Peter Ingemi hosts the radio program DaTechGuy on WCRN True Talk 830 AM in the Worcester/Boston area. On his program on April 30, 2011 I joined him for his round table for the second hour. The topics were:

1. The vote by the Democratic Assembly in Massachusetts to curtail collective bargaining rights concerning health care. This would be news if done by Republicans, the fact that it was done by Democrats is astounding
2. The National Labor Relations Board has told Boeing that they cannot open a factory in South Carolina but must return to Washington because the move was because of oppresive unions in Washington. And that’s a problem because….
3. The Obama birth certificate. Is it over, yet?

(The audio is about 32 minutes)

[podcast]http://libertyslifeline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/DaTechGuy.mp3[/podcast]

Let the games begin.  The Republicans now control the House of Representatives and have pledged to cut $100 billion from the budget in short order.  About half a beat later came the howls from the transportation lobby that they can’t possibly mean highway and mass-transit projects.  Why is this even a matter for debate?

Budgets for highway and mass-transit projects have been growing for the past twenty years, and  they are beloved by the states, the construction industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  But why do these programs even exist?  The only highway and mass-transit projects that should be the province of the federal government are within the roughly ten square miles of the District of Columbia and territories under U.S. jurisdiction.  The federal government has authority in these areas, the states have their own governments.

This is another giant shell game.  Georgians pay for a highway project in Alaska, Alaskans pay for mass transit in New York, New Yorkers pay for a highway in Arizona, Arizonans pay for trolleys in Baltimore.  This kind of shell game is one where no one but the taxpayer gets screwed.  The politicians go to ribbon cuttings and fill their reelection literature with pictures of the projects they have brought home.  They don’t talk about how they have impoverished their district by paying for every other politician’s project as well.

In the spirit of the new House rules concerning “Cut as you go,” I propose cutting all highway and mass-transit funding from the federal government.  At the same time I propose eliminating the federal fuel taxes and the Highway Trust Fund.  Take whatever money is in the Highway Trust Fund, parcel it out to the states and ceremoniously shut down the operation.  States would be free to pass the savings along to consumers or they could increase state fuel taxes necessary to maintain their own roads and mass-transit.  The federal fuel tax is currently nine cents per gallon.  Let each state collect and pay for their infrastructure with the revenues from these usage based taxes and not have to go begging to Washington for this project and that.  Why should a project entirely within one city, for example, the Big Dig in Boston that cost $17 billion be paid for by the rest of America (Answer: Ted Kennedy represented Massachusetts).

Shrink the federal government and let the state’s motorists pay as they go.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

Ah, the romance of rail travel.  From Murder on the Orient Express to From Russia with Love to White Christmas to Some Like It Hot there is something alluring about a train.  But for all those warm feelings it’s time to recognize that we are in the 21^st century and to leave trains to the movies. 

There have been calls for the great idea of high speed rail that is, in effect, a solution in search of a problem.  It may work well in Europe and Japan, but the United States is not Europe or Japan.  Two things needed to make high speed rail viable are population density and distances between such population densities that are not too close and not too far. We have a whole lot of neither.

Building a high speed rail system is capital intensive.  Between the track bed, carefully engineered to keep high speed trains on the tracks and the passengers comfortable, the rolling stock, and the signaling and safety equipment, it takes a lot of money to build it.  If that investment is to be recovered you need many passengers paying ticket prices high enough to make a profit and low enough to attract those passengers.  Those population centers have to be far enough apart so that the inconvenience of public transportation offsets driving by car and close enough so that the travel time is not too much longer than air travel.  How many of these routes are there in this country that satisfy those criteria?  Precious few.

Consider that part of the country where the population is densest, the Northeast Corridor, extending from Boston to Washington, D.C.  This happens to be one place in the country where rail service works.  Amtrak runs a fast train service along this corner that in 2008 actually made a profit of $41 per passenger on this service, called Acela. 

Let’s compare that to what is being planned for California.  The concept is a high speed rail link running from San Francisco in the north to San Diego in the south, a run of about 800 miles.  The initial segment of the project is estimated to cost $5.5 billion, take five years to build, and will connect Bakersfield to Madera mainly through agricultural regions.  From a construction perspective that should be an easy build with long stretches of open spaces.  Anyone care to wager what how much the estimate will grow?  The total cost is estimated at $40 billion.  If you could achieve the same profit as the Acela ($41 per passenger) and carry as many passengers as the Northeast Corridor in a year (10.8 million), it would take over 90 years just to recover the capital costs, not including any interest charges.  Is that remotely feasible?

Here’s where the problems mount, you could travel the 800 miles by air in about an hour and a forty minutes, whereas a high speed train would probably take around four hours.  One of the towns mentioned in a recent article in the New York Times as being along the route is Corcoran, population 26,000 including 12,000 “guests of the state” at nearby prisons.  Don’t count on them using the rails much.  The distance is too great and the population density is lacking.  But once again, the federal government is in the middle of something where it doesn’t belong providing funding.  Why should the overtaxed citizens of New York and New Jersey pay for a high speed rail system entirely within the state of California?  This about sums it up:

On Dec. 9, California’s rail authority received a windfall of additional federal stimulus money — some $600 million — when Republican governors in Ohio and Wisconsin passed on money intended for their states. California voters approved high-speed rail in 2008, and deadlines are already passing, including a Dec. 31 cutoff for the state to finalize a plan to spend federal money in the Central Valley. Initial spending will span a raft of projects, including designing stations, redirecting nearby roads and acquiring land.

So responsible governors in Ohio and Wisconsin passed on federal stimulus money; rather than return the money to the Treasury, damn it, it was going to be spent by someone!  Send it to California.  In case you hadn’t noticed lately, California is broke.  So tell me again, why hasn’t this project been cancelled?

If the people of California want to build this themselves, fine.  If a private company sees the opportunity to make a profit and wants to build this, go ahead.  But to take tax dollars from one state and give it to another to build another white elephant, is insane.  It is time to get our heads screwed on straight and live within our means.  Between cars and air travel, there are few places you cannot reach in this country.  There is no value in spending billions of dollars to hit a very small niche between the two.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

Comments submitted in response to a previous post, “The Progressive War on Federalism,” focused on the Electoral College and a movement called the National Popular Vote (http://www.nationalpopularvote.com) bill.  Rather than argue against my point it only seemed to reinforce it.  The objective of this movement, which before this commenter’s contribution I was unaware of, is to abolish, or should I say neuter, the Electoral College and replace it with the direct election of the president.  This movement looks to further weaken the states and move us away from federalism and toward a strong monolithic central government.  Here is my analysis.

The Case in Favor of Direct Election of the President

The commenter and the website for the National Popular Vote (NPV) bill make several points in favor of the change.  In my view it boils down to the following:

1. In the current system, after the primaries, candidates only campaign in a handful of competitive states and ignore the rest where one candidate is either far ahead or far behind.
2. The Electoral College that we have today, was not designed, anticipated or favored by the Founding Fathers
3. This does not abolish the Electoral College
4. It does not require a Constitutional Amendment
5. The power of states are neither increased nor decreased
6. The National Popular Vote bill would end the influence of the “mob” in a handful of closely divided battleground states
7. The current system does not provide a check on the “mob”

This seems pretty compelling.  Most polls show that this idea is strongly favored over the Electoral College that we have today.  However, who is being asked the question?  In the federal system of government that the Founders designed, the people did not have the power to directly elect the president, so asking someone who doesn’t have power if they would like it, is like asking someone who is hungry if they would like some food.  Let me present my case against it.

The Case against the Direct Election of the President

The first argument that somehow having the direct election of the president would compel candidates to actively campaign across the country is stated but not proven.  If the outcome of the election is determined based on who has the most votes, what would compel a candidate to campaign in Montana or Alaska?  There just aren’t that many people in  those states and are we to believe that if a candidate does not show up in a state to campaign that the citizens there are going to stay home and not vote? That is absurd.

The more likely scenario is that candidates will focus on major media markets.  If you take Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., not the cities but the media markets, you will cover about 25% of the population of the U.S.  Add Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, and Miami, and you probably don’t have to campaign anywhere else to have a shot at reaching enough of the popular vote to win.  Those in favor of this proposal make no compelling argument otherwise.

The second argument that the Electoral College that we have today was not designed, anticipated or favored by the Founding Fathers is a myth.  They created the Electoral College, they left the method of choosing the electors up to the states.  “The Framers not only rejected the direct popular election of the President, but also left it to the state legislatures to determining how the states’ electors were to be appointed.” (Heritage Guide to the Constitution, p.185).  This raises several points.

If the Founders specifically rejected the direct election of the president how can the supporters argue that this will pass Constitutional muster without an Amendment?  Also the argument that it does not abolish the Electoral College may be true, but it renders it meaningless, which is the same as abolishing it.  If the NPV bill is adopted by all the states, the outcome of every presidential election going forward would be a vote of 538-0.  Anyone who thinks that is more than a rubber stamp is deluding themselves.

The argument that this does not require a Constitutional Amendment, which I believe I have refuted, is based on the argument that states can band together in compacts and agree on the all for one selection of electors.  The supporters point to Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution in support of this.  However, this clause states that the approval of Congress is required.  Furthermore in “United States Steel v. Multistate Tax Commission (1978), the Supreme Court declared that state compacts require congressional approval only if they ‘encroach upon the supremacy of the United States.’”  (Heritage, p. 179).  What could be more of an encroachment than the states banding together to effectively nullify the Electoral College without a Constitutional amendment?

Federalism recognized the national government and each of the state governments as sovereign entities.  Therefore the voters in one state determining the electors in another state would also likely draw constitutional challenge.  If all the voters in Texas chose candidate A, but the national popular vote chose candidate B, under NPV the electors from Texas would vote for candidate B against the wishes of the people of Texas.

The Cato Institute studied the NPV proposal and found that about an equal number of states would garner more candidate attention from this proposal as would lose attention.  It looked at the electoral power of the states under both systems.  Under the current system it considered each state’s power as the current electoral votes as a percentage of the total number of electoral votes.  Under the NPV system it looked at the population of eligible voters as a percentage of the total number of eligible voters.  In their analysis twenty states would have greater influence under NPV among them Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois; thirty states would lose influence among them Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Alaska, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Louisiana; one state, Alabama would be unchanged.  So the argument that smaller “flyover” states would suddenly garner more attention is not borne out by the analysis.

The last argument is a check on “mob rule,” which oddly was the purpose behind the design of the Electoral College in the first place.  The argument against this is best illustrated by a hypothetical example.

Let’s say over the next six years there is a massive migration to California and at the same time NPV is approved in every state.  Maybe California finally gets marijuana legalized and maybe they even declare it a fundamental right that every Californian is entitled to a free pound of the stuff every year.  The migration results in 51% of the population living in California.  Now in 2016, governor Jerry Brown decides to run for president.  On Election Day, everyone in California lights up a spliff and heads to the polls to vote for Jerry Brown.  The vote in California is unanimous.  Elsewhere in the country everyone is shocked at what is taking place in California and votes for another candidate, say, Marco Rubio.  The popular vote is 51% for Jerry Brown, 49% for Marco Rubio.  Rubio carries 49 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia.  Jerry Brown carries one state, California.  In the system we have today, Brown would get 54 Electoral votes and Rubio would get 484 and easily win the presidency over the “mob rule” in California.  But under NPV, Brown wins 538 -0.

Okay, forward to 2024 and let’s say the population has remained the same as have the voter sentiments, but another census has come and gone so the House of Representatives and subsequently the electoral votes are reapportioned.  If you take 51% of 435, gives California 222 plus 2 electoral votes for a total of 224 electoral votes.  Now the same election is held with Bill Maher running for president from California and Alan West from Florida running against him.  When the smoke clears the results are the same, Maher with 51% of the popular vote and West with 49%.  In the Electoral College, as it exists today, West would win 314 to 224, again carrying 49 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia, while Maher carries one state.  However under NPV, Maher would win 538-0.  Therefore NPV enforces mob rule rather than preventing it.

The Wisdom of the Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers designed our form of government out of a mistrust of power.  They designed the system so that the people would directly elect the House of Representatives and they also gave control of the purse to that body.  They designed the Senate to represent the interests of the sovereign states, until the progressives abolished that with the seventeenth amendment.  They designed the system where the Electoral College would choose the president, but left it to the individual states how they would choose their electors.  They designed the system where judges would be chosen by the president with the advice and consent of the senate.

The Electoral College was a way to protect the voice of small states from the tyranny of the majority.  What the progressives want to do is to follow up what they did with the seventeenth amendment.  Instead of having fifty-one election districts for president, represented by the states and the District of Columbia, they want to have one election district consisting of the entire nation.  Why not then abolish the state boundaries and the states themselves?  State capitals can then become district offices of the federal government carrying out the directives that come down from Washington. 

This is not the great country our Founders gave us.  It is moving this country to a omnipotent federal government where the individual has no voice of consequence and no liberty either.

That’s my opinion. I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

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.

The progressives envision a national government that they can dominate and that, in turn, will dominate us.  There is no activity over which they do not feel they can or should control.  Private property is a panacea, to keep the masses from open revolt, but they really believe that all wealth that is generated belongs to the government except for the portion they permit us to keep.  If you think that statement is unimaginable consider this.  How often do you hear, concerning the current debate over the Bush tax cuts, that we cannot afford them for the rich?  Think about it.  They say our government cannot afford to allow certain citizens of this country to continue to pay the same level of taxes in 2011 that they pay today.  That the government somehow has to pay for a tax cut, that actually isn’t even a cut but rather a continuation of what has existed for the last ten years.  How is getting less than you want a cost? If you awake on Christmas morning and do not find the present you have been hoping for under the tree, do you say, “Man, that’s gonna cost me?” Of course you do not.

A Massive Federal Government

Think about the many federal departments and agencies that exist today for which you will find no authorization in the Constitution: Education; Agriculture; Housing and Urban Development; Energy; Health and Human Services; Transportation.  Did they not have education in the eighteenth century? Are we more agrarian today than we were in 1789?  If not, why do we need a Department of Agriculture today, but the Founders didn’t see a need for it then?

The progressives are fighting for the continual concentration of functions at the federal level where the voices of the people are faint, but the voices of the special interests are robust and clear.  The branch of the federal government that is closest to the people is the House of Representatives.  But ponder how small your voice is in that chamber.  You are one of some 700,000 in your congressional district; your congressman or woman is one of 435 in the House of Representatives.  How do you get your voice heard at the federal level?  And yet Congress will tell you what kind of light bulb to buy or what kind of toilet you must flush.  Is this what our founding fathers envisioned?

The Bloody Revolution

To establish our country they fought a brutal revolution; a revolution where 50% of the mortal wounds were caused by bayonets.  Now that’s up close and personal.  It is not something they entered into lightly and a reading of the Declaration of Independence will tell you that they pledged their lives when they signed that document and their death warrants as well.  If captured by the British they surely would have been tried and executed for treason.

In designing our form of government they were very suspicious of strong central power and authority, having just thrown off one.  They did not trust government.  As Jefferson said, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty.  When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”  Here is a simple test, do you fear the IRS or does the IRS fear you?

The Founders designed the Constitution to have strictly enumerated powers given to the federal government with all other powers retained by the states or the people.  They did not design a democracy, but a republic.  In that republic they built numerous checks and balances to prevent the accumulation of power. It has been the goal of the progressives to remove those checks and balances and put in place the tyranny that fears no people.

The Structure of the Federal Government

Among the balances they put in place was that the people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives.  That is the body of government closest to the people.  If you recall the wording of the Tenth Amendment it speaks of the federal government, the states and the people.  The Senate was to be appointed by the state legislatures to represent their interests.  The president was to be elected, not by the people, but by the Electoral College.  Lastly, judges were to be appointed for life by the president with the advice and consent of the senate.  Why did they do this?  One reason is that they believed that if a proposed law had the backing of the majority of the people (House of Representatives) and a majority of the states (Senate) then it was probably a good thing, otherwise slow it down.  The fewer the number of laws, the greater our liberty.

The Progressives Attack

The progressives began their designs on the Constitution with the introduction of the income tax through the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.  By allowing the government to tax incomes the government could now afford to greatly expand. However, to be able to expand it had to have the consent of the states, which was not likely to be granted.  So two months after the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified.  The Seventeenth Amendment called for the direct election of Senators, rather than having them appointed by the state legislatures.  The individual citizens picked up two more votes in the federal government, in most cases an even weaker voice than their Representative, and the states were shut out.

Do you think things such as unfunded mandates could pass in Congress if the states still chose the members of the Senate?  Social Security? Medicare? The Department of Education? The Department of Housing and Urban Development? And on and on?  Think of some of the more radical members of the Senate.  Do you think Al Franken would have been appointed by the Minnesota state legislature?  For many years in New York, the State Assembly was under the control of the Democrats but the State Senate was under the control of the Republicans.  The governorship passed back and forth between representatives of the two parties.   However, New York’s two Senators are Democrats and win reelection easily because of the concentration of Democrats mainly in New York City.  Could Hillary Clinton have moved into New York and immediately become its newest Senator with a Republican governor and Republican controlled State Senate? She was elected Senator from New York before she even moved out of the White House.  So instead of representing their state legislatures, Senate candidates focused on the population centers of their states to appeal directly to the people and to get elected and reelected.  The states were reduced from sovereign entities to subsidiaries of the federal government.

The Supreme Court

When Franklin Roosevelt was president he tried to pass his massive socialist programs but found that the Supreme Court was striking down many of his programs as being unconstitutional.  Roosevelt wanted to pack the court by increasing its membership from nine justices to fifteen.  He argued that the justices were old and over worked.  So he wanted to appoint a new justice for every existing justice that was seventy years or older.  His plan failed.  But when he broke with George Washington’s precedent and that of every president who followed him of serving no more than two terms, he was eventually able to appoint every justice to the Supreme Court.  So he got his way, it just took longer.

The Supreme Court can be considered the collateral damage of the Seventeenth Amendment.  The Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.  However once the Senators became directly elected by the people things changed.  Would a distinguished jurist like Robert Bork be treated as shamefully as he was by the lie filled speech of Ted Kennedy if Kennedy and Joe Biden weren’t doing the work of the pro-abortion lobby?  Would Clarence Thomas be subjected to the electronic lynching he faced if not for some Senators pandering to their special interest groups?  What we now have are potential Supreme Court justices who have learned that if you don’t want to get “Borked” keep your mouth shut during your confirmation hearings.  So we don’t know who we are going to get until a lifetime appointee is on the bench and then it is too late.

The 2000 Presidential Election

Who can forget the 2000 presidential election?  The Democrats still say Al Gore won, not because of Florida (he lost the election there, he lost the re-count, he lost the re-re-count) but because he won the popular vote.  The debates raged, why do we have an Electoral College?  The president should be elected by popular vote only. 

The argument follows the one made previously about the direct election of senators.  The Electoral College forces presidential candidates to campaign everywhere because everywhere counts.  There are at least three electoral votes to be had in every state.  The Founders were very concerned about balance.  They did not want the president just to be elected by the people of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, the large cities of that time.  Today, if the Electoral College was abolished the election would focus on the media  and population centers of New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago and the large cities because that’s where it is easiest to get the message out and that is where the majority of the people are.  The progressives would put up pretty much the same candidates as they do today, perhaps more to the left.  This is their home turf and power base.  Instead of traveling around the country they could concentrate their time and money in a few large cities.  The Republicans would probably field candidates of a far more moderate stripe to not get hooted off the stage in New York.  Let me illustrate.

Electoral College vote Bush-Gore 2000

The Democrats claim Gore won in 2000 because he won the popular vote.  He lost in the Electoral College by five votes.  If you look at the breakdown of the states Gore won versus Bush, Gore took the Northeast, the Great Lakes area and the West Coast.  With the exception of New Mexico, Bush took everything else.

Let’s dial it down a level and look at who won at the county level.

Bush-Gore 2000 Winners by County

If you look at it at the county level, you could drive from the east coast to the west coast without entering a single county that Gore won.  You could do the same driving from Canada to Mexico.  But if popular vote was the metric, the man who won 80%-90% of the land mass of the United States would have lost.  Why should you not have a say, if you don’t live in a major population center?  It is not like Bush won in an Electoral College landslide and it is not like Gore absolutely trounced Bush in the popular vote.  The purpose of the Electoral College is to act as another brake on the tyranny of the majority.  

Where Do We Go From Here  

We are presently at a crossroads.  We have an electorate that is more knowledgeable, more aware, and more engaged than at any time in my memory.  We can continue to go down the socialist path toward a massive central government that takes all of our liberties for a measure of sustenance, or we can turn the tide and demand our liberties back.  

Let us begin by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.

There was a time when people came to our shores to find a better life.  To escape persecution and poverty and to build a better life for their children was their goal.  They found Lady Liberty lifting her lamp beside the golden door.

What happened next was that people assimilated.  Their children went to school with other children and learned to read and speak English.  Their names may have sounded different but before long their voices didn’t.  Sure, New Englanders sounded different than those from Mississippi, but they sounded very much like their neighbors.  They became Americans.

I just finished reading Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen’s historical novel, To Try Men’s Souls, which is the story of the George Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, and attacking Trenton.  Trenton was guarded by Hessian mercenaries, who were some of the most elite soldiers in Europe.  It was a mismatch beyond belief, but in a last ditch effort, their password that night was “Victory or Death,” and with the element of surprise, they prevailed.  In one passage it mentioned American soldiers of Dutch and German extraction shouting to the Hessians to surrender, in German.  They were probably closer to the Hessians in culture and blood than to their fellow Americans from Boston, but they considered themselves Americans and were willing to die for their country.

The Balkanization of America

Today, we are mired in multiculturalism.  I remember the story of an Hispanic man loudly protesting to his local school board regarding bilingual education to which he was opposed.  “You’re teaching my son to be a janitor!” he said, “I want him to learn in English, so that he can get a job with a future!” 

We should not lose track of our roots.  It is right to celebrate where we came from.  One of the great things about New York is the different neighborhoods and parades that teach and celebrate about where we came from, which is good.  But if carried to the point where we no longer assimilate; where we remain pockets of groups with their own identity and politics, we are in grave danger of ceasing to be America.

During World War II, what if people of German heritage refused to fight against Hitler or for that matter felt a greater allegiance to him than to America?  Some did.  They were tried for treason. What if they were protected instead?  What if their differences were looked at with admiration rather than suspicion?

Fort Hood

Commentators in the news are twisting themselves in knots trying to disassociate Major Nidal Hasan’s slaughter of 13 Americans from his jihadist proclivities, despite evidence of outright hostility toward America and contact with a radical imam.  It is politically incorrect, to speak of his religion.  The Army Chief of Staff raises concern about negatively impacting the military’s record of diversity, if we focus on anything but a lone gunman who snapped.

But what if there is a larger plot?  What if there is an effort on the behalf of some Muslims to purposely not assimilate, to infiltrate the military and become a fifth column within?  Multiculturalism makes it far easier for this to occur because if everyone looks different, no one stands out.  On the other hand, if everyone assimilates, those who speak, act, or plot against America become more obvious.  Again, imagine multiculturalism in the United States in 1943.  You might have whole communities that were German to the core, did not like non-Germans among them and quickly spread the alarm when a stranger approached.  How much easier would it have been for Hitler to build a network of saboteurs?

Kill Multiculturalism Before it Kills Us

We must reinvigorate the idea of assimilation.  Speak any language you want at home; dress any way you want; practice your faith as you please, but where government is involved, we should be treated equally. We should speak one common language for all official business.  If not, where do we draw the line?

In Minnesota in 2007 a public university coffee cart was banned from playing Christmas Carols, but public money was being used to install foot baths to accommodate Muslims before prayer.  After the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and now another terrorist attack at Fort Hood, we have to be able to tell the good Muslims from those out to kill us.  We must have true peace loving Muslims, become true Americans.  We have to engender that we are Americans first, like those early Americans of Dutch and German decent, and not have divided loyalties particularly where the “other loyalty” insists on killing us infidels.

Movin' Out

One of the great blessings bestowed upon us by our Founding Fathers was federalism. Our federal form of government evolved from the Articles of Confederation, where states had primacy and the national government acted only with the consent of the states.  This proved to be too cumbersome.

In writing the Constitution, the Founders identified very specific roles and responsibilities for the national government and left everything else to the states or the people (see Tenth Amendment).  In doing so it gave the people the power of liberty through mobility.  If you didn’t like the way they did things in Massachusetts, you could move to Virginia.  If the people of Pennsylvania didn’t want a mass migration of people to Georgia, they needed to be careful regarding the laws that they passed so as not to alienate a large block of their constituents.

The War on Federalism

The statist, who loves government and believes government should control every aspect of our lives, hates federalism, because it weakens its control.  So they attack it through the courts.

Here is their standard battle plan.  Let’s the case of Gay Marriage.  Vermont’s legislature approves Gay Marriage.  Whether you are in favor of that or oppose that it shouldn’t affect you if you don’t live in Vermont.  If you are in favor and you live elsewhere, you can move to Vermont.  If you live there and are opposed you can either fight to overturn it in Vermont, or move elsewhere.  That’s the beauty of federalism.  If continued to its logical conclusion, some states would approve it and those in favor would migrate there, and those who are opposed would concentrate in states that would ensure that it would not be adopted in their state.  You could have a raging debate, but your liberty would be preserved through mobility.

However, the statists have a different view of things.  After the law is passed in Vermont by the legislature (as is proper), or made up out of thin air by the court in Massachusetts (judicial activism and improper), some couples who are married in these states move to another state.  By doing so, they should leave their state sanctioned rights behind.  However, what they will typically do when their Vermont sanctioned rights are not honored in, say, Tennessee they will rush to federal court and says their Constitutional rights are being violated.  A court stocked with judicial activists, will find some fig leaf of justification with words like emanations and penumbras, to make a new law of the land and with the stroke of a pen, the liberties of all Americans will be swept away based on the will of the people of Vermont.  You no longer can protect your liberty through mobility.  You cannot go anywhere to live in proximity to like minded people and live the life you believe in.  Mobility is no longer a tool to protect your liberty it is a weapon against you.  People can secure rights elsewhere and use mobility to come to your doorstep and use the courts to force their beliefs on you.

Fierce Fighting

I believe that is why the fighting over these issues become so fierce and acrimonious.  If something is allowed anywhere, it will soon be allowed everywhere, because of an activist judiciary.  Our rhetoric has become more strident, our politics is anything but bipartisan, all because everything is being elevated to the federal level.  States are becoming less and less important.  If you don’t believe it  ask people, who was responsible for the fiasco after hurricane Katrina?  If they say President Bush, ask them to name the mayor of New Orleans or the governor of Louisiana at the time. Bush and the federal government should have been the third line of defense, not the first.  The first should have been the city, then the state and then the federal government.

Back to Federalism

Show me where in the constitution it says the government should own General Motors and Chrysler.  Show me where it says that a tunnel, entirely in the city of Boston should be paid for by the taxpayers of Arizona.  Show me where in the constitution it says education is the responsibility not of local government but the federal government.  It doesn’t.  And until well roll back this juggernaut, our liberties will be crushed little by little, day by day.

This is why it is also important to guard against activist judges getting on the bench or being elevated to higher levels of the court. It is just these activist judges who are taking away your liberty to move away from those who don’t believe what you do and moving toward those you do agree with.  Take note of the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

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 — Amendment X, United States Constitution

“I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going To Take It Any More”

That quote from the movie “Network” popped into my head as I read about a legislator in Oklahoma, calling for legislative support for the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.  It passed the state assembly unanimously.  So what does this mean?  The sponsor of the bill, State Senator Randy Brogdan, explains:

The “federal government has been putting the screws on (the states) a little tighter and tighter each year” along with unfunded mandates of varying sorts.

And each time this happens, Brogdon explained, “We lose a little bit of our freedom and liberty.”

The federal government has been growing enormously and taking on more and more things that used to be handled locally, such as education, and welfare.  Other programs have not changed as the economy has, for example, as the percentage of the population that farms has decreased dramatically has the Department of Agriculture shrunk accordingly?

You Must Obey!

The way the federal government works around this is by saying, okay, you don’t have to do what we tell you, but you will get no federal funding if you don’t.  It seems like a Catch-22, no?  Since the 16th Amendment, which authorized the income tax, the federal government can decide how much to tax incomes and there is little that the states can do about it.  They take money from your pocket under threat of imprisonment, and will give it back to you only if you comply with their rules.

How Do We Fix This One?

It may require a constitutional amendment to fix as the 16th Amendment says:

The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. — 16th Amendment to the Constitution

I’ll leave the legal mechanics to those better qualified, but I would propose the following.  That the federal budget shall include a breakdown of projected revenues derived from income taxes, broken down by source: individual, corporate, etc.  A state should then be allowed to refuse mandates and programs from, say, the Department of Education, and withhold from the IRS that proportion of tax dollars destined for the Department of Education from that state.

Certain departments should be deemed mandatory, such as Defense, State, Treasure, to name a few as these departments serve all citizens.

The legislation under consideration in Oklahoma will have little effect if the federal government can suck up as much money as it wants to from the states, via their citizens and then just keep the money if the states refuse to participate in the programs.  How do you determine which programs should be subject to the states discretion?  No money should flow from a state, to Washington, and then back to the state.  That is just plain stupid and wasteful, or a distribution of wealth, none of which is a government function. Paying for roads and infrastructure that does not cross state lines should be funded locally.  It is ridiculous that the federal government pays 90% of the cost of a highway that lies entirely within a city.  Look at the scandalous “Big Dig” in Boston.  Billions of dollars spent and parts of it are falling down.  Why should any of this be paid for by the people of Kansas, Oklahoma, Alaska, New York, Florida, et al.?

But the real answer is following the 10th Amendment.  It clearly states that the role of the federal government is spelled out in the Constitution.  If it’s not in the Constitution then that responsibility is left to the states or the people.  Show me where in the Constitution it says that the federal government is responsible for education.  It’s not in there and that department should be shut down tomorrow.

It’s Time to Rein the Monster In

The anger in the country is growing.  Those who acted responsibly are being told they have to bail out the irresponsible.  They are being told by “Buck a Day Biden” that it is their patriotic duty to pay higher taxes to help out.  Meanwhile half a dozen Obama appointees haven’t paid the taxes they owe, let alone paying more.  I give Biden the “Buck a Day Biden” moniker because that is how much this millionaire gives to charity.  He doesn’t want to spend his own money on charity, he wants the government to take your money to fund government programs to do that.

If you don’t think the anger is growing take a look at this.  Rick Santelli