Thought For The Day
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The longer an elected official remains in the swamp of Washington, D.C., the farther he drifts from mainstream Americans. Recycle Congress in 2010 - No exceptions
Someone once said that Senator Hubert Humphrey, liberal icon of an earlier generation, had more solutions than there were problems.
Senator Humphrey was not unique in that respect. In fact, our present economic crisis has developed out of politicians providing solutions to problems that did not exist-- and, as a result, producing a problem whose existence is all too real and all too painful.
What was the problem that didn't exist? It was a national problem of unaffordable housing. The political crusade for affordable housing got into high gear in the 1990s and led to all kinds of changes in mortgage lending practices, which in turn led to a housing boom and bust that has left us in the mess we are now trying to dig out of.
Usually housing affordability is measured in terms of how much of the average person's income it takes to cover either apartment rent or a monthly mortgage payment.
There were certainly places here and there where it took half a family's income just to put a roof over their heads. Many such places were in coastal California but there were a few others, here and there, on the east coast and elsewhere.
But, vast areas of the country in between -- "flyover country" to the east coast and west coast elites -- had housing prices that took no larger share of the average American's income than in the decade before the affordable housing crusade got under way.
Why then a national crusade by Washington politicians over local problems? Probably as good an answer as any is that "It seemed like a good idea at the time." How are we to be kept aware of how compassionate and how important our elected officials are unless they are busy solving some problem for us?
The problem of skyrocketing housing prices was all too real in those places where this problem existed. When you have to live on half your income because the other half goes for housing, that's a real downer.
Almost invariably, these severe local problems had local causes-- usually severe local restrictions on building homes. These restrictions had a variety of politically attractive names, ranging from "open space" laws and "smart growth" policies to "environmental protection" and "farmland preservation."
Like most wonderful-sounding political slogans, none of these lofty goals was discussed in terms of that one four-letter word that people do not use in polite political society-- "cost."
No one asked how many hundreds of thousands of dollars would be added to the cost of an average home by "open space" laws, for example. Yet empirical studies have shown that land-use restrictions added at least a hundred thousand dollars to the average home price in dozens of places around the country.
In some places, such as coastal California, these restrictions added several hundred thousand dollars to the price of the average home.
In other words, where the problem was real, local politicians were the cause. National politicians then tried to depict this as a national problem that they would solve.
How would they solve it? By pressuring banks and other lenders to lower their requirements for making mortgage loans, so that more people could buy houses. The Department of Housing and Urban Development gave the government-sponsored enterprise Fannie Mae quotas for how many mortgages it should buy that were made out for people for low to moderate incomes.
Like most political "solutions," the solution to the affordable housing "problem" took little or no account of the wider repercussions this would entail.
Various economists and others warned repeatedly that lowered lending standards meant more risky mortgages. Given the complex relationships among banks and other financial institutions, including many big Wall Street firms, if mortgages started defaulting, all the financial dominoes could start falling.
These warnings were brushed aside. Politicians were too busy solving a national problem that didn't exist. In the process, they created very real problems. Now they are now offering even more solutions that will undoubtedly lead to even bigger problems.
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Red State Patriot: So what should we anticipate next from the Obama Administration?
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A look at Sweden's way
Government health care advocates once sang the praises of Britain's National Health Service (NHS). That's until its poor delivery of health care services became known.
A recent study by David Green and Laura Casper, "Delay, Denial and Dilution," written for the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, concludes that the NHS health care services are just about the worst in the developed world. The head of the World Health Organization calculated that Britain has as many as 25,000 unnecessary cancer deaths a year because of under-provision of care.
Twelve percent of specialists surveyed admitted refusing kidney dialysis to patients suffering from kidney failure because of limits on cash. Waiting lists for medical treatment have become so long there are now "waiting lists" for the waiting list.
Government health care advocates sing the praises of Canada's single-payer system. Canada's government system isn't that different from Britain's. For example, after a Canadian has been referred to a specialist, the waiting list for gynecological surgery is four to 12 weeks, cataract removal 12 to 18 weeks, tonsillectomy three to 36 weeks and neurosurgery five to 30 weeks.
Toronto-area hospitals, concerned about lawsuits, ask patients to sign a legal release accepting that while delays in treatment may jeopardize their health, they nevertheless hold the hospital blameless.
Canadians have an option Britainers don't: proximity of American hospitals. In fact, the Canadian government spends more than $1 billion each year for Canadians to receive medical treatment in our country. I wonder how much money the U.S. government spends for Americans to be treated in Canada.
"OK, Williams," you say, "Sweden is the world's socialist wonder." Sven R. Larson tells about some of Sweden's problems in "Lesson from Sweden's Universal Health System: Tales from the Health-care Crypt," published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (spring 2008). Mr. D., a Gothenburg multiple sclerosis patient, was prescribed a new drug. His doctor's request was denied because the drug was 33 percent more expensive than the older medicine. Mr. D. offered to pay for the medicine himself but was prevented from doing so. The bureaucrats said it would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine.
Malmo, with its 280,000 residents, is Sweden's third-largest city. To see a physician, a patient must go to one of two local clinics before they can see a specialist. The clinics have security guards to keep patients from getting unruly as they wait hours to see a doctor. The guards also prevent new patients from entering the clinic when the waiting room is considered full. Uppsala, a city of 200,000 people, has only one mammography specialist.
Sweden's National Cancer Foundation reports that in a few years most Swedish women will have no access to mammography.
Dr. Olle Stendahl, a professor of medicine at Linkoping University, pointed out a side effect of government-run medicine: its impact on innovation. He said, "In our budget-government health care there is no room for curious, young physicians and other professionals to challenge established views. New knowledge is not attractive but typically considered a problem [that brings] increased costs and disturbances in today's slimmed-down health care."
These are just a few of the problems of Sweden's single-payer government-run health care system. I wonder how many Americans would like a system that would, as in the case of Mr. D. of Gothenburg, prohibit private purchase of your own medicine if the government refused paying.
We have problems in our health care system but most of them are a result of too much government. More than 50 percent of health care expenditures in our country are made by government. Government health care advocates might say they will avoid the horrors of other government-run systems. Don't believe them.
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, who published Sven Larson's paper, is a group of liberty-oriented doctors and health care practitioners who haven't sold their members down the socialist river as have other medical associations. They deserve our thanks for being a major player in the '90s defeat of "Hillary care."
Walter E. Williams
March 21, 2009
Walter E. Williams is a nationally syndicated columnist and a professor of economics at George Mason University.
All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"... A billion dollars ... A hundred billion dollars ... Eight hundred billion dollars ... One trillion dollars ... Just words. Most people don’t have a conceptual appreciation of one trillion dollars … how could they?
To illustrate the point, let’s start with a $100 bill, currently the largest denomination bill in general circulation. Most everyone has seen one. I think we can agree that $100 bills are guaranteed to make friends wherever they go, even in foreign countries.
A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. It fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.
This next little pile of money is $1 million dollars (100 packets $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.
While a measly $1 million looks a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet.
And $1 billion ... now we're really getting somewhere!
The next image is ONE TRILLION dollars. That’s that number we've been hearing so much about. How much is one trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million dollars. Or if you prefer, it’s a thousand billion. A trillion dollars is $1 followed by 12 zeros.
You ready for this? It's pretty surprising. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you $1 trillion dollars. Note all those pallets of $100 bills, as far as the eye can see, each pallet being $100 million. Did you notice that the pallets are double-stacked? Look at the size of the person.
The graphic above provides us a glimpse of YOUR personal debt, in such a way to grasp its enormity. Yes, your government’s debt is your personal debt. And the graphic only depicts $1 trillion! Because it's YOUR debt, I feel the need to tell you again who is going to have to pay it off - you, your family, your children, your grandchildren, for generations and generations to come. Let the realization sink in slowly and savor it.
Oh, did I mention that the national debt is far greater than $1 trillion, closer in truth to 11 trillion dollars today. Keep in mind that we’ve only been talking about one trillion dollars, and the Obama Administration’s projected deficit spending (vastly expanding the pre-existing national debt) is expected to add another $7-9 trillion in national debt. Can you imagine 20 trillion dollars?
So the next time you hear someone (politician or lame-stream media) toss around the phrase "trillion dollars", now you know what that ‘empty hat’ is talking about.
Furthermore, it isn't your money that Congress is spending! It never was. The bailout and stimulus money didn’t come from your taxes. It was Chinese or Saudi Arabian or Japanese money, which Congress borrowed (in your name and on your behalf) and then spent/directed toward corporate, bank or labor union special interests or redistributed to expand the welfare state. Even though you didn’t authorize Congress to borrow and spend this money, or to spend it irresponsibly, it was YOU who voted for these people and it was you who authorized them to act in your behalf (and in hindsight to beat you figuratively with a rubber hose). Now that you’re ‘hosed’ financially, in debt beyond comprehension in perpetuity, you can better appreciate their callously inept, or in many cases, willful and reckless decisions.
Congress’ relationship and fiduciary responsibility to us is what Bernie Madoff’s relationship was with his investors. While Bernie Madoff will NOT repay the money he lost in a Ponzi scheme with bad investment decisions and bad market timing, you WILL be expected to repay every penny Congress has squandered and redistributed around the world for decades. Congratulations. You now owe tens of trillions of dollars. While Congress borrows, and uses the money to bail out not just domestic banks, but foreign banks as well, counterparties of Goldman Sachs, you have the remarkable privilege of bailing out Congress. While Bernie Madoff goes to jail, your congressman goes free. Is this a great country or what!
Maybe you’re thinking, “Who loaned us trillion’s of dollars?” The answer is foreign governments, foreign banks and multi-national corporations, all of whom purchased our Treasury Bills (debt instruments of the U.S. federal government). Now you’re wondering, “How do we ever pay them back? What do we export anymore beside wheat and corn? Can we give whoever loaned us the money a state, let's say Nevada, as payment?”
Unfortunately, as a result of the other flawed decisions by the genius’ in Congress, a large percentage of the corn is going into the production of Ethanol. We don't sell corn that much any more, at least not in the quantities we once did, to other nations. As for wheat, large tracts of land have been converted by farmers to grow corn. So we don't grow and sell as much wheat any more either, at least not to other nations. While the United States was once-upon-a-time the breadbasket of the world, that is not so true anymore. As far as giving them Nevada, many countries (and particularly the Chinese and Saudis) already have a legal financial claim to many infrastructure assets in the United States as collateral for the United States national debt (your debt). Isn’t that a hoot! They also have a legal and ethical right to claim a large portion of your wages, for your lifetime, to repay the debt your government owes them. Think of it this way. Congress is going to garnish your wages in the form of draconian taxes to pay the indebtedness to foreign nations that they created. They party, and live like royalty, and behave like rock stars, while you pick up their tab.
How many people do you think grasp the fact that taxing United States citizens and businesses is the only tool our government has with which to pay off loans to countries such as Saudi Arabia, China and Japan? Put another way, this is the money YOU personally owe because of the votes of people like Democrat Harry Mitchell. The Honorable Harry Mitchell is the District 5 representative in the House of Representatives from Scottsdale, Arizona. You can tell he’s looking out for you.
Ask yourself - how many people in the United States pay taxes? Roughly, there are 138 million individual taxpayers in the United States. In addition to personal income taxes, taxes are also collected from payroll tax (FICA), corporate tax, estate and gift taxes, and excise taxes (gasoline, alcohol, tobacco, etc.), just to name a few of the 30+ other sources of taxes extracted from the economy.
It is important that you realize, to actually comprehend, that it is you who personally pay every dollar of these taxes, every tax whether it is levied by the federal, state, country, or municipal governments, even the corporate taxes which are embedded in the price of everything we purchase.
There is nothing you can do to avoid responsibility for this debt - short of moving overseas and renouncing United States citizenship. And until you realize that the grass is not much greener anywhere else, why not enjoy a humorous moment and calculate the interest payments on the national debt - your debt? Let me do it for you.
So I ask you, where is the $450 billion in annual interest (1.25 billion dollars in interest payments per day) on the $11 trillion of national debt already outstanding (that includes U.S. Treasury notes and bonds, Foreign and domestic series certificates of indebtedness, notes and bonds, Savings bonds, Government Account Series (GAS), State and Local Government series (SLGs) and other special purpose securities, going to come from? From you and me of course!
Those numbers are from 2008 and do not include the first dime of spending by the Obama Administration and Congress since the 2008 election; the 11 trillion includes none of the so-called bailout or economic stimulus schemes.
Just today, in a surprise and dramatic move, the Fed increased the amount of money it will create out of thin air, ostensibly to thaw out the still-frozen credit markets (read: we’re not lending any more money to those deadbeats that won’t pay it back) that have cramped lending to consumers and businesses alike.
The Fed went on to say it would purchase (read: you will be purchasing with your taxes) an additional $750 billion worth of government-guaranteed mortgage-backed securities, on top of the $500 billion that it is currently in the process of buying. In addition, the Fed said it would buy (read: you will be buying) up to $300 billion worth of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months. That would tend to artificially push down longer-term interest rates on loans of all types - at least that’s the thinking. All of the Fed’s measures would come in addition to what has already been an unprecedented expansion of lending by the Fed. Since last September, the central bank has roughly doubled the size of its balance sheet to $2 trillion from $900 billion (buying up marginal or worthless debts in your behalf) — even before today’s action — in what appears to be a concerted effort to create $10 per gallon milk.
When the spending (running up of U.S. debt owed to the rest of the world) reaches its predictable crescendo, the interest payments alone will be tens of billions of dollars per day - per day.
And you want to send your child to what school? You want to buy what house? Don’t make me laugh. Your congressmen and women have seen to it that it will never happen - never.
Ask yourself: On whom has most of this borrowed money been spent, or going to be spent?
Regardless of the answer, whether based on knowledge or bias, understand that you’re going to pay for it (and there are a lot of ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ in your life and your children’s and grandchildren’s lives that all of you are going to have to forego). This is not change you should be proud of.
March 6 marks the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo back in 1836. For more than 13 days, 186 brave and determined patriots withstood Santa Anna's seasoned army of over 4,000 troops. To a man, the defenders of that mission fort knew they would never leave those ramparts alive. They had several opportunities to leave and live. Yet, they chose to fight and die. How foolish they must look to this generation of spoiled Americans.
It is difficult to recall that stouthearted men such as Davy Crockett (a nationally known frontiersman and former Congressman), Will Travis (only 23 years old with a little baby at home), and Jim Bowie (a wealthy landowner with properties on both sides of the Rio Grande) really existed. These were real men with real dreams and real desires. Real blood flowed through their veins. They loved their families and enjoyed life as much as any of us. There was something different about them, however. They possessed a commitment to liberty that transcended personal safety and comfort.
Liberty is an easy word to say, but it is a hard word to live up to. Freedom has little to do with financial gain or personal pleasure. Accompanying Freedom is her constant and unattractive companion, Responsibility. Neither is she an only child. Patriotism and Morality are her sisters. They are inseparable; destroy one and all will die.
Early in the siege, Travis wrote these words to the people of Texas: "Fellow Citizens & Compatriots: I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. . . . The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise the garrison are to be put to the sword . . . I have answered the demand with a cannon shot & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. . . . VICTORY OR DEATH! P.S. The Lord is on our side. . . ."
As you read those words, remember that Travis and the others did not have the A.C.L.U., P.E.T.A., People for the un-American Way, and the National Education Association telling them how intolerant and narrow-minded their
notions of honor and patriotism were. A hostile media did not constantly castigate them as a bunch of wild-eyed extremists. As school children, they were not taught that their forefathers were nothing more than racist jerks.
The brave men at the Alamo labored under the belief that America (and Texas) really was "the land of the free and the home of the brave." They believed God was on their side and that the freedom of future generations depended on their courage and resolve. They further believed their posterity would remember their sacrifice as an act of love and devotion. It all looks pale now.
By today's standards, the gallant men of the Alamo appear rather foolish. After all, they had no chance of winning--none. However, the call for pragmatism and practicality was never sounded. Instead, they answered the clarion call, "Victory or death!"
Please try to remember the heroes of the Alamo as you watch our gutless political and religious leaders surrender to compromise and political correctness. Try to recall the time in this country when ordinary men and women had the courage of their convictions and were willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom and independence.
One thing is certain: those courageous champions at the Alamo did not die for a political party or for some "lesser of two evils" mantra. They fought and died for a principle, and that principle was liberty and independence. So did the men at Lexington and Concord. That is our heritage.
Today, however, our national leaders are in the process of turning America over to the very forces that the Alamo defenders gave their lives resisting. On second thought, do they look foolish, or do we?
Beyond that, how much longer do we have before it will become necessary for freedom-loving States such as Texas (and maybe Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Vermont or South Carolina) to declare their independence one more time? An argument could be made that Washington, D.C., is considerably more brutish and tyrannical than old Santa Anna ever was. I'm not so sure that it isn't already time to again hoist the "Don't Tread On Me" flags, shout "Remember The Alamo," and renew the faith and courage of William Travis and Patrick Henry.
By Chuck Baldwin
March 10, 2009
This column is archived at
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2009/cbarchive_20090310.html
Politics: Democrats say Rush Limbaugh is running the Republican Party. Better Rush than George Soros, who is running the Democrats. At least Rush believes in freedom, capitalism and letting you keep what you earn.
The cover of the March 7 issue of Newsweek shows a picture of conservative icon Limbaugh with a piece of tape covering his mouth and the word "Enough!" So much for disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. Voltaire could never be a contributor to Newsweek.
But David Frum is, and his inside cover story, "Why Rush Is Wrong," savages Limbaugh and praises President Obama in a way that makes one wonder if tingles are running up his leg like they did for MSNBC's Chris Matthews.
Frum describes a debate with, on one side, "the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims."
Never mind that Obama helped create the recession when the second-largest recipient of campaign funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac behind Chris Dodd helped pressure banks through his association with ACORN. The banks then made the very kind of risky loans that caused the mortgage meltdown.
On the other side, Frum places Limbaugh, with "his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history."
The perfect and athletic Mr. Frum forgot to blame Rush for inciting the Oklahoma City bombing, as many others on the left did.
This is what passes for public discourse these days as the mainstream media see their readers and viewers flee.
Over at MSNBC, where viewership is at microscopic Air America levels, the tingly Matthews over the weekend described Limbaugh as "a human vat of vitriol." He then ran a clip from "You Only Live Twice," where a James Bond villain pushes a victim into a piranha tank. Subtle.
"Do you know what he does?" Matthews says to the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page. "He defends capitalism." Horrors! Hide the children. To which Page responds that "ever since Reagan we've been on a trend of taxing lower-income people and giving breaks to the upper income."
Page et al. rewrite history into a lie agreed upon. The Reagan and Bush tax cuts went to those who pay taxes, to those who pull the wagon rather than those riding it.
They were not given anything. They were allowed to keep their own money. No wealth was redistributed or spread around unlike Obama's plan. The fact is that "ever since Reagan" the rich have borne an ever-increasing share of the tax burden while the poor have been removed entirely from the tax rolls.
A study for the National Center for Policy Analysis shows that from 1986 to 2004, the total share of the income tax burden paid by the top 1% of income earners grew by nearly half, from 25.8% to 36.9%. Over that same time, wrote study author Michael Stroup, an economist and associate dean of the Nelson Rusche College of Business at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, the burden of the bottom 50% of earners was almost halved from 6.5% to 3.3%.
The Tax Foundation has noted that in 2000, a year before the first tax cuts under Bush, roughly 30 million tax returns had no income tax liability. Every dollar those earners made they kept.
By 2004, a year after the second round of cuts was passed, 43 million returns had no tax. It estimates that, in all, more than 25 million Americans have been wiped off the federal tax rolls just by President Bush.
Yes, Rush wants Obama's socialism to fail just as liberals and Democrats wanted Bush's defense of capitalism and freedom to fail.
A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of 900 registered voters taken Aug. 8-9, 2006, asked this question: Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?" Fifty-one percent of Democrats said no, they did not want Bush to succeed.
Another Fox poll taken Jan. 16-17, 2007, asked respondents about the surge in Iraq: "Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?" An astounding 34% said they did not want the surge to succeed. Among Democratic Party leaders the percentage was probably close to 100%.
If, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says, Rush Limbaugh "is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party," it is only fair to ask: Who is his Democratic counterpart?
Our nominee is George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire and former Nazi sympathizer who helped fund MoveOn.org, the radical group that smeared Gen. David Petraeus with its "General Betray Us" ad last fall.
Through his Open Society Initiative and personal contributions Soros has funded many liberal causes and many Democratic candidates with the intent of undermining democracy and capitalism. His ultimate goal is to create a global socialist collective where we hand over our money and/or freedom and sing "Kumbaya."
For our part, we'll take Rush over Soros.
Rush believes in the Constitution and the First Amendment. He believes in freedom of religion and the freedom of speech. He believes in the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms to protect all our freedoms.
He believes in securing our borders and taking the war on terror to the enemy and winning. He believes that traditional marriage between a man and a woman is the bedrock of any stable society.
He believes that taxes should be low and are to fund the constitutional functions of government. He believes that government should work for us and not the other way around.
Rush does not believe, as Soros and the Democrats do, in open borders, confiscatory taxation, redistribution of wealth, a gutted military, appeasing despots or being forced under penalty of imprisonment to pay through our taxes other people's mortgages.
And, unlike George Soros and the Democrats, we will defend to the death his right to say it.
Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).
Eleven States Declare Sovereignty Over Obama's Action
State governors -- looking down the gun barrel of long-term spending forced on them by the Obama "stimulus" plan -- are saying they will refuse to take the money. This is a Constitutional confrontation between the federal government and the states unlike any in our time.
In the first five weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has acted so rashly that at least 11 states have decided that his brand of "hope" equates to an intolerable expansion of the federal government's authority over the states. These states -- Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas -- have passed resolutions reminding Obama that the 10th Amendment protects the rights of the states, which are the rights of the people, by limiting the power of the federal government. These resolutions call on Obama to "cease and desist" from his reckless government expansion and also indicate that federal laws and regulations implemented in violation of the 10th Amendment can be nullified by the states.
When the Constitution was being ratified during the 1780s, the 10th Amendment was understood to be the linchpin that held the entire Bill of Rights together. The amendment states: "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."
The use of the 10th Amendment in conjunction with nullification garnered much attention in 1828, when the federal government passed a tariff that southerners believed affected them disproportionately. When the 1828 tariff was complemented by another in 1832, Vice President John C. Calhoun resigned the Vice Presidency to lead his home state of South Carolina in pursuit of an "ordinance of nullification," which was no less a declaration of the sovereignty of each individual state within the union than the declarations now being made.
Calhoun was simply exercising what he recognized to be his state's right to defend liberty within its borders by rejecting the dictates of an overbearing central government. While his efforts culminated in a tense affair referred to as the "nullification crisis," which witnessed everything from threats of a federal invasion of South Carolina to an ongoing and near union-rending debate over national power vs. state's rights, they also succeeded in turning back the tariffs that had been passed in spite of the Constitutional limits on federal power.
This time around, in 2009, appeals to the 10th Amendment are not based on tariffs but on unfettered government expansion in Obama's "stimulus bill," federal mandates on abortion that violate state laws, and infringements on the 1st and 2nd Amendments, among other things.
For example, Family Security Matters reports that Missouri's "House Concurrent Resolution 0004 (2009) reasserts its sovereignty based on Barack Obama's stated intention to sign into law a federal ‘Freedom of Choice Act', [because] the federal Freedom of Choice Act would nullify any federal or state law ‘enacted, adopted, or implemented before, on, or after the date of [its] enactment' and would effectively prevent the State of Missouri from enacting similar protective measures in the future."
The resolution in Montana grew out of concerns over coming attacks on the 2nd Amendment, thus its preface describes it as, "An Act Exempting From Federal Regulation Under The Commerce Clause Of The Constitution Of The United States A Firearm, A Firearm Accessory, Or Ammunition Manufactured And Retained In Montana."
New Hampshire's resolution actually references certain federal actions that would be nullified within that state were they pushed by Obama's administration, according to americandaily.com. Among these are "Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press, [and any] further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition.
Regardless of the specific reason behind each of the resolutions in the 11 states, all of them direct the federal government to "cease and desist" in its reckless violation of state's rights. In this way, South Carolina's resolution is typical of the others issued to date:
"The General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, by this resolution, claims for the State of South Carolina sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the United States Constitution...
Be it...resolved that this resolution serves as notice and demand to the federal government, as South Carolina's agent, to cease and desist immediately all mandates...beyond the scope of the federal government's constitutionally delegated powers."
What these state assemblies and congresses have hit upon here is key to our entire conservative interpretation of the Constitution, for these states understand that the Constitution limits the federal government, not the people. Or to put it another way, it guarantees the freedom of the people by limiting the government.
Every conservative should relish the call for the federal government to "cease and desist all mandates that are beyond the scope of [its] constitutionally delegated powers." In this way, we honor the Constitution that enumerates a number of our liberties yet also guarantees us other liberties that are neither enumerated nor denied in the document.
Liberals don't respect the Constitution, and liberals in Congress don't hesitate to propose legislation that would clearly violate it. The current push to give Washington, D.C. a voting representative in the House of Representatives is a good example; even liberal Prof. Jonathan Turley told a Congressional hearing that this bill is patently unconstitutional. But they press on with it.
Our Constitutional system of checks and balances is always thought of as enabling two of the three branches of the federal government to keep the third within its constitutional bounds. But there is a fourth check, the states, which also have a Constitutional function. It is to them this burden now falls. The states can choose between allowing the federal government to impose untenable conditions on them if they accept the stimulus money, or to reject it.
These eleven states have the right to reject the stimulus plan. And they must.
There is no other option. For this federal expansion will not stop unless we stand in its way with courage in our hearts and the Constitution in our hands.
by A.W.R. Hawkins
02/23/2009
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30807
Hat tip: Dave Cogburn
Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).
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Additional information resources:
Glenn Beck - 20 States Move to Declare Sovereignty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzwAzB7lfA8
