Archive for February, 2009
81R5789 MMS-F
By: Creighton H.C.R. No. 50
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: “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”; and
WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and
WHEREAS, The scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and
WHEREAS, Today, in 2009, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government; and
WHEREAS, Many federal laws are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and
WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment assures that we, the people of the United States of America and each sovereign state in the Union of States, now have, and have always had, rights the federal government may not usurp; and
WHEREAS, Section 4, Article IV, of the Constitution says, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” and the Ninth Amendment states that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”; and
WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and
WHEREAS, A number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That the 81st Legislature of the State of Texas hereby claim 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 Constitution of the United States; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That this serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to the speaker of the house of representatives and the president of the senate of the United States Congress, and to all the members of the Texas delegation to the congress with the request that this resolution be officially entered in the Congressional Record as a memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.
I hope that everyone is having a terrific Mardi Gras!
It seems like 2008 might have been the most painful Ash Wednesday for our country. To many people, 2008 was the joyous year of ascension for the current President of the United States. If you were really attune to the economic crisis and it’s causes (phony mortgage backed securities, mounting debt, creation of fiat currency, China buying up our debt), you would have been experiencing a very painful hangover from some boom years. The Republicans did let corporations run roughshod over markets and made no real regulatory changes. I am inclined to agree with this philosophy. However, the US Treasury continued to pour manufactured currency into fiscal markets. The only problem is that the dollar has no intrinsic value. One dollar is literally worth as much because the US Treasury and Federal Reserve say it is. Our money is backed by China buying our debt.
Focus. It’s not a Gold-Standard anymore. It’s China-is-floating-us-a-huge-loan Standard. This is a loan that the United States Government has absolutely no ability to pay down or pay at. We’re still borrowing to “stimulate” our economy. It’s an absolute disaster. The reason that we are in such a mess is because President Bush could not get Social Security privatized. The Socialist programs that are so lauded by the Left (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) are absolutely bankrupting us. Not only are they bankrupting us, they are bankrupting my grandchildren. With interest, we will not be able to pay down these loans. Here’s a quaint little movie to illustrate the point.
What has basically happened through the guise of social justice programs is selling my children and their labors into bondage to a Communist country by America’s Left. Kudos. They’ll get me and mine in the end.
I think I touched on this subject a few posts ago. The Communist conspiracy could not follow the same path in the United States as it did in Russia. We had to be conditioned in the long term to believe that being ruled instead of governed was what being an American was all about. Well, I will not be ruled. I will use this medium like Rick Santelli used CNBC and tell the current Administration, the previous Administration, and Congress that there is no reason for these ineffective Socialist programs. Cut them. If they don’t work, cut them and try again. Nobody can retire off of their Social Security checks anymore and Government run health care is going to be about as efficient as well, Government run anything.
It may sound insensitive, that I’m not thinking about the lives of the poor. That’s horse-shit. I give my personal money, at my direction, to those that I see as being in need, and having the promise to elevate themselves through whichever program I am donating to. I do not need the US Government creating a nanny-state with my tax dollars.
So, what’s my cure for our current hangover? Cut the big entitlement programs. President Obama is going to cut military spending. I think that that will prove to be a mistake in the long-run. I don’t know if Liberals actually have the stomach to fight any war anymore. If a situation like World War II were to happen now, I doubt that President Obama would be leading the charge to stop Hitler. We would “engage in aggressive diplomacy”.
Markets are crashing because they see an end to the Free Market Era. Other changes may be in the wind very soon. I hope that we realize who we are as a people again and we focus on what documents that define the United States of America state. My suggestion to those Liberals (i.e. Communists) who do not like the governing structure, you have five years to attempt to amend it. If it’s not changed to your liking then and you want to live in that Socialist Utopia, no one says that you have to stay. Leave, and try to find that ideal Socialist Utopia. You may be looking for a long time though, and that’s evidence enough for me to come to the conclusion that it doesn’t exist. I also think that by nature of humanity’s self-preservation instincts, it will never exist.
…But thanks for placing my future children and grandchildren into slavery to a Communist Regime. Looks like all that plotting might just pay off.
My discussion this week will be short. The 2009 Economic Stimulus is about to be passed by the Senate. It will then go to conference committee and both houses will then approve the $850+ billion measure. The stimulus is a mix of 42% “tax cuts” (which are no more than fiat checks) and 58% spending measures and it is a massive wrong move.
Hopeful proponents assert that the Stimulus will promote new government funded growth. Employment rates will rise and the base level wealth will infuse the ailing economy with more domestic growth. The pitfalls have been outlined by the Congressional Budget Office, which is non-partisan. The CBO tells us that each new job will cost on average $250,000. The main focus will be renewing infrastructure and retooling the medical insurance industry. Personally, I would love to have a traffic flagging job that pays me $250,000. However, I do not think that all of that money is going to go to the lowest man on the totem pole.
Addressing the current economic sluggishness requires harder choices than which pet project to throw money into. The real answer has to come as a revamping of our current Federal Government’s perceived jurisdiction. I am not going to harp on this point very much in this article, but the Federal Government is already vastly overextended past their Constitutional role. The Federal Government was intended to be a peacemaker between states (who were intended to be independent nations unto themselves) and provide for the protection of common interests of all of these nations. Think of it as a proto-unsocialised-European Union. In our progress as an American people, power intended for State and Municipal governing units has been usurped and centralized in the Federal level. At the time, this was done because only the Federal Government had the ability to operate on such massive scales. With the initiation of our current society to the information age, this simply is not true anymore. A present day American citizen has been conditioned to think that the Federal Government should have it’s current reach, if not longer.
State and Municipal governing units have as much of an opportunity to take on large scale problems within their jurisdiction. What they don’t have is the means. There lies the problem. How do we tax people on top of how much the Federal Government already is to fund a laughable Social Security Ponsi Scheme that no longer provides a living wage for retirees and is just an excuse for taxation. The solution and actual stimulus would be to privatize Social Security. Encourage people to invest their money in accounts where they will gain returns and not fund $10,000 for a new broom in a Federal building. Cut FICA. Reduce the size of the Federal Government to its intended jurisdiction. In the absence of the massive Federal tax, State and Municipal governments can come in and make up the difference and fund the appropriate measures to really help the economy recover locally. This will lead to actual prosperity.
What this can really do is encourage businesses to come back to America. We can again be a land of producers instead of a nation of outsourcing. Why would you get taxed up to 40% of your income as a business when you could operate under a 12% tax rate in North Ireland? Lower corporate tax rates and businesses will move their operations back to the States to get their products closer to their consumers. This is prosperity.
My final knock against the impending stimulus is that history shows that they are largely ineffective. Look at the New Deal or the Great Society. The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression until wartime production started up. The Great Society created the welfare state. The TARP measure passed in September when it was so critical to get money into the market or we would all be doomed has been largely unsuccessful in its aims, and we are still alive. This Stimulus that is so important for our immediate relief has been delayed longer than the Democrats intended and we are still here. I think that fear mongering is what is fueling the impotence to push a Democratic wishlist bill that has been garnishing on their platform since 1994. During Japan’s 1990s depression, they passed 8 stimulus bills that did nothing to help their economy. It is obvious to anyone that is rational that Stimulus is not the answer. We need to refocus.
I will leave you with the following, 21% of the American workforce works for the government. Do we really need to let that number increase. Is the centralization of all labor and power what the framers intended for this great land or is this all partisan nonsense?
Think about it.
HCR 6 – AS INTRODUCED
2009 SESSION
09/01
HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 6
A RESOLUTION affirming States’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles.
SPONSORS: Rep. Itse, Rock 9; Rep. Ingbretson, Graf 5; Rep. Comerford, Rock 9; Sen. Denley, Dist 3
COMMITTEE: State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs
This house concurrent resolution affirms States’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles.
09-0274
09/01
STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Nine
A RESOLUTION affirming States’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles.
Whereas the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire, Part 1, Article 7 declares that the people of this State have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State; and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right, pertaining thereto, which is not, or may not hereafter be, by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in congress assembled; and
Whereas the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire, Part 2, Article 1 declares that the people inhabiting the territory formerly called the province of New Hampshire, do hereby solemnly and mutually agree with each other, to form themselves into a free, sovereign and independent body-politic, or State, by the name of The State of New Hampshire; and
Whereas the State of New Hampshire when ratifying the Constitution for the United States of America recommended as a change, “First That it be Explicitly declared that all Powers not expressly & particularly Delegated by the aforesaid are reserved to the several States to be, by them Exercised;” and
Whereas the other States that included recommendations, to wit Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia, included an identical or similar recommended change; and
Whereas these recommended changes were incorporated as the ninth amendment, the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, and the tenth amendment, 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, to the Constitution for the United States of America; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring:
That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress; and
That the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations, slavery, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that “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,” therefore all acts of Congress which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory; and
That it is true as a general principle, and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the Constitution, that “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;” and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, and were reserved to the States or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated, rather than the use be destroyed. And thus also they guarded against all abridgment by the United States of the freedom of religious opinions and exercises, and retained to themselves the right of protecting the same. And that in addition to this general principle and express declaration, another and more special provision has been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution, which expressly declares, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press:” thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press: insomuch, that whatever violated either, throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, and that libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals. That, therefore, all acts of Congress of the United States which do abridge the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, are not law, but are altogether void, and of no force; and
That the construction applied by the General Government (as is evidenced by sundry of their proceedings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” and “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof,” goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution: that words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers, ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument: that the proceedings of the General Government under color of these articles, will be a fit and necessary subject of revisal and correction; and
That a committee of conference and correspondence be appointed, which shall have as its charge to communicate the preceding resolutions to the Legislatures of the several States; to assure them that this State continues in the same esteem of their friendship and union which it has manifested from that moment at which a common danger first suggested a common union: that it considers union, for specified national purposes, and particularly to those specified in their federal compact, to be friendly to the peace, happiness and prosperity of all the States: that faithful to that compact, according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preservation: that it does also believe, that to take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government, without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact, is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States; and that therefore this State is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on earth: that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non foederis), to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them: that nevertheless, this State, from motives of regard and respect for its co-States, has wished to communicate with them on the subject: that with them alone it is proper to communicate, they alone being parties to the compact, and solely authorized to judge in the last resort of the powers exercised under it, Congress being not a party, but merely the creature of the compact, and subject as to its assumptions of power to the final judgment of those by whom, and for whose use itself and its powers were all created and modified: that if the acts before specified should stand, these conclusions would flow from them: that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. That this State does therefore call on its co-States for an expression of their sentiments on acts not authorized by the federal compact. And it doubts not that their sense will be so announced as to prove their attachment unaltered to limited government, whether general or particular. And that the rights and liberties of their co-States will be exposed to no dangers by remaining embarked in a common bottom with their own. That they will concur with this State in considering acts as so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States, of all powers whatsoever: that they will view this as seizing the rights of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government, with a power assumed to bind the States, not merely as the cases made federal, (casus foederis,) but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent: that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority; and that the co-States, recurring to their natural right in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these acts void, and of no force, and will each take measures of its own for providing that neither these acts, nor any others of the General Government not plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution, shall be exercised within their respective territories; and
That the said committee be authorized to communicate by writing or personal conferences, at any times or places whatever, with any person or person who may be appointed by any one or more co-States to correspond or confer with them; and that they lay their proceedings before the next session of the General Court; and
That any Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of America or Judicial Order by the Judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several States or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States of America by the government of the United States of America. Acts which would cause such a nullification include, but are not limited to:
I. Establishing martial law or a state of emergency within one of the States comprising the United States of America without the consent of the legislature of that State.
II. Requiring involuntary servitude, or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.
III. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.
IV. Surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government.
V. Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press.
VI. Further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition; and
That should any such act of Congress become law or Executive Order or Judicial Order be put into force, all powers previously delegated to the United States of America by the Constitution for the United States shall revert to the several States individually. Any future government of the United States of America shall require ratification of three quarters of the States seeking to form a government of the United States of America and shall not be binding upon any State not seeking to form such a government; and
That copies of this resolution be transmitted by the house clerk to the President of the United States, each member of the United States Congress, and the presiding officers of each State’s legislature.
