Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
I suppose we knew it wouldn’t take long before this turned into another “opportunity not to be wasted” to curtail our Second Amendment liberties further. On Slate.com William Saletan, wrote a piece called, “Friendly Firearms: Gabrielle Giffords and the Perils of Guns: How an Armed Hero Nearly Shot the Wrong Man.”
In an interview on Bloomberg radio yesterday, New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch talked about the perilous state of New York’s economy. Mr. Ravitch was a key player in the rescue of New York City from the brink of financial collapse in the 1970s. He talked about bankruptcy being an option and how New York City’s possible bankruptcy really brought banks to the negotiating table. He also talked about how important the financial services industry is to New York as a source of tax revenue. Then he let the cat out of the bag.
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.
For years Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the most thoughtful and erudite public servants we have had, published a document New York and the Federal Fisc that described the flow of dollars from New York and the great imbalance on the return trip. Steve Israel seems to have taken up that mantle but his votes in the House are baffling.
When President Obama and his team stood before their supporters and introduced ObamaCare you could almost hear them sing in unison the Carly Simon song, “Nobody does it better…”. They were going to bring us the health care we had been waiting for. Magically covering every soul in America whether they wanted it or not. If they did not, the government would be just like granny used to be, “Open wide, this won’t hurt a bit.” Come to think of it, was that granny or… never mind.
As is the case every ten years we take a census of the population of the United States, as required by the Constitution. After the census is taken the seats in the House of Representatives are shuffled to accommodate for shifts in population between the states.
So what does this all mean? In a previous post focusing on the Senate we showed that currently twenty-one Democrats and two independents who caucus (meet and generally vote with) the Democrats will be facing election in 2012 compared to only ten Republicans. In the House, everyone is up for re-election every two years. So after picking up 60 seats, or thereabouts as some races still haven’t been decided, where do the two parties start off as a result of reapportionment? Although final numbers won’t be in until December, it doesn’t look good for the Democrats.
Two disparate news items this weekend got me thinking. The main stream media is all abuzz with Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, even to the point of throwing the term royalty around. It is estimated that the wedding will cost $3-$5 million, although Sally Quinn of the Washington post puts the bill at closer to $1 million. The comparison was then made to the cost of Jenna Bush’s wedding, a mere $100,000. This became fodder for The Joy Behar Show. Comedian Judy Gold leaped at the opportunity to take a shot at Bush, “Yeah, well, if he could have found a way for us to pay for Jenna`s wedding, he would have done that, okay, he likes to spend other people`s money.” An interesting perspective on other people’s money that I will return to later.
The other news items was an article in The New York Times, by Bob Herbert titled “A Sin and a Shame,” lamenting that corporations are hording cash and not hiring people and it is all so unfair, in fact, sinful. This is while this government is spending huge amounts of money that someone will have to pay back, massive new programs like ObamaCare that we are still uncovering what that will cost, and enormous tax increases about to kick in on January 1 when the Bush tax cuts expire. Perhaps they are hording cash for a reason? Perhaps they are not hiring because they don’t know what any new employees will cost under these new programs, or for that matter what their existing employees are going to cost? Perhaps it is because the latest economic reports show GDP shrinking and if that continues why would you start hiring if your business is going to slow down with the rest of the economy?
We have two very divergent views of the economy today. One view is held by those who actually work in the private economy and the other view is held by those in the ivory towers of government, which brings me back to the weddings. I really don’t care what the Clintons or the Bushes spend on their daughter’s weddings. It’s their money. But perhaps it is instructive to look at where that money came from.
George Herbert Walker Bush, Jenna’s grandfather, was born into a successful family. His father was a banker and a Senator. But after getting out of the Army after WWII he went to Yale and upon graduation, moved away from that family and settled in Texas to start an oil company. He went into private business and put his own money at risk. What that means, to those who never took that chance, is you may be successful and make a lot of money, you may be successful and make a little money, you may fail and lose your money. Chances are greater that you will lose than win, but that is the American Dream. If you lose, you have to start over by trying to earn and save up what you lost to try again, if you have the guts and drive. Bush succeeded in forming Bush-Overby and later with Zapata Petroleum. He became President of Zapata for ten years and then Chairman for another two, before going into politics. By then he was a millionaire in his own right.
George Walker Bush, Jenna’s dad, attended public school in Midland, Texas, where his parents had settled. He went to private school after the family moved to Houston. He later attended Yale University and became the only president to get an MBA which he did, from Harvard. Like his father, he went into the oil business starting several independent oil exploration companies. He later bought a stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team for $800,000 and was instrumental in building the team’s attendance. He later sold his stake for $15 million. Then he went into politics.
The two Bushes know risk, know about taking chances and became millionaires on their own before going into politics. They also learned lessons about spending money and doing so prudently.
Bill Clinton went into politics almost immediately after getting his law degree. He was Attorney General and then Governor of Arkansas. As governor he had a governor’s mansion. He ran for president and upon winning traded in his governor’s mansion for the Executive Mansion, aka the White House. He had been on the government payroll and living in government provided housing almost his entire working life. The sweat of the people in who paid their taxes paid him. After leaving office, Mr. Clinton was able to write books about his experience and make speeches commanding six figures a pop. His wife did pretty much the same. They lived off the people and ended up very rich. They didn’t create a product or service, they didn’t create jobs, and they didn’t meet a payroll.
I can hear the screams from the left right now, “What do you mean he didn’t create a job or meet a payroll?” Try this test. If Bill Clinton’s opponent was elected rather than Bill Clinton, would there still be a government payroll and government jobs? If yes, Bill Clinton didn’t create them. If either of the Bushes didn’t create their companies would there be jobs at those companies or payrolls? No.
What about some other famous politicians who tell us what to do? Let’s look at Al Gore. Here is another individual that spent the bulk of his career in government. He was a member of Congress, a United States Senator, Vice President and presidential candidate. Today he is very rich. It is said he may become the first “green billionaire”. If he went into his current endeavors before a life in government, would the story be the same? Or is it because of his name, reputation, and connections that he made at the public trough, that he is wallowing in riches, and telling the rest of us to reduce our carbon footprint while his mansions consume ten times the energy of his neighbors?
Charlie Rangel spent most of his life in government. He rose through the ranks and now has a waterfront condominium in the Dominican Republic, writes the tax laws but does not observe them, and is a wealthy man. Conservatives don’t believe in rent control or rent stabilized apartments, but Charlie does. After all, how can poor and middle income people afford to live in places like Manhattan if greedy landlords have their way. So Charlie Rangel who makes $174,000 per year, plus his chairmanship pay, has not one, not two, not three, but four rent controlled apartments. Is he poor or middle class? No, he is the political class. He took three adjoining rent controlled apartments and had them joined together, while the fourth apartment served, illegally, as his campaign headquarters. What about the poor and blue collar workers who could live in Manhattan if three of your four rent controlled apartments weren’t being horded by you? Let them eat cake.
John Kerry is in the news for trying to avoid $500,000 in taxes on his new yacht. Here is another individual who spent his entire working life in government. He can tell the rest of us to pay more taxes while he garners favors spending our money. He is the richest man in the Senate but with prenuptial agreements with his wife he only lists personal assets of between $400,000 and $1.8 million and joint assets with his wife of $300,000 – $600,000. So how does he buy a $7 million yacht? I am not suggesting anything nefarious, it’s obvious his wife paid for it, but do you think he is in touch with someone trying to make a payroll in the private sector? You pay taxes; John Kerry has advisors to figure out how to avoid them.
So those evil corporations started by those evil men like George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush, know the value of a dollar. They know we are not out of the woods yet and so to protect the jobs that their companies still have they are not hiring but are building their rainy day funds. Perhaps Bob Herbert should ask why his employer is shedding jobs left and right. Perhaps this is his safe way of doing so, but on the other hand the New York Times is hardly hording cash. Its circulation is crashing because people like Bob Herbert are so out of touch with the rest of America; no one wants to read his rants any longer.
So perhaps Bill Clinton spends millions on Chelsea’s wedding because he didn’t learn the value of a dollar. He lived of the government for many years and then just held out a basket and it was miraculously filled with more money than he can count. George Bush spent $100,000 on a wedding because he knows how hard it is to earn a dollar. What we need is less of the political class telling us what to do, and then handing us the bill and more entrepreneurial Americans who risk their own money, watch it like hawks, create jobs and generate wealth that they then reinvest in America.
Best wishes to Chelsea and Marc.
You hear a lot of talk these days about the Senate being broken because nothing can get passed with a majority vote. Everything has to get sixty votes to pass and that’s just un-American. Is it?
The House of Representatives
The Founding Fathers were brilliant in designing the government that has survived longer than any other, and it wasn’t an accident. The House of Representatives was designed to be the branch of government closest to the people. The members come from districts that are sized based on population. It is also in the House of Representatives that all revenue bills (i.e., tax increases) must originate. The Senate cannot create legislation to raise taxes.
The Senate
The Senate was designed with a different purpose in mind. In the form of federalism that they created, the Senate was supposed to represent the individual states. Originally Senators were appointed by the state legislatures and this continued until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, which provided for the direct election of Senators by the people. The Senate was designed to be a check on the tyranny of the majority. In the House, populous states like New York, California, Texas and Florida, have a lot of representation. To prevent a handful of states from pushing around everyone else, representation in the Senate is the same for Rhode Island as it is for California, two each. In the House, California trumps Rhode Island. In the Senate they do not. Are you picking up the theme?
The Dreaded Filibuster
Being able to filibuster in the Senate is another way of allowing cooler heads to prevail. If legislation before the Senate cannot win over some reasonable number of Senators, then it’s probably not a very good idea for the country.
As proof that things are more partisan today, pundits point to how the number of filibusters has greatly increased over time.
In the entire 19th century, including the struggle against slavery, fewer than two dozen filibusters were mounted.
It is reported that things really took off during the Clinton administration. Hmm, what else was going on then… Hillary Care? We have also seen the out of control growth of the federal government’s involvement in almost every aspect of our lives, such as, how much we can be paid, how much a bushel of wheat should cost, how schools are funded; none of which is in the Constitution as powers the federal government should have. Those are all things that, according to the 10th Amendment, are the purview of the states or the people.
The Filibuster Fix
So if you don’t like the way the Senate is bogged down, instead of taking the brakes off the car, how about dumping the junk in the trunk? The less minutia the federal government gets involved in (let’s start with health care), the less reason, reasonable Senators will have to filibuster.
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.
Your Tax Dollars Hard At Work
by Bill O'Connell on March 3, 2010
The US Postal Service is contemplating increasing postage rates and eliminating Saturday delivery. Really? They lost approximately $4 billion last year. But don’t worry the CEO got a bonus. It is reported that their labor costs, heavily unionized, exceed 80% of revenues. Did you know that the only place where unionization is growing is in the public sector? Union representation in the public sector surpassed the private sector for the first time this year.
But don’t worry, President Obama has a handle on it. He appointed Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union to the board to figure out how to reduce the deficit. Do you see a problem between these two news items? Can you see a problem with the objectives of an Andy Stern and you and me?
As a side note, Rick Perry just won the Republican primary for governor of Texas and in his campaign he used no yard signs, no phone banks, and no direct mail. As one commentator said “paper is dead.”
I know this is completely anecdotal, but my local post office just completed an expansion project increasing the size of the building. I have noticed more than one post office being expanded as well. Again, this is just my limited, personal observation, not a scientific study, but with the drop in mail volume, “paper is dead”, $4 billion in losses, performance bonuses for lackluster performance, heavy unionization, am I being unreasonable in thinking the government couldn’t handle health care even if it was a good idea?