Who got to take our stuff

Congress used to allow what were called earmarks – designations in spending bills for projects in the lawmaker’s home district. Earmarks were a way to bargain a lawmaker into supporting a spending bill. But the process was abused, such as members slipping items into a bill under the cover of darkness to help a particular corporate donor. The public outcry got loud. So earmarks were banned. They’re back now and called “member-directed spending” along with rules for more transparency to cut down on abuse. A big infrastructure bill is a good and appropriate place for MDS. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that more than 100 House Republicans have requested projects in the current infrastructure bill. They were approved. Yet, many of these same members are bellowing about their opposition to the bill. So, when the bill passes along party lines, these Republicans get a twofer. They get to proclaim their opposition to the bill and they get to brag how much money they’re bringing back to their district through a bill they voted against. Wrote McCarter:

In other words, "my stuff is essential and wonderful but yours is bulls--- and costs too much." But the bill is going to pass anyway without his vote, so who's the sucker here?

McCarter is implying the suckers are the Democrats. On July 2 the NPR show Morning Edition continued a 32 year tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on a day close to July 4th. This year was slightly different. In addition to reading the full text and in memory of the racial protests over the last year the NPR staff acknowledged the bad parts of the declaration. There’s the famous parts we all learned and remember – the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness thing – but even in the famous parts is the problematic “all men are created equal.” We usually don’t remember much of the document is a list of grievances against King George III of Britain. Thomas Jefferson wrote it and the Continental Congress edited it. Southerners demanded removal of criticism of the African slave trade. But a reference to “merciless Indian Savages” was kept. David Treuer, who is Ojibwe, was on the show.

But a deeper look at history also shows that one of the reasons why the colonists wanted to rise up against the British — and wage the Revolutionary War — was over the question of who would try to colonize Native lands west of the colonies, Treuer tells Morning Edition. "The crown wanted that money for themselves. The colonists, understandably, would have preferred to have it for themselves. So the whole revolution was in large part fought over who got to take our stuff," he says. He also notes that Native people helped the colonists in the Revolutionary War. "It was the Oneida people who broke the famine at Valley Forge, who taught the revolutionaries with George Washington, how to process Indian corn so that it was digestible and nutritious," he says. "So I think it's safe to say that war would been difficult to win without our help."

Much of the rest of this post is the text of the Declaration divided up by which host or reporter read which part. Cliff Albright, cofounder of Black Voters Matter, tweeted about the recent Supreme Court decision that gutted the last pillar of the Voting Rights Act:

They're *literally* using the same rationales used post-Reconstruction to protect "the purity of the ballot". Regarding racial justice & voting rights in particular, the Roberts Court will be remembered much as the Taney Court & the late 1800s courts that decided Plessy & others.

In a tweet that’s been hiding in my browser tabs for a month, Chuck Modi, justice journalist, wrote:

Most subjective journalists in the world are the ones who claim to be objective, & are usually advocates for existing power. Majority of subjectivity is in: 1—Story Selection 2—Story Framing Even if you play 3–Story Content straight up, most subjectivity has already occurred.