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Under the Constitution's Article VI, "....all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby..."
As explained above, presidents can make treaties with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, and can terminate them by executive edict as George Bush did in renouncing the ABM Treaty with Russia. They can also violate them freely with impunity, including the UN Charter, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions, among others. They can block ratifying ones like Kyoto, the Comprehensive Test Ban and Landmine Treaties, PAROS to prevent an arms race in space, and the ICC. They can approve harmful ones like the WTO and NAFTA. They can hurt or harm with a stroke of a pen or do nothing by abstaining.
They and Congress can enact real change by allocating public dollars equitably for essential social needs, including universal health care and education. They can end imperial wars and occupations, downsize the military, close global bases, produce fewer weapons, become a good neighbor, not a menacing one. They can end corporate welfare and other giveaways, rebuild essential infrastructure, put people back to work, reindustrialize the country, end Wall Street's dominance, nationalize or abolish the Federal Reserve, and let government be of, for, and by the people the way Lincoln envisioned. They can do all that and more but won't.
Forming a More Perfect Union
We can restore the Bill of Rights and add new ones, revoke illegal laws like the USA Patriot Act, and enforce all constitutional, statutory, and international ones. We can reinvent democracy and make it real. We can make social equity and equal justice the law of the land. We can be good neighbors, not intimidating ones.
We can protect against "arbitrary arrest, detention, exile, or enforced disappearance, and from all forms of slavery and forced labor, with criminal penalties for violators and compensation for victims." We can ban torture, illegal surveillance, political witch-hunts, and corporate personhood. We can protect, not wreck the environment, prohibit unsafe foods and drugs, enforce collective bargaining and human and civil rights. We can guarantee safety net protections for the needy, end homelessness and hunger, elevate living standards, and make corporations and the rich pay their fair share.
We can take the power of money out of politics, convene a second constitutional convention, redo the document Michael Parenti said protected "a rising bourgeoisie('s freedom to) invest, speculate, trade, and accumulate" to assure that people who own the country run it. We get it right this time, but grassroots pressure is needed to do it. We can discover that organized people can beat organized money with enough will.
We no longer need tolerate extreme inequalities of wealth, lost civil liberties, human rights abuses, destructive foreign wars, the American dream turned nightmare, and politics more corrupted than ever regardless of the party in power. Ideas for change abound. Free and open debate are needed to pick the best, then organize for change and work to enact them for the fundamental goal of equity and justice for all in a nation again to be proud of.
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