Ganesh Sitaraman argues in his book, "The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution," that the founding fathers set up a constitution that presumed rough economic equality, and then designed our government based on that assumption.
Clearly we are now in a situation where the richest are effectively at war with the rest of us.
We need to move to an upper and lower house (Lords and commoners) with rules similar to the UK, so the "little people" have at least some sort of base with which to slow or reverse the onrushing oligarchy we face with our current system.
Ed Taub
Devoto Street
Cities can't rewrite
immigration laws
In a guest column published May 26, Mountain View Mayor Ken Rosenberg calls for volunteers to join an effort to expand the number of "human rights cities" around the world. This year's mayor notes that the City Council voted in December to support some of the principles in a 1949 United Nations "Declaration of Human Rights."
The opinion piece had likely already been submitted before the May 23 meeting at which the City Council voted 5-2 to adopt a resolution proposed by the Santa Clara County Cities Association which recites that all residents are "valued" without regard to their "immigration status," and something called "nativism" is a form of "bigotry" not to be tolerated. Webster's dictionary (online) reports that one meaning of "nativism" is giving preference to existing residents of a country over potential new immigrants from any other country.
The truth is that there are good reasons to favor existing residents over potential newcomers. Existing residents helped build this country and are far more likely to preserve and advance the values and accomplishments of America than are foreigners (as a group). Even the 1949 UN Declaration cited by Mayor Rosenberg did not claim that anyone had the right to move to any other country.
The nation to receive immigrants must choose among the billions of aspirants to protect and improve its way of life. That is why nations need borders and immigration laws — enforced. It is not for each city to select the immigrants or immigration laws it wants.
City council members who wish to rewrite immigration laws should run for Congress. Cities are in charge of other matters.
Gary Wesley
Continental Circle
This story contains 392 words.
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