Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
The Tea Party has some major accomplishments to their credit that will be on display this week. The first is a reading of the Constitution in the House of Representatives to open the 112th Congress, the second is the change to rules that require any bill to state where in the Constitution Congress has the authority to enact that legislation.
Whether you call it an iceberg or a torpedo, ObamaCare just struck something or vice versa and it doesn’t look good. The ship is taking on water and you can hear the orchestra tuning up as they rearrange the deck chairs.
I still find myself in awe of our Founding Fathers who created our form of government. The competing ideas that they sifted through to come up with our Constitution and the safeguards in it is wondrous. The designs upon it by the progressives is by equal measure disturbing.
In today’s New York Times there is a story about Rick Lazio latching on to the Ground Zero mosque issue as his new campaign theme. The first television ads I have seen regarding his run for governor are about this issue. He is strongly opposed. Okay, but he wants us to elect him governor to do what, exactly? New York has a lot of problems, from a state government that is completely dysfunctional to being broke and since everyone seems to agree that the mosque at Ground Zero is not about the right to build there but about the propriety of building there, what does it have to do with the office of governor?
When he pinch hit for Rudy Giuliani running for the senate against Hillary Clinton, after Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the race with prostate cancer, Mr. Lazio took a similar tack. You probably remember their first debate when Mr. Lazio famously walked across the stage to a startled Mrs. Clinton and asked her to sign his pledge on campaign finance reform. She refused and that was his theme. The problem is that although many people feel our political process is corrupt, when it comes to campaign finance reform, most people don’t care about it. Those who care about it are incumbents, who want to cripple those who run against them. Some of the so called “reforms” have politicians spending so much time chasing $50 donations that they can’t do what they were elected to do. Either that or we can only run multi-millionaire candidates who can spend their own money without limits. (Simple solution: let anyone contribute any amount to any campaign at any time and just post the information on the Internet within 72 hours in a database that is fully searchable. Done.) It only took a little time for the novelty of the debate video to fade and Mr. Lazio had no campaign.
Another challenger in this year’s governor’s race, Carl Paladino, one of the aforementioned millionaires, has been hitting the airwaves more frequently and more effectively than Mr. Lazio. He is not a one trick pony. His first ads hit Andrew Cuomo on being a career politician and that he, Paladino, was a business man who knows how to create jobs. What do we desperately need now? Jobs. What are we sick of? Career politicians, like Mr. Cuomo, who played a role as HUD Secretary in the Clinton administration of feeding the real estate frenzy and the subsequent housing collapse that created the financial crisis.
On the mosque situation, agree or disagree with him but Mr. Paladino says exactly what he will do about it. He will take the property away under Eminent Domain (thanks to the activist judges on the Supreme Court who gave us Kelo v. City of New London) and use the property to create a war memorial. He doesn’t just say he will oppose it he tells us what he will do about it.
In the interest of full disclosure, I contributed to Rick Lazio’s senate run in 2000 and I have no connection with the Paladino campaign. But if Mr. Lazio is serious about defeating Andrew Cuomo for governor, he has to find some issues that not only resonate with the people of New York but that are the responsibility of the governor to address. If not, rather than split the conservative vote, he should step aside and help ride the anti-incumbent wave that Carl Paladino is surfing.
We have come to expect a fight whenever a seat opens up on the Supreme Court as there are distinct battle lines between conservatives who believe the Constitution should be interpreted how it was written and liberal/progressives view it in light of what they feel it should be today. In other words, conservatives approach the Constitution with a magnifying glass while liberal/progressives approach it with an eraser and pencil.
I happen to believe that elections have consequences and that for the most part the president should be allowed to nominate who he chooses to fill a Supreme Court vacancy and have them approved. However, as Democrats like to point out when a Republican sits in the White House, the Senate has a Constitutional role to give advice and consent on such nominees, not just rubber stamp them, which is true enough. Unfortunately, today the advice and consent process is almost a sham, because the nominees have learned how to keep their mouths shut and defer from answering all but the blandest questions under the cover that it may come up before them in a case on the court. We can thank Ted Kennedy for this as he turned the advice and consent role into an opportunity to smear a nominee, Judge Robert Bork, in the most vile and mendacious way to pander to the base of the Democratic Party. Since then, it’s been lights out on any serious probing of the thought process of nominees to our highest court.
But what about Elena Kagan? After the Senate Judiciary panel approved her nomination along nearly party lines (Lindsey Graham – R voted in favor) most Americans (87%) believe she will be confirmed, according to Rasmussen. However, in the same poll Americans oppose her nomination 42% to 36%. Is she qualified to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court?
One of the arguments against her is that she has never been a judge before. That is true, but it is also true for about one-third of past Supreme Court justices. However, among those past Supreme Court justices who were not judges, they had on average 20 years experience in the private practice of law. Ms. Kagan has two years experience in private practice, two years. The rest of her experience in academia or government service.
Before her current position of Solicitor General, she had never argued a case at a trial. She has no judicial experience, next to no private practice experience, and thanks to Ted Kennedy, she revealed as little as possible about her judicial philosophy to get confirmed. Her key strength, according to Barack Obama, is her ability to build consensus. I’ll give you a translation of what that really means. Her job will be to vote with the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court and use her persuasive powers on Anthony Kennedy to peel him off and generate as many 5-4 wins as possible. President Obama does little without a purpose and his purpose is to pull the Supreme Court in the same direction as the laws he has jammed through against the will of the American people.
Despite the approval of the Judiciary committee, an effort must be mounted to reject or filibuster her approval. How can we accept someone with so little in the way of qualifications to a lifetime appointment? We know next to nothing about her judicial philosophy. There are no cases on which she has written opinions that can be examined. With regard to what she has written in the government service she simply says I was acting as an advocate for my client, and those are not necessarily my views. Who could argue with that? So what are her views? We don’t know and like Nancy Pelosi claimed with the health care monstrosity, “we’ll just have to pass it to find out what’s in it.” With a lifetime appointment, you can’t take it back later if you disagree with her eventual positions. The track record of the “Trust me” presidency is downright frightening.
With all due respect to Elena Kagan, I don’t see how we can idly sit by and silently accept another Obama abomination of ramming through his agenda without regard for the people who elected him. He is essentially asking us to grant a lifetime appointment that could profoundly affect our liberties, to someone who is a blank slate that we know little about. He should withdraw the nominee and submit another candidate.
“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” – Presidential Oath of Office, Constitution of the United States of America, Article II, Section I
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” — Constitution of the United States of America, First Amendment.
“This ruling strikes at our democracy itself,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.” — NY Times, January 25, 2010
Last week in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission the Supreme Court struck down a provision in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill that prohibited “electioneering communication”, that is, broadcast ads that name a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary election or within 60 days of a general election. It is what I and many others dub the “Incumbent Protection Act”, because it tips the scales heavily in favor of incumbents who have the name recognition, and the communication power of their office as an advantage in an election. In addition, the 30 days or 60 days are when many voters really start paying attention. Our elected representatives love to talk tough about reform, but that reform typically ends up making it harder to replace them.
Obama Weighs In
As the above quotes demonstrate, President Obama’s job is to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution protects free speech. So why is President Obama attacking a Supreme Court ruling that protects Free Speech? Is that what he is supposed to be doing? Instead he says it “strikes at democracy itself.” He doesn’t mention that it also lifts restrictions on the speech of unions that typically favor the positions of his party. Perhaps that is because with the Obama administration unions have extraordinary access to the White House. From January to July, White House logs show that Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) visited the White House 22 times, more than anyone else in the visitor logs.
If President Obama is truly concerned about the influence of lobbyists, it does no good to drive them out of advertising on TV into personal visits to the White House. Of course, the president would be selective in who has an audience with him. If you really want to reduce the number of lobbyists, then reduce the reasons for them to lobby. If, for example, you want to reduce the lobbying effort of the giant agricultural corporation Archer Daniels Midland, then get the government out of the business of ethanol subsidies, farm subsidies, and shut down the federal Department of Agriculture. Lobbyists will call on Washington less, if they have less to call about. Shrinking the federal government will reduce the number of lobbyists and their influence, reduce the deficit, help balance the budget, and make the government more manageable so that we can reduce or eliminate waste and fraud.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens blasted the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision saying that the ruling is not grounded in the writings of the Founding Fathers. His argument being that certain groups could have their speech curtailed and only individuals had their speech protected. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a separate concurring opinion to address Stevens argument. In part:
“I write separately to address JUSTICE STEVENS’ discussion of “Original Understandings”… This section of [Stevens'] dissent purports to show that today’s decision is not supported by the original understanding of the First Amendment. The dissent attempts this demonstration, however, in splendid isolation from the text of the First Amendment. It never shows why “the freedom of speech” that was the right of Englishmen did not include the freedom to speak in association with other individuals, including association in the corporate form. To be sure, in 1791 (as now) corporations could pursue only the objectives set forth in their charters; but the dissent provides no evidence that their speech in the pursuit of those objectives could be censored….
The [First] Amendment is written in terms of “speech,” not speakers. Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals–and the dissent offers no evidence about the original meaning of the text to support any such exclusion. We are therefore simply left with the question whether the speech at issue in this case is “speech” covered by the First Amendment. No one says otherwise.” – Antonin Scalia, concurring opinion in “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Newly seated Justice Sonia Sotomayor voted against free speech. I always marvel when people who succeed against tough odds attack the very principles of this country that allowed them to succeed. The Bill of Rights was designed to protect against the tyranny of the majority by defining certain rights of every individual that could not be infringed upon. It is one reason why people around the world fight to come here for a chance to succeed. Because they know that these principles will allow them to do so if they have the drive to succeed.
The Incumbent Protection Act, aka McCain-Feingold, took a big hit yesterday from the Supreme Court. It is particularly timely with so many incumbents nervously eying the exits. The McCain-Feingold bill prohibited corporations and unions from “electioneering communications” within in 30 days of a primary, or 60 days of a general election. Those time limits probably match pretty nicely with when most people start paying close attention to elections. So if this kind of communication is cut off, who is left with the power of name recognition? That’s right, the incumbent and that is probably why 90% of incumbents are re-elected.
Outrage on the Left
President Obama immediately came out swinging saying it was a victory for “big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and other special interests.” He somehow overlooked the SEIU union whose president topped the list of visitors to the White House. Unions will have unfettered communications as well. Chuck Schumer promises hearings and the Naderite Public Citizen group is proposing a constitutional amendment banning free speech for “for-profit” corporations. I’ll give you a moment to ponder that; a constitutional amendment to eviscerate the First Amendment.
The Momentum is Building
On April 15 it will be the first anniversary of the Tea Parties that were held across the country. Let’s raise a cup of tea, that the Ship of Liberty that was foundering on the rocks may at last be turning it’s guns on the enemy and turning the tide of battle. Virginia, New Jersey, a close loss in NY23, Massachusetts, the First Amendment, the momentum is building. But let’s not forget the words of Churchill:
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. — Winston Churchill
Don’t let up until we have our country back.
In the midst of the financial meltdown the government and financial pundits argued that they had to rescue the big banks because they were too big to fail. If we don’t save them, they could bring down the entire U.S. economy and in turn the economy of the entire world. Ignoring the history and responsibility for how they got there, that could be a true statement that the government had to do something to avoid a worldwide panic.
The panic averted, many banks paid the money back with interest, are in the process of paying out massive bonuses and the Obama administration is twisting itself in self-righteous knots to tax them into humility. Good luck with that. While they target the banks, they are hands off on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, GM and Chrysler because to tax those basket cases would just be taking money from the left taxpayer pocket and moving it to the right taxpayer pocket. If you look to the root of the problems of the fiscal meltdown you will find the government’s hand in almost every corner, but don’t expect this administration to try to get to the bottom of it.
Back Up, Go Ahead
There was an old Abbot and Costello routine where Abbot was guiding Costello in parking a car.
Costello asked what he should do and Abbot said, “Back up.”
Costello confirmed, “Back Up?”
To which Abbot replied, “Yeah, go ahead.”
“Go ahead?”
“No. back up.”
“Back up?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
I don’t know if the Obama administration is Abbot or Costello, but they are telling banks, “Lend more money.” Then they tell the banks, we are going to raise taxes and take your money away. Then they ask the bank, “Why aren’t you lending more money?”
Programs You Can Believe In
Medicare
It is estimated that Medicare loses about $60 Billion ANNUALLY in fraud. That’s right about $60 billion of your tax dollars are stolen every year from this program.
“If you want to find Medicare fraud, the first place you should look is South Florida, where 60 Minutes and correspondent Steve Kroft were told it has pushed aside cocaine as the major criminal enterprise.” – 60 Minutes – Medicare Fraud: A $60 Billion Crime
While the Obama Administration pushes their health care program one of the ways of funding the program is through savings in Medicare fraud. However, no one has been able to stop it. Not Republicans. Not Democrats.
First Time Home Buyer Credit
This wonderful new program was designed to help first time home buyers achieve the American Dream. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a genius to also achieve that criminal American Dream, fleecing the government.
It’s hard not to laugh when viewing the results of the federal first-time home-buyer tax credit. The credit, worth up to $8,000 for the purchase of a home, has only been available since April of last year. Yet news of the latest taxpayer-funded mortgage scam has traveled fast. The Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, recently told Congress that at least 19,000 filers hadn’t purchased a home when they claimed the credit. For another 74,000 filers, claiming a total of $500 million in credits, evidence suggests that they weren’t first-time buyers. – WSJ – First Time Fraudsters, 10/29/2009
The IRS even had to admit that in an investigation they found 53 cases where IRS employees filed “illegal or inappropriate” claims for the credit.
Too Big To Govern
A new president is elected once every four years, but the vast government bureaucracy remains. It is said that a president will only be able to address 3-4 top priorities in their term. By the time they appoint executive department heads and the Senate approves them and they set about to figure out the departments they are in charge of, it is an enormous undertaking to try to make significant changes. To try to curb fraud, to overcome the inertia of the entrenched bureaucrats who know they will outlast the appointee, and their friends in Congress who will probably be there as long, is just too tall an order to accomplish in a four year cycle. Every time a new liberal takes over, their first order of business is to make the bureaucracy larger. It does not work. It will not work.
The Only Solution
The only solution is to make the federal government smaller. It must be bold. It must be dramatic. Tweaking it at the margins will fail. Entire departments must be shut down. The Constitution should be the blueprint for this. If the power is not explicit in the Constitution, shut it down and allow the states or local governments to take it up if they choose. Then drastically cut taxes accordingly. Let people keep their money and decide at the local level if they want that service or not. Let every state try their own solution and each state can learn what works and what doesn’t from each other. But this idea of pushing every solution up to the federal and let one size fits all be forced on everyone is, quite simply, madness. We need less government and more liberty.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. – Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America
The Tenth Amendment
The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution is an interesting piece of work. The way the Constitution is written is to explicitly state what the national government could do, and thereby exclude it from doing everything else. When some of the Founding Fathers advocated a Bill of Rights the federalists strongly objected. Why? First, they thought it was redundant. If, for example, the Constitution did not say the national government could regulate speech then having a First Amendment guaranteeing the Freedom of Speech made no sense. The national government was only permitted to do precisely what the Constitution said it could do.
The second objection concerned having the opposite intent of the original writing of the Constitution. You see, if the constitution has a provision that says what the national government cannot do (First Amendment barring free speech for example) it implies that the national government can do anything else that is not prohibited, which is exactly what the federalists did not want the Constitution to say. It wanted to specifically enumerate the powers granted to the national government and no more. So they compromised by adding the Tenth Amendment, which spelled out that distinction. To quote Hamilton in Federalist 84:
“Why, for instance should it be said that the liberty of the press should not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?”
The Federal Government’s Runaway Growth
The federal government has expanded enormously particularly with FDR and the New Deal. The Supreme Court has paid scant attention to the Tenth Amendment in curbing that expansion. Perhaps it is time they gave it a closer look and more weight in their decisions.
Below is what the Constitution says Congress has the Power to do.
Article I. Section 8. The Congress shall have Power To:
Does anybody see anything there about minimum wages? miles per gallon? housing subsidies? urban development? education? energy? James Madison summed it up thus in Federalist 45:
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace negotiations, and foreign commerce;….The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state.”
To see how far we have come from Madison’s and the other Founding Fathers views can be seen in the New Deal era court case Wickard v. Filburn(1942). Roscoe Filburn was a farmer during the Great Depression who was growing wheat to feed his chickens. The Federal Government had imposed limits on how much wheat a farmer could grow based on acreage in order to prop up wheat prices. The amount of wheat that Filburn was growing exceeded this number, however, Filburn intended to use the wheat entirely on his own farm. Not only was the wheat not going to leave his home state, it was not going to leave his farm! But the Supreme Court ruled that by growing more wheat than allowed, Filburn would not have to buy additional feed in the open market and by not doing so the lack of his consumption of wheat on the market would adversely affect the price of wheat, therefore he was violating the Federally imposed limits. Now if that doesn’t set off Tenth Amendment alarm bells, I don’t know what could.
Federal Government Sprawl
Here are the cabinet level departments of the Federal Government. Those in bold seem, in my opinion, to be consistent with the enumerated powers above. Those in italics seem, again in my opinion, to be a national government overstepping its Constitutional bounds. It is not that each and any of these things should not be done at all, but according to the Tenth Amendment should be at the discretion of the states or local government.
Federalism
One of the brilliant ideas of federalism is the ability to vote in two ways. One, is at the ballot box and the other is with your feet. If my state puts forth a bad idea and the majority of the citizens of my state agree with the bad idea, I have the freedom to move to another state. However, if we keep moving all these bad ideas up to the national level, my right to vote with my feet is taken away. If states like California and New York choose to follow polices that lead to their bankruptcy, so be it, but let’s not force those policies on Texas and Florida or force the citizens of those states to pay for the mistakes of Californians and New Yorkers.
Since George Washington, who had four cabinet positions, we have added thirteen new cabinet departments and eliminated two and the ones eliminated did not go away, they simply became part of other government entities (e.g., Navy into Defense; Post Office into Postal Service). In other words our government is telling us that they have not solved a single problem for which one of these agencies were created since 1789, otherwise why wouldn’t that cabinet department be shut down, after ceremoniously giving all the key players well deserved gold watches? But Government encroachment marches on with the Obama Administration poised to devour one-sixth of the U.S. Economy into the Department of Health and Human Services. They tell us they know how to solve that problem. With their track record do you believe them? Perhaps it’s time to dust off the Tenth Amendment, and start putting a scalpel to the federal government rather than tying a bib around its bloated neck.
Let’s look to 2010 as the year we start taking back our government. Polls show how far out of touch our elected leaders are from the views of their constituents. It’s time to retire them from office. Let’s keep up the hard work and countdown to November 2010.
