@ Darkcorp - that your father is a small business owner means he's middle class.
Its either the rich or the ruling class. Pick your poison. Not likely that you will see a poor person oppress a rich person.
As for people working more than ten hours? Consider the great number of poor folks who work two jobs to support their families- I would say quite a lot. Given that real wages have gone down since the 1970s, things have gotten worse for the poor.
Check out Freakonomics- the chapter on Crack Dealers- and how little they get paid and how few jobs there are for them. They're not selling Crack because it pays better, because most of them make less than they would at McDonald's. the problem is, they can't get that job.
As the Boss says, "All men want to be rich, rich men want to be king, and the king ain't satisfied till he rules everything."
For all this nonsense that Obama is elitist- what they are really saying is that he's educated. One doesn't get born by single mother, raised by working class grandparents, and then work his way to law school and becomes an elite. Ironic that McCain and Hillary call him an elite, when the Clintons have made over $100 million over the last seven years, and McCain's wife stands to inherit a fortune. This while Obamas have just finished paying off student loans.
@ Mik- Prosecuting Attorneys on this side of the ocean who withhold evidence are at risk of being disbarred. In this case, the person is at risk of doing jail time.
Yes, you're right that the Courts can make law, but mostly its through the interpretation of either the law or statutes that are unclear. The Right to Free Speech, for instance, is not without limits. Who gets equal protection, etc.
And that's where the courts in the US are somewhat distinct from the political process- at least in the federal system. Once in office, the judges remain. They are not subject to political control. This allows them to interpret the law and the constitution in ways that might not be kosher with the popular opinion, but which continue to make legally logical sense and which prevents what the Framer's called, "The tyranny of the majority."
Example of the "tyranny of the majority" the Republican attack against giving gays the right to marriage (and calling it a "defense of marriage' = clever packaging). It is the Courts that cracked open discrimination with Brown 1 and Brown 2, and it was the courts that have interpreted the Equal Protection Clause to extend the same rights to everyone.
Because it only took 100 years from the Civil War to the Voting Rights Act that Blacks really got the chance to vote and access to political power.
In the meantime- political disempowerment means social and economic inferiority. Why? Because whites didn't want to share buses, schools and other public servants with Blacks. Police repression (such as the DA in this case) or Jim Crow or the lynchings, were all means to keep Blacks repressed by dominant white society. Which is even better if you're rich and white, because this way you can keep poor whites and poor blacks against each other-
Divide and conquer.
And it was the Court, acting as the guardian of the Constitution, that pushed that when politically it was very difficult to do. Congress may allow majorities to rule, but the Court protects the interests of the individual and the minority.
Affirmative Action was designed to address the consequence of 100 years of doing little to change the relationship between races and overcome that political disempowerment and economic distribution that had favored whites over blacks.
And why? Because you have peaceful Martin Luther King campaigning for Civil Rights (and gets assassinated for it) and then you have the Panthers and other less peaceful groups who were willing to use violence to further their rights. Given that choice- ethnic violence or ethnic compromise- the decision to go with compromise was the right one.
But what about worker rights? Or the rights of the poor? You ask why the union movement never picked up.
Short answer- the US is predominantly a rural and agricultural country. Yes we have big cities, but the days of manufacturing were fairly short-lived (the industrial revolution through the 1960s and since then we've been moving to services). Furthermore manufacturing was concentrated in various regions that were geographically seperate. Small farmers, in contrast, work their land with their hands- these are not folks that will not sympathize with an ideology that promises to take away their meager property.
In Europe you have a highly urbanized population and you had union workers who were able to become politicized. In Europe, the far left is communism and socialism is more of a moderate response. But in the US you have very powerful rural classes and, until the last 20 years or so, lots of small farmers. Communism wouldn't have survived and Socialism was unpopular.
As they did everywhere, unions organized because capital owners exploited them. Constitutional Law prior to the New Deal has countless cases of labor abuse that are shocking even today.
Note that while the Unions were organizing, Blacks were also campaigning for equal rights- so you had already a divided lower class.
Similar currents in Europe are being felt in the US. Anarchism leads to the assassination of leaders in Europe and the US. But Communism becomes a real threat, and leads to two Red Scares. Many of the leading Free Speech cases on political speech begins with the government wrestling with how much freedom should they allow to Communist organizers.
But as communism becomes seen as a threat in the US- Russian Revolution, Red Scare, Rise of leftists during the Great Depression and then the Second Red Scare that occurs along with the development of the Cold War, communist leaders are becoming hugely unpopular and then purged.
(If you read Dashell Hammett's Red Harvest, you see a bit of the politics of small towns and the small communist/union movement- and what happens).
With the end of the communist leadership of unions, than another power fills the vacuum of union leadership. Sometimes that was organized crime.
But the long story short- unions were never popular in the US because, I suspect, small farmers and rural America didn't see the purpose.
As for whose court is better. Generally, I am against courts where the judges get elected as the court's job is to interpret the law, not play to public opinion. WHich is the better system? In the US some jurisdictions allow for the election of judges. In others (the federal system) the judge has to be appointed and reviewed.
What I see of the civil system is that the courts are more the agent of the state- the appliers of what the legislatures decree. In the US, the courts do that too, but they have more flex to apply the law . But even here they must abide by precedent- so the courts are inherently conservative institutions.
Whether this allows the institutions to be abused-
Institutions are created by social actors who engage in on-going conflicts over material gains. We can interpret those material gains broadly to include economic wealth and politial power. Institutions are the consequence of those battles, an occassionally, those compromises.
@Neamos-
"This person"?
@AH-Teen- a less kind Admin would ban you, so be careful. We may not be back in the days when Admins banned for simple stupidity, but mind your words.
Have you been to Alabama? I have. Montgomery, home of Martin Luther King's Church, where Rosa Parks took a bus ride, where the battle lines of the Civil Rights Movement happened, remains a divided city between those who celebrate the Civil Rights movement and those who glorify the Civil War and the Seperate but Equal. And the city is split in half demographically.
That you don't get affirmative action and what the purpose it, is understandable. It is racist. But its also meant to be a self-correcting device, to overcome economic and political marginalization that occurred for 100 years and which require a Voting Rights Act, Brown v Board, a Civil Rights Movement and which led to the burning of cities.
White had a simple choice- they could either do this peacefully and build that world that Martin Luther King dreamed of, or they could live in the world where Black Militants were shooting white cops. Either the country got past the racial divisions or it fought over them. That was the basic choice. Affirmative Action was the right one.
And in the process- it worked. Despite what you say 30 years haven't done anything... that's wrong. Back in the 1960s the great majority of Blacks were living in poverty. Now, roughly 1/3 of blacks live in poverty and most have entered the middle class with a few making it to the upper class. More blacks might have been able to climb out of poverty except for two things- Crack in the late 1980s early 1990s that turned back two decades of social-economic advancement and the Bush administration.
Of course white racists want to control the state. The state is an institution for the mobilization of bias with a monopoly of legitimate bias. It is the mechanism through which ruling classes further their hegemony. Happily, most of the racists asshole are too stupid or incompetent to be an effective challenge (although it is interesting to note that the number of such movements has increased over the last 7 years while W and company and their "war on terror" have turned a blind eye to far right militants).
"Tax Breaks for the Rich" hasn't worked twice- Under Reagan and Bush. Both cases led to recession and both cases led to deficits. Only when you taxed the rich did you have really sustainable economic development and a decrease in inequality for everyone. That's why Hilary is so popular among the blue collar workers- because their quality of life was better than under idiot Bush.
And if you don't see that the Republican game is about divide and conquer- than you're foolish or blind. That Bush's financial supporters came from the top 1/10 of the top 1% and while his electoral support came from generally poor but conservative Christians - allowing him to win in 04.
You don't believe the poor are oppressed? No one is so blind as those who shall not see. I teach at a public university and get kids from both rich (predominantly white) neighborhoods and poor (predominantly black) neighborhoods. I have a lot of respect for my black students who work really hard to get ahead. But they are definitely behind in terms of education background before they even get to college.
And why? Because there is no right to an equal education-
San Antonio School District vs Rodriques basically said that being poor was not a suspect class and there was no civil right to an education.
Conservative Court decision means that if you're poor you're fucked.
Which corresponds with the fact that over the last 40 years, Americans have been enjoying fewer civil rights. Doubt it? Check out the history of Constitutional cases.
Simply-
Conservative Courts are appointed by Republicans = fewer individual rights.
You don't want to hear that Whites oppress Blacks? What? Like the DA in the case above? You mean the whole history of Jim Crow is fiction?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
We call it Jim Crow. But internationally it has another name- Apartheid.
You're argument- poor are poor because they don't know how to live. So I guess you're arguing tha the poor deserve to be poor because they're just stupid? And the entire conditions of their existence doesn't seem to matter? That your chances of climbing the social ladder are much harder if you're poor than rich?
Bullshit.
"They are given every opportunity to succeed?" Yeah.... with all the social spending that has been cut in the last 15 years, with an administration that won't give health care to poor kids.
Every opportunity? Get your head out of your ass. Seriously, "Happy workers are well paid and treated fairly." What bullshit.
Real wages have gone down over 30 years. That's why we're talking about social class and why the workers are so pissed off, and why W and the Republicans are so unpopular.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Racism-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
!!!!!! Not everyone agrees with you. Nether do most things I've read. Especially studies on poor put out by leftist groups. But you wont read them because those in power of the left, Just like those in power of the right, don't want you to read stuff that makes them look bad.
