Posted on 08/31/2012 10:31:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
I wish the Republican Platform was binding.
Why? Because the GOP, for all intents and purposes, has just proposed to eliminate the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Health and Human Services, along with a host of other government programs, agencies, and departments.
More specifically, they endorsed the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which means they put themselves on record in favor of getting rid of all federal spending and intervention that is inconsistent with the Founding Fathers’ vision of a limited central government.
Here’s some of the story, as reported by The Hill,
All federal spending should be reviewed to ensure powers reserved for the states are not given to the federal government, according to the GOP platform approved Tuesday. The platform language is meant to ensure all federal spending meets the requirements of the 10th amendment, which prohibits state powers from being given to the feds. “We support the review and examination of all federal agencies to eliminate wasteful spending, operational inefficiencies, or abuse of power to determine whether they are performing functions that are better performed by the States,” the platform reads. “These functions, as appropriate, should be returned to the States in accordance with the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
For those of you who don’t have your Cato Institute picket Constitutions handy, here’s what the 10th Amendment says.
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.
In other words, the 10th Amendment is basically a back-up plan to re-emphasize that the federal government was prohibited from exercising power in any area other than what is specified in the enumerated powers section of Article I, Section VIII.
And if you look at those enumerated powers, that pretty much invalidates much of what happens in Washington.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Republican platform will have less impact on a potential Romney presidency than this blog. In other words, Republicans don’t intend to live up to this promise. Heck, they don’t even know that they have such a position. That’s why I included the asterisk in the title and must draw your attention to this fine print.
But I suppose it’s good that they included this language in the platform, even if it’s merely empty political rhetoric
P.S. If they did abide by the 10th Amendment, it means that Obamacare also would be repealed.
P.P.S. Yes, this implies limits on democracy. Our Founding Fathers, contrary to E.J. Dionne’s superficial analysis, were opposed to untrammeled majoritarianism and wanted to make sure 51 percent of the people couldn’t vote to rape and pillage 49 percent of the people.
As can the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
And the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars...
Literally hundreds that can go.
That chart says our revenues will be the same 40 years from now as they are today. What we don’t plant to grow at all?
There’s no way we could get that lucky.
excellent point
Yes! Good start.
He’s a left wing lunatic
Oh those pesky asterisk disclaimers...
Call me in, all the way ! Heros of the Republic, arise!!! Restore USC and heed your fore-fathers design.
And while we’re at it overturn Calder, McCullough, Gibbons, Helvering, Kelo, Koramatsu, Butler, Buckley, Penn Central, Home Building and Loan, Bollinger, Roe, Bennis, Raich, American Trucking Association, Gold Clause Cases, Carolene Products, the Obamacare Case, etc.
I'm not sure why you think Gibbons was wrong, but other than that what I do recognize on that list relied on Wickard for precedent, so if it goes, they go.
Why is the GSA missing from that list?
No, it doesn't. It shows a flat-line extrapolation of the historical 18% average of past tax revenues expressed as a percentage of GDP. You've got to see that it's a PERCENTAGE scale, which means it's 18% of whatever the GDP may grow to be, which figure is extrapolated from past data, as well, to get the 24% of GDP data point for the sum of the entitlements shown.
The only ways out of the dead-end involve repeal WITHOUT REPLACEMENT of "Obamacare," four decades of GDP growth at more than double the historical average, or some combination of both.
I'll leave it as an exercise to figure out which of the two elements we should most rely on to get the job done.
Gibbons was the first time they expanded the commerce clause, so far as I know. It unilaterally rewrote “commerce” to mean “navigation,” and if that weren’t bad enough for regulatable navigation to be within one state if the body of water it was on overlapped state lines. This decision is still used today to justify, for instance, EPA rules covering “navigable waterways” consisting of a pond in your backyard.
Take out Homeland Security and throw it away with the BATF.
Reduce the leviathan to those matters clearly authorized in the ennumerated powers, and enforce the ninth and tenth amendments, leaving all other matters to the states? We could go back to a part-time legislature, pay reps $20,000 and senators $30,000, and give each a staff of two people.
It'll never happen, short of another revolution.
Wrong. That chart indicates what will happen if our taxes don’t go up to pay for said entitlements.
It explicitly did not recognize any application to intrastate commerce.
The subject to which the power is next applied is to commerce "among the several States." The word "among" means intermingled with. A thing which is among others is intermingled with them. Commerce among the States cannot stop at the external boundary line of each State, but may be introduced into the interior.
It is not intended to say that these words comprehend that commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a State, or between different parts of the same State, and which does not extend to or affect other States. Such a power would be inconvenient, and is certainly unnecessary.
Wickard established the "substantial effects" doctrine that says Congress can regulate anything they "find" to "have a substantial effect on interstate commerce". In Roscoe Filburn's case, he was fined for growing his own wheat, because in doing so he avoided having to buy it, and that would deny someone in another state the opportunity to sell it to him, thus affecting interstate commerce.
Congress explicitly claims this "substantial effect on interstate commerce" in the Clean Air Act, which established the EPA.
We are close and it's been looking more and more like it all the time.
Regardless of who wins in November, my sense is we are seeing the beginning of a sort of changing of the guard, where the old, tired ways, names and brands are simply discarded, the same way we leave things behind when new technologies or better ways of doing things come along and the old ways are abandoned.
This is true for Big Labor and its unions, the media and its many disciples and, with any luck since skill is usually absent, this will be especially true for the symbiotic political parasite that feeds on all of it, the progressive movement worldwide.
That title is music to my ears, like the band's practicing the dirge before the parade. Hallelujah! Let's dance! There's a Renaissance a comin'!
Short essay Here.
Lots of great suggestions to cut these porkulus socialists.
Music to read this thread by...(”what they need’s a damn good whacking”) BUMP!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHei4OrwT2o
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