces punishment with treatment; and the city now has one of the most active victim-offender reconciliation programs in America. People arrested for driving under the influence or soliciting prostitutes are sent through a comprehensive course of counseling rather than automatically being handed criminal records.

"I had the most unorthodox interview of my life," Sim Gill, Salt Lake City prosecutor for the past six years, recalls. When Anderson contacted him, Gill, originally from Chandragar, India, was a deputy DA for Salt Lake County and had built a reputation for thinking outside the box when it came to sensible punishments for criminal defendants. "We sat and discussed the meaning of life for the next hour, and ethics, and social responsibility. We connected on a principle of community service; he's very passionate about wanting to solve community problems. The question isn't whether we can fill up our jail beds. The question is, are we filling them up with the right kind of people? Jail should be a place we [only] put people who are a risk to our community."

On other fronts, Anderson has gone out on a limb to defend gay rights and has been an outspoken opponent of wholesale sweeps against illegal immigrants. He has turned the city into one of America's top relocation centers for refugees from war-torn spots of the world.

And last but not least, he has repeatedly taken on big developers, from "sprawl mall" advocates to those in favor of unregulated suburban growth in the large Salt Lake Valley region surrounding the 182,000-strong city itself.

"You do not expect this [these policies] to be coming out of this municipality, out of this state," Gill says. "And therein lies the hope of our political agency. That's what's wonderful about democracy. It is the freedom of dialogue to take hold. The landscape of democracy is always fertile to conversation, and has to be. Anderson's raising issues that need to be talked about. People forget: Democracy requires an ongoing dialogue."

In the corner of the mayor's office in a large cage is a green parrot. (The bird's name is Cardoso, and while Anderson has managed to teach him to do a chicken imitation, so far he's had no luck getting the bird to talk.) On the wall opposite Anderson's desk is a four-image montage of John Kennedy, painted by psychedelic art guru Peter Max. In the outer conference room is another Max quartet, this one a series of images of Anderson, whom the artist counts as a friend. Other objects of note in the office: a photo of City Hall with a gay pride flag hanging on the flagpole outside, a replica of the Olympic rings, articles on Anderson's election victories, a snapshot of the mayor with then-President Bill Clinton.

More than thirty years ago, as an undergraduate at the University of Utah, Anderson studied political philosophy, religious philosophy and ethics. He read books by Sartre and other existentialists, and, he remembers, he had a "powerful epiphany. We can't escape responsibility, there's no sitting out moral decisions, and whenever we refuse to stand up against wrongdoing we're actually supporting the status quo."

Three decades on, the angst of the existentialist student has been channeled into a nova burst of political energy and fury. "I really despise what politics has become in this country," he says. "Our elected officials are normally not leaders. They don't inform themselves. They're not driven by any particular passion on these issues."

He's speaking before the Republicans took a beating in the midterm elections, but his criticisms--of soundbite politics, of decisions via focus groups--aren't simply leveled at Karl Rove and his acolytes. "You can point to maybe two or three people in national politics that you can remotely call leaders." His list is somewhat eclectic: Robert Byrd, Russ Feingold, Joe Biden and Mitt Romney. At the top, however, is the Hamlet figure of Mario Cuomo, the quintessential philosopher-politician whose larger-than-life persona hovered in the background over the Democratic Party in the 1980s and early '90s.

"He's elevated the conversation about a range of issues," says Robert Newman, dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Utah and a friend of the mayor's--they are in a book club together, in which they have read such books as "A Problem From Hell", The Devil in the White City and The Brothers Karamazov. "A lot of people have been very thirsty for that here," says Newman. "His strongest legacy is, we have a not just behind-the-scenes mayor but a mayor who is front and center nationally and internationally. Rocky speaks from the heart. And people respond that way. There's a very visceral reaction to Rocky, whether it's positive or negative."

When Anderson proposed a law stating that the city would favor doing business with companies that paid a living wage to their employees, the conservative state legislature did an end run around this by passing a bill prohibiting municipalities from making contract decisions based on such criteria. He is, according to senior staff, often at loggerheads with councilmen, state legislators and the governor. Some go so far as to say that anything he supports, the legislature will oppose.

For Jeff Hartley, executive director of the Utah Republican Party, Anderson's style, his willingness to critique the Mormon Church, his defense of locally unpopular themes like gay marriage, make him, quite simply, "bombastic. The majority of Utahans take offense at his tone and style. The fact that he'd invite Cindy Sheehan and her brand of anti-Bush campaigning to the state--it seemed quite wrong to a lot of people."

In response to such sentiments, the mayor told the August demonstrators--who had stood through a series of mediocre warm-up speeches while they waited for him to get onstage--"Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism. A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to sit down and be quiet in the name of politeness." The Bush Administration, he continued, was "an oppressive, inhumane regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst President our nation has ever had." Quoting Teddy Roosevelt, he declared that silence in the face of injustice "is morally treasonable to the American public."

When I ask Hartley whether he thinks that it's Anderson's actions instead that border on the treasonous, there's a long pause. Finally he says, "It's one thing to be antiwar, but to do it in a way that undermines respect for the President emboldens the enemy--it makes them think, Why shouldn't they fight against what we're trying to accomplish overseas? Anderson's language is incredibly inflammatory."

Countering Hartley, sculptor and architect Steven Goldsmith--who first met Anderson in the 1970s--believes the mayor's combination of intellectual rigor and straight talking has made him something of "a folk hero of the American West."

When Anderson was elected mayor in 1999, Goldsmith was brought aboard as the city's planning director, with the goal of rejuvenating the downtown--in part by using money leveraged around the upcoming winter Olympics--by expanding the light-rail system, encouraging the creation of vibrant restaurant dining hubs, creating from scratch a premier jazz festival and helping to bring cutting-edge cultural events and speakers to town. The city even instituted a citywide book club. "Once Rocky emerged," the architect recalled, "you couldn't help but listen to this thinker. People attached themselves to Rocky's voice."

Seventy-three-year-old Robert Archuleta, the mayor's now-retired adviser on minority affairs and a longtime organizer among lower-income and minority Utahans, once gave Anderson a statue of Cervantes's Don Quixote, as well as a poem he'd written titled "Don Quijote, el Alcalde?" (Don Quixote, the mayor?). "He kinda reminds me of him. He's fearless," says Archuleta, a short man sitting in his small Westside home on the poor side of town, wearing a white vest, suspenders and gray trousers, his white hair a mass of curls. "When he sees something that is wrong and needs to be fixed, he's just fearless." Another senior employee quotes a Jack London poem, using its description of man as a meteor as a metaphor for the mayor.

"It's a great lesson in social discourse," says Goldsmith of his friend's tenure. "It's a great lesson to the kids of the city to stand up and do what's right. He addresses the social conscience of this community, and there's nobody else here to fill it."

The mayor's combination of pragmatic quality-of-life policies as well as ambitious, even utopian, programs around environmental issues has won him many enthusiastic fans. And his ability to improve Salt Lake City's infrastructure and make local government far more responsive has won him support even among people who do not necessarily sympathize with his outspoken prognostications on national and international politics. That's the formula that has allowed him to win two mayoral races, despite vocal opposition from most of Utah's political leadership.

With only a year left in office for Rocky Anderson, where does he go from here? In a more rational system, Anderson, having more than demonstrated his leadership during eight years in the mayor's office, would be a strong candidate for national office--a viable presidential contender, perhaps, and certainly Cabinet-level material. He would, for example, make a strong Secretary of the Interior. But despite the success of a new breed of Democratic populists in the November midterms, generally America's political system still gives a tremendous edge to machine-backed candidates. Given that he lacks the backing of state and regional party groups--or, to rephrase it, has the misfortune of being a strong liberal in a state and region with conservative party machines--could a man like Anderson, who plans to work on environmental and human rights issues once he leaves City Hall, ever make his way to Washington today?

As we move beyond the midterm elections, gratifying though they were for progressives, and into the next presidential election cycle, that's a crucial question. Clearly, there are leaders of tremendous moral and intellectual caliber out there--Anderson's example shows this, as does the rise of many strong liberals in the incoming Congress. But can the same system that catapulted Bush into the White House raise those people to national prominence at an executive level? Is today's system flexible enough to allow the emergence of national leaders and Cabinet secretaries who are thinkers as well as politicians, men and women of principle as well as ambition? Perhaps, but Anderson and others like him face an uphill path. After all, we have grown used to seeing candidates who appeal to the lowest common denominators in our politics win.

Rocky Anderson will likely never attain national office; but perhaps his most important legacy will be showing the country that voters, in some places, do make lofty choices when presented with truly inspiring candidates.

 

Rocky's 4th of July Message

Celebrating, by honoring, the Fourth of July

 Hear Rocky Anderson, interviewed by Mitchell Rabin, call for a restoration of the rule of law, the application of fundamental constitutional principles, and the urgent need to rein in the imperial presidency ramped up during the Bush/Obama years.

Listen to Rocky's Independence Day message.

Please share the following with your friends and family, and especially with young people who too often have not learned the basics about history, our Constitution, and their role in preserving our Republic:

The Fourth of July is a time of celebration for the principles underlying the Declaration of Independence: 

• All people are created equal. 
• All of us are endowed with unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.   
• Governments are instituted to secure those rights and they derive their “just powers from the consent of the governed.”  

We often take these ideas for granted, but they are profound and very different than the principles guiding governments in many other nations.

The Constitution provides for a constrained government, with limited powers, and a separation of power among three co-equal branches of government – the courts, the Congress, and the Executive Branch.  Each branch is to provide a check against abuses by the other branches. 

At the core of the Constitution is a commitment to the principle that what is allowed or disallowed is determined by the rule of law, not by the dictates of one person or a cabal of a few people.   

The Constitution was created to “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”   

However, these documents are not sufficient for the fulfillment of their grand promises and principles.  Without constant diligence by each generation, our nation is at risk of transformation into a tyranny, where our liberties are lost, where an imperial presidency assumes dictatorial powers, and where, bit by bit, the principles upon which our nation was founded are eroded.

As he was leaving the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, Ben Franklin was asked by a woman, “Well, doctor, what do we have – a monarchy or a republic?”  Franklin responded, “A republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.”

That is the challenge for every generation.  Constant vigilance is essential for liberty and the preservation of our republic. 

We must face the truth: As a nation, we are now doing a very poor job of preserving our Republic and our freedoms, which, in earlier times, distinguished the United States from authoritarian regimes in other nations. Consider the following:

War Power

The War Power Clause of the Constitution makes it clear that Congress, not the President, has the sole power to decide whether to go to war.  Yet, without a congressional determination that our country should engage in war, President Bush illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, a nation that posed no danger to the United States.

Without any authorization from Congress, President Obama has ordered military strikes against Libya, as well as killings from bombs delivered by drones (which have resulted in the murder of innocent civilians – men, women, and children) – all of which are acts of war – in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. 

All of this has been in blatant violation of the War Power Clause, yet when these usurpations have been challenged in our judicial system, the courts have, in derogation of their constitutional responsibilities, begged off, refusing to decide the vital constitutional issues on the purported basis that they are “political questions”.  

Due Process

The Due Process Clause of the Constitution provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.  However, without any semblance of due process, President Obama has targeted U.S. citizens for assassination.  President Bush was justifiably criticized for kidnapping, disappearing, and torturing people in violation of domestic and international law.  Now, President Obama skips the kidnapping and incarceration and simply has them killed. 

In 2009, Obama argued he should have the power to indefinitely detain people because they might – in the future – prove to be a danger to the United States.  On New Year’s Eve (2011-2012), Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”), which provides that our government can kidnap people and detain them indefinitely, up to the rest of their lives, without any charges, trial, legal assistance, or right of habeas corpus.  The NDAA is perhaps the most un-American, subversive statute ever passed by Congress and signed into law by any U.S. president.

Separation of powers and the constitutional system of checks and balances.

The separation of power and the system of checks and balances provided for in our Constitution has been eviscerated.  As the President has assumed more and more dictatorial powers, Congress has stood timidly by and the courts have, in several instances, simply dodged their vital constitutional duties. 

Congress has passed laws, then instead of the President vetoing them and providing the opportunity for Congress to override the veto, Presidents Bush and Obama have unconstitutionally issued “signing statements,” indicating that they will not abide by the legislation.  Instead of abiding by the principle that “no person is above the law,” they seem to endorse the tyrannical sentiment of Richard Nixon that “when the President does it, that means it is not illegal.”  

That assertion of dictatorial powers has been most clearly demonstrated when people in the Executive Branch (including the president) have violated federal laws by engaging in abuses such as torture and warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens’ communications, in violation of federal statute and the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.  When the illegal conduct has been challenged in federal court, the Executive Branch has asserted the court-made “state-secrets” doctrine, arguing that the court must dismiss the cases to prevent the disclosure of important state secrets.  Hence, the very perpetrator of criminal acts (i.e. the Executive Branch) is allowed to dictate to the courts whether the perpetrator can be held accountable under the law. 

Equal Protection of the Laws

Consistent with the observation in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” is the provision in the Constitution requiring the equal protection of the laws.  However, President Obama, who delayed until 2012 his utterance in support of marriage equality, still asserts that equal treatment under the law for gays and lesbians who want to marry is solely a matter for the states to decide.  Apparently, for Obama, federal protections for equal treatment under the law are appropriate for people of different races or religions, but not for members of the GLBT community.  That is a betrayal of equal treatment under the law, a core value of our Constitutional system.

The principle of equal treatment under the law has also been betrayed by the creation of a two-tiered system of justice, where the rich and powerful are not held accountable under the law, while everyone else is subjected to full accountability, sometimes with a vengeance (as under our Draconian drug laws, which have resulted in the incarceration of more people in the U.S. than are incarcerated for all crimes throughout Western Europe).  Among those who President Obama and his administration have excused from any accountability for their crimes are torturers, those responsible for illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, and Wall Street criminals who committed massive fraud contributing to the economic crippling of millions of people throughout our nation.

The Supreme Law of the Land

Article 6 of the Constitution provides that the supreme law of the land is the Constitution, laws passed by Congress, and treaties ratified by the United States Senate.  That constitutional mandate, insofar as it relates to treaties, is now treated with disdain, as if our treaty commitments are optional, depending on the dictates of the President. 

For instance, President Bush determined that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to certain instances of torture authorized by him.  The Supreme Court held he was wrong. 

President Obama declared that, as to illegal torture and warrantless surveillance, he would not seek to have anyone held accountable under federal criminal laws, saying we should look forward and not backward.  That, of course, severely undermines the rule of law. 

Tyranny is the proper label for one who purports to determine against whom the law will be applied and under what circumstances.  In the case of torture, President Obama has aggravated the situation by ignoring the mandate in the Convention Against Torture, which requires every signatory nation to prosecute cases of torture as they do other serious offenses.  Obama’s failure to hold people accountable for authorizing or engaging in torture is itself a violation of the Convention Against Torture. 

Perhaps the most important treaty obligation is the duty to refrain from wars of aggression under the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the United Nations Charter.  A war of aggression is comprised of military aggression against another nation that has not attacked, or is not about to attack, the aggressor nation.  For a violation of that international prohibition, people were tried and convicted for aggressive war at the Nuremberg Tribunal. 

President Bush cavalierly disregarded the prohibition in attacking and occupying Iraq and President Obama has continued our nation’s tragic pattern of disregard of the prohibitions against aggressive war by ramping up the war in Afghanistan and ordering drone killings in sovereign nations that pose no threat of harm to the United States.

As is evident, our Constitution is being blatantly violated in many ways by those who are sworn to uphold it – and, in the process, our Republic is being transformed into an international outlaw, with a president that has exercised unprecedented abusive powers, a Congress that is sound asleep at the constitutional switch, and courts that too often step aside and find excuses for not deciding important constitutional questions.

On this Fourth of July, let us keep this in mind: Blindly following leaders who disregard the Constitution and undermine the rule of law is not patriotism.  In fact, it is a betrayal of the values that gave rise to our country’s founding and for which so many have fought and died.

Here’s to each of us doing all that is required to keep our Republic. 

 

For liberty and justice for all,

 

Rocky Anderson

 

 

Volunteers Petition to Add Presidential Candidate Rocky Anderson to the Arkansas Ballot

You may not see Rocky Anderson campaigning for President door to door in Arkansas right now, but his volunteers are here trying to get enough signatures to put him on the ballot. Anderson is a former two term mayor of Salt Lake City.

He's a Progressive, who's running as an Independent for President.

He accepts no corporate contributions.

Some of his volunteers have been here for one week.

They've gathered 700 of the 1,000 signatures they need to get Anderson on the Arkansas ballot.

One of Anderson's volunteers says "but we find a lot of the people that sign that the only two choices they have are two party candidates they are just choosing the lesser of two evils and that's no way to be. "

Anderson is also an attorney. He is also founder and Executive Director of High Road for Human Rights.

Rocky Redux