A more perfect union (Speech by Senator Obama Mar 18, 2008

A prelude to restarting the dialog on the principle of equality and the reality of racism and discrimination. Senator Obama shows the courage of his conviction , no matter the precipitant, how the country systematically contributed to groups of people's pervasive poverty and marginalization of African Americans.

Posted By Editor On March 18, 2008 @ 10:27 am In Campaign 2008 | 563 Comments

Here, the full text of Sen. Barack Obama’s speech, “A More Perfect Union,” as prepared for delivery.

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

Why the Fed's rate cuts won't help you (common man)

(parenthesis mine) Been thinking about "bail outs, lending crisis, bottoming out of the housing market, the depreciating dollar. "Yesterday on the drive to the city, I listened to a conversation "Where Does the Money Go?, Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis" with authors Jean Johnson and Scott Bittle at KPFA's morning show. The authors spoke on the Federal Deficit, the Medicare crisis, the minute impact on the war in Iraq/Iran has on the whole picture of the USA economic decline, and the pentagon budget. What was salient for me is the point of Americans willingness (unwillingness) to pay additional taxes, cut spending, and resolve priorities by establishing them. Here included below is a more pointed perspective for the "middle class" to chew on, it seems many are deluded into believing "someday they will ascend to wealth" and benefit as the "truly rich" can only benefit.

http://kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=25326

Why the Fed's rate cuts won't help you

In its efforts to keep irresponsible bankers on Wall Street afloat, the Federal Reserve is spurring inflation, crippling the dollar and cutting into retirees' incomes. And mortgages and car loans won't get any cheaper.

By Jon Markman

The Federal Reserve today continued its attempt to get out in front of the worst financial crisis to hit the world banking system in five decades by slashing short-term interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, to 2.25%, the lowest level since 2004.

But the Fed's effort will have little effect on the ability of the average American to get a cheap loan for a new home, car or college education even as it has a large effect on U.S. banks' ability to fix their balance sheets by racking up fat profits.

If that sounds unfair, welcome to the latest episode of a brutal new American business ethic, in which the government bails out bad bets by risk-taking banking executives in New York with money that it borrows from middle-class families and foreign investors. The effort is gilded with fancy financial language and cloaked in the guise of a rescue that helps all citizens, but the reality is that Washington is essentially robbing the poor to help the rich.

It seems odd, but these are extraordinary times. Normally, when the Federal Reserve cuts the rate at which it lends money to U.S. banks, those banks in turn cut the rates at which they lend money to citizens and companies for personal and commercial use. Simple enough. Yet in the past few months, banks have made three important changes in their usual practice:

• They have not been passing all of their interest-rate savings to customers.

• They have restricted lending only to most creditworthy, documented applicants.

• They have cut the total amount they're willing to lend.

Good for banks, bad for you

Banks are taking these seemingly perverse steps in an effort to reverse the effects of the massive losses they have withstood for lending too broadly to consumers and companies with lousy credit over the past five years.

They're pulling a big 180, which is as confusing as it is disheartening. Rather than providing funds to prospective home buyers and business people with legitimate needs for moving into larger homes or expanding factory lines, records show the banks are hoarding the low-cost money they're borrowing from the Fed and investing it in Treasury bonds paying higher interest yields. They're then pocketing the windfall profits to repair their own ravaged balance sheets.

As if that's not bad enough, the Fed's swiftly conceived, unprecedented course of action harms the public in three other ways:

• It boosts inflation by lifting the total number of dollars in circulation.

• It undercuts the attractiveness of the U.S. dollar, which leads to higher food, energy and gold prices.

• It cuts the yields of dividend-paying investments such as government bonds upon which retirees depend for steady income.

In other words, the Fed action helps imprudent bankers dig out of a hole by putting prudent citizens and foreigners in one. This gives big financial businesses a shot at staving off disaster at the risk of cutting the spending and earning power of everyone else.

Continued: Outwitted and outplayed

Fed outwitted and outplayed

To be fair, the Federal Reserve never wanted to be in this position, and it told Congress as recently as a few months ago that the U.S. economy was in such great shape that it had no intention of lowering interest rates in a material way anytime soon. But the Fed's leaders, a dangerous mix of university professors and career bureaucrats, were drawn into a trap at amazing speed by dark forces in the global financing system that they now admit they scarcely understood.

How could this happen? Albert Wojnilower, who was chief economist at Credit Suisse First Boston for a quarter of a century, observes that the history of finance is rife with examples of financiers who successfully outwit their referees -- the accountants, auditors, rating agencies, bank examiners and government agencies that are assigned to create and enforce rules.

Wojnilower, now an adviser to Craig Drill Capital in New York, points out that just as in sports, some of these officials may be corrupt, indifferent, incompetent, or even hostile to the rules themselves, but they always fall behind the financiers. He notes that as soon as lenders are freed of constraints -- as they were in this case by Bush administration officials eager to deregulate the industry -- they are spurred by huge short-term rewards "to compete addictively with one another in taking bigger and bigger risks.” Wojnilower says that eventually havoc breaks loose, forcing responsible government authorities to halt the chaos by providing bailouts to participants considered too big to fail.

It's a bit ironic, and not a little sad, that government has come to believe it has to fight fire with fire. The Fed, whose leaders are appointed by the president, is essentially trying to battle problems created in an era of overly cheap money and loose lending by making money even cheaper and lending even more aggressively.

In just the past few weeks, it has broken all of its own rules by providing hundreds of billions of taxpayer funds to brokerages at special auctions, opening a bigger "discount" window to permit a wider range of financial institutions to beg at the government till and accepting weaker-than-normal collateral such as iffy mortgage-backed securities. The Fed has put the government in the position of being the payday lender of last resort.

The Fed's hamster wheel

Just to top it all off, the Fed this week announced plans to allow the twin titans of government-supported mortgage finance, Fannie Mae (FNM, news, msgs) and Freddie Mac (FRE, news, msgs) -- which have proved themselves horrible at managing risk -- to make even bigger loans than they had previously. And it is telling banks to let individuals facing foreclosure to stretch out their payments a little longer.

It is all a bit crazy, which is why many veteran financial advisers recommend that investors remain skeptical of rallies.

The market rallied before today's Fed action, expecting a full percentage-point cut, and reacted well initially even to the less aggressive action. But what you want to watch is the reaction of debt markets, not the equity markets. Credit investors, who are the real masters of the global economic system, believe that the Fed is like a hamster in a cage that has to run faster just to stay in place as events spin faster and faster out of its control. To have had a chance at getting ahead, by making money so cheap that lenders would have abandoned their policy of distrust toward borrowers, the Fed should have cut rates by 1.25 percentage points today. As the Fed's effort fell short, the hamster will likely just go back on the wheel.

At the time of publication, Jon Markman did not own or control shares of companies mentioned in this column.

State Supreme Court takes up same-sex marriage

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, March 2, 2008

As gay-rights groups call for marital equality and opponents warn of a public backlash, societal decay and religious conflict, the California Supreme Court is prepared for an epic three-hour hearing Tuesday on the constitutionality of the state law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

It shapes up as the most momentous case the court has heard in decades - comparable to the 1981 ruling that guaranteed Medi-Cal abortions for poor women, the 1972 ruling that briefly overturned the state's death penalty law, and the 1948 decision, cited repeatedly in the voluminous filings before the court, that struck down California's ban on interracial marriage.

The arguments on both sides are weighty.

Supporters of same-sex marriage invoke the state's commitment to equality regardless of gender or sexual orientation, the needs of the children of gay and lesbian couples, the persistence of societal discrimination, and legal rights such as freedom of expression, association and privacy.

In defense of its law, the state cites a cultural tradition far older than statehood, the will of the people as expressed in a 2000 initiative, the steps California has already taken toward equal rights for gays and lesbians, and the power of lawmakers and voters to determine state policy.

Beyond those arguments, groups opposing same-sex marriage want the court to justify the state law on moral or scientific grounds, as an affirmation that limiting matrimony to a man and a woman is best for children and society.

A ruling is due within 90 days.

The case combines four lawsuits - three by nearly two dozen couples who want to marry and the fourth by the city of San Francisco, which entered the dispute after the court overturned Mayor Gavin Newsom's order that cleared the way for nearly 4,000 same-sex weddings in February and March 2004.

The suits rely on the California Constitution, which state courts have long interpreted as more protective of individual rights than the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs invoke a passage in the 1948 ruling on interracial marriage - the first of its kind by any state's high court - in which the justices recognized a "right to join in marriage with the person of one's choice."

Judge Richard Kramer of San Francisco Superior Court echoed that language in March 2005, when he ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriage violated "the basic human right to marry a person of one's choice." He also said the marriage law constitutes sex discrimination - prohibited by another groundbreaking California Supreme Court ruling in 1971 - because it is based on the gender of one's partner.

But a state appeals court upheld the law in October 2006. In a 2-1 decision, the court rejected Kramer's findings of discrimination and said California was entitled to preserve the historic definition of marriage while taking steps to protect the rights of same-sex couples who register as domestic partners.

Advocates crowd in

As the case reached the state's high court, the participants and the arguments multiplied.

Conservative religious organizations, including sponsors of the 2000 ballot measure that reinforced the opposite-sex-only marriage law, accused the state of making a half-hearted defense of its law and sought to justify it as a pro-family measure. Marriage is for procreation, and children fare best with married fathers and mothers, they argued. They also said the definition of marriage is so deeply engrained in the law that judges have no power to change it.

The coalition of conservative religious groups warned that a ruling against the state law would "fracture the centuries-old consensus about the meaning of marriage."

An opposing assortment of liberal denominations counseled the court against a state endorsement of "the religious orthodoxy of some sects concerning who may marry."

The court also heard from hundreds of organizations representing psychologists, anthropologists and other professions, city and county governments, law professors, businesses, civil rights advocates and social institutions.

Judges and limits

Underlying all the arguments is a debate about the proper role of courts in a democracy, particularly on contentious social and political issues. It's the same question - how far, and how fast, judges should move to correct injustices they perceive in the actions of elected officials - that has confronted jurists pondering such issues as segregation, school prayer and abortion.

The subject was raised with unusual frankness in written arguments by Attorney General Jerry Brown's office, which is leading the defense of the marriage law that Brown signed as governor in 1977.

"One unintended and unfortunate consequence of too radical a change is the possibility of backlash," said Deputy Attorney General Christopher Krueger. Same-sex marriage may someday be legalized in California, he said, "but such a change should appropriately come from the people rather than the judiciary as long as constitutional rights are protected."

Brown said last week he wasn't asking the court to sacrifice principles to politics, only observing that rulings that "ride roughshod over the deeply held judgments of society" can have unintended consequences.

He noted that the court majority swung from liberal to conservative after three of his appointees, including Chief Justice Rose Bird, were unseated in a 1986 election that centered on their votes to overturn death sentences.

Legitimate concern?

Lawyers for San Francisco in the same-sex marriage case nonetheless accused Brown of using scare tactics and of encouraging the justices to abandon their duty to protect the constitutional rights of all Californians, regardless of public opinion.

"Far worse than any short-term controversy a principled but unpopular decision might engender, an unprincipled, politically based decision of the sort the attorney general seeks will invite and sanction the continued stigmatization and marginalization of lesbians, gay men and their families," said Chief Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart.

But Cass Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor who is not involved in the case, said concern about public reaction is a legitimate basis for judicial restraint.

Sunstein said he favors allowing gays and lesbians to marry, but fears that such a ruling in California "would have undue influence over the upcoming presidential election, would polarize the country in ways that are not desirable and would short-circuit a continuing process of democratic debate over this issue."

That debate has reached the state Capitol, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed two bills in the past two years that would have legalized same-sex marriage, and it may intensify statewide regardless of the court ruling. Two organizations are circulating initiatives that would write the current marriage law into the state Constitution; one of the measures would also repeal recently enacted laws protecting same-sex domestic partners.

Those laws, which grant domestic partners the same rights to property, finances, child custody and other benefits that spouses receive in California, are also at the heart of the state's case for upholding its marriage law. Brown's office argues that the partnership laws satisfy the state's obligation to treat same-sex couples equally and eliminate any need for judicial intervention.

"Maintaining the long-standing and traditional definition of marriage, while providing same-sex couples with legal recognition comparable to marriage, is a measured approach to a complex and divisive social issue," Krueger wrote in his argument to the court.

Benefits for married couples

Opponents of the marriage law counter that domestic partnership is a second-class status that leaves partners without the numerous federal benefits afforded to married couples, such as Social Security payments to survivors, joint tax filing, immigration assistance, the right to help a spouse immigrate, and recognition in other states. Within California, they argue, a household becomes a family in the eyes of the public only when its partners are legally married.

"The right to marry compels the state to sanction and support a unique expression of personal commitment, and that personal commitment is not the exclusive province of those who love someone of a different sex," said the National Center for Lesbian Rights, representing 15 same-sex couples who sued to overturn the state's law.

Other issues abound:

-- Whether the marriage law discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, and if so, whether bias against gays belongs in the same category as laws that discriminate on the basis of race or sex, which courts rarely uphold.

-- Whether the 2000 ballot measure, Proposition 22, prohibited state legislators from legalizing same-sex marriage without voter approval.

-- Whether Prop. 22's sponsors and other organizations opposing same-sex marriage have the right to participate in the case on an equal basis with the state, based on their claim that broadening the marriage law would harm husbands and wives.

Cautious court

This case may not resolve all those questions. Under Chief Justice Ronald George's leadership since 1996, the court - with a 6-1 majority of Republican appointees - has been generally sympathetic to gay rights and civil rights, but has seldom overturned laws or thwarted popular majorities.

Over the last five years, with little dissent, the justices have established parental rights for same-sex couples, upheld an adoption procedure widely used by gays and lesbians and outlawed business discrimination against domestic partners.

But in more incendiary cases, the court has upheld the Boy Scouts' right to exclude gays and has broadly interpreted a voter-approved ban on preferences for women or minorities in public contracting.

Few court-watchers expect California to follow the lead of Massachusetts, whose top court - relying on the state's constitution - became the first and only tribunal to legalize same-sex weddings in 2003.

"This is a close case," said Clark Kelso, a professor at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and a longtime observer of the California court. "I don't think they will say anything like, 'Heterosexual couples are better at raising children.' But it's likely that the court will not blaze a trail.

"In cases of doubt," Kelso said, "the court is likely to tilt toward the expressed will of the people."

The proceedings are titled In re Marriage Cases, S147999. Briefs can be viewed at www. courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/highprofile.

How to watch the hearing

In the courtroom: The hearing is scheduled from 9 a.m. to noon Tuesday at the courthouse at 350 McAllister St. in San Francisco. Limited courtroom seating is available.

Remote viewing: The hearing will be telecast live in the Milton Marks Conference Center in the basement of the court building, and also at Hastings College of the Law, 198 McAllister St., first-floor auditorium. Limited seating is also available in the Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St.

On cable: The hearing can be seen on the California Channel, a cable channel whose number varies from city to city. The channel is also online at www.calchannel.com. In San Francisco, the hearing will also be shown on SFGTV, Channel 26.

The law in other states

How other states treat same-sex couples.

Same-sex marriage legal: Massachusetts.

Civil unions, with most of the rights of spouses under state law: Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire.

Domestic partnerships recognized, with most of the rights of spouses under state law: California, Oregon.

Constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin.

Statutes outlawing same-sex marriage: Arizona, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, West Virginia.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.