Supreme Court may take territories off the map of the US
bostonglobe.com>In April the Supreme Court decided what seemed to be an abstruse case about federal benefits owed to Puerto Ricans. But Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion began with a startling passage. He asserted that the United States has no business deciding anything for Puerto Rico because our ownership of that island — and by extension other US colonies — is unconstitutional.
Great!
They pay taxes, then look what happened during Hurricane Laura.
This liminal space of "fuck you, pay me, but don't expect the same benefits as the 50 states" needs to end, one way or another[1].
(But I'll defer to people who live or own property there, I don't have any ties to the island beyond the general feeling all Americans should be equal. Something something taxation without representation - it's been a long day, I'm tired.)
[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/05/06/608868104/federal-response-to...
The law which extended American sovereignty to include American Samoa also said that normal American land laws do not apply. https://archive.org/details/modernsamoaitsgo00kees/page/266/...
Thus, in American Samoa, there are restrictions on what non-Samoans can do with land. https://asbar.org/code-annotated/37-0204-restrictions-on-ali... .
This sort of discrimination is illegal in the rest of the US, and allowed because of the insular laws.
If the insular laws are found unconstitutional, then those restriction on alienation of land are illegal. Which means we'll be breaking (yet again) an agreement we made with indigenous people.
The article mentions the American nationals on American Samoa who want American citizenship. While (as I understand it), others in American Samoa want to preserve their traditional landownership practices, instead of letting wealth decide, and don't want this to change.
Yeah, that all sounds like bullshit.
I recently found out in some Native American areas of the USA you aren't even required to pull over or anything if you're not literally in the tribe.
That seems... insane. Like you're gonna drive through the equivalent of a township or county, speed (or worse) and just go fuck you, call the state police?
People are really rude, they misunderstand on purpose, then they cry that the world is chaotic.
Until very recently, they couldn't even arrest you for rape on the reservation if you weren't a member of the tribe... only the FBI had jurisdiction and it often wasn't a big enough fish to fry for them to bother.
https://indianlaw.org/safewomen/law-was-meant-let-american-i...
I know. I was avoiding specifics.
Puerto Ricans aren’t subject to Federal income tax unless they work for the Federal government. (They still pay payroll taxes, though.)
Thanks for pointing this out, I need to be better about specifics when making policy oriented posts.
> “The Constitution does not apply to foreign countries,” Justice Brown wrote. “If these possessions are inhabited by alien races, differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation and modes of thought, the administration of government and justice according to Anglo-Saxon principles may for a time be impossible. . . . A false step at this time might be fatal to the development of what Chief Justice Marshall called the ‘American Empire.’”
Kind of a weird statement to be given by a person charged with adjudicating lands whose inhabitants had no concept of "Anglo-Saxon principles."
In fact, I seriously struggle with the logical contradiction that this opinion creates. How can this man claim the privilege to make such a ruling over a land, when his opinion so clearly implies that the USA, and it's Constitution have no no place ruling over the "foreign countries" that the USA now claims as territory.
Obviously, if I could ask him this today, he would hand-wave the argument with that being different for whatever bunk-ass reason.
> Obviously, if I could ask him this today, he would hand-wave the argument with that being different for whatever bunk-ass reason.
I think he would explain white supremacy to you, and how important it is that he uphold it.