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.
Get rid of all non essential Gov’t. Slash the rest to bare bones. Let the courts do the work if they have to. I don’t care if the Czar(s) are cut. It will only add to unemployment “a little”.
Rules and Regs are getting complely out of control. Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians!
EJ Dionne is a superfical idiot. The Founders specifically worried about Dionne sort of untrammeled majoritarianism which is why they designed the check and balances into our political system.
Cutting Medicare and Social Security? Ha! Good luck with that.
Overturn Wickard v Filburn!
hell yeah!
I have a list. Full list of Federal Agencies
I will provide detailed plans to use in crafting legislation and full citation of applicable Art 1 Sec 8 specified duties for what's left.
I'll do this for a grand total of $250k/year, plus medical and dental, and I'll consider myself under contract until the list above matches Art 1 Sec 8. I'll work from home on my own computers. I'll have the first bills ready to be voted upon by the time the next Congress is seated.
BIG GOVERNMENT IS CRONY SOCIALISM
“Socialism Is Legal Plunder” - The Law; Frederic Bastiat 1801-1850
“Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.” - The Law; Frederic Bastiat 1801-1850
DEPOPULATE socialists from the body politic. Here are some...
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/caucus-members/
DEFUND their collectives. Here are a few.../sarcasm
http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/index.shtml
live - free - republic
The only future for our kids...is just all that happening with powers transferred back to the States.
We will all live to see just how flexible and resilient a structure our Founding Fathers bequethed us.
Excellent! Now, here’s to actually doing it...
I didn’t see your link, Dead Corpse. Nice work. YOU’RE HIRED! Dead Corpse for President!
live - free - republic
Further, I've never voted for a gun ban, or a take over of a medical care industry. I believe that if it's human, killing it is murder. Even if said human is still in someone else's womb. So I'm more qualified the current GOP pretender.
Now all I need a a half billion dollars and we can get this campaign rolling...
Or... Some enterprising Congress-critter can put me on payroll at the above listed terms and I can get to work... It's a bargain in the long run.
Its really very simple. If half your budget is borrowed money, your government is twice the size it needs to be. It logically follows that you need to cut away about half of your government.
The things you don’t do from Washington don’t go undone. If they need doing, private people will pick up the slack, or private companies, or churches, or towns, counties, states. Thats how it works in a free country. If its a need, someone will build a company to do it. Or someone will set up a charity to do it. It will get done.
Best headline I’ve ever read.
If that is not a reason to vote Republican, I don’t know what is!
Try 90%. Possibly more...
For an extra $25k/annual, I'll even provide free market based solutions for any services that may have a "perceived" need. Like how to re-integrate the Air Force back into the Army/Navy/Marines. How to privatize NASA. How a model like the IEEE could be used to set up various free market consortium to take over for agencies like the FAA/FCC/FDA.
It's still a heck of a deal.
Re-vamp DHS to be a coordinating Agency that will help link efforts between citizen milita groups in various States operating under local Governor/County Sheriff auspices.
I agree with your list of agencies to eliminate completely. Add to it Department of Energy.
If we handed BLM land off to the states, we could shrink Interior down to nothing. Hand the parks over to the states, you could eliminate it.
Beyond State, Defense, and Justice, the rest are either optional or quite expendable.
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
OUTSTANDING post!
History/Education/Context BUMP!
The EPA and NLRB both need to be eliminated, as well.
When you say “commercial operators,” there’s the rub. They’d have to be involved in commerce to be commercial, and if we’re talking about commerce why bring up “navigation”? Because the decision extended the power beyond commerce to non-commercial navigation, that’s why. Otherwise there’s be no controversy and no decision to force kids to study in textbooks.
Oh yes it did apply to intrastate navigation.
As for Wickard, yes it is immeasurably worse for extending the definition of “commerce” to include everything affecting commerce. But did you know, and check me if I’m wrong but I seem to remember the majority opinion in Wickard citing Marshall in Gibbons as having held that navigation was regulatable because it affected commerce. Or at least it was implied. Which is false, since Marshall pretended navigation was commerce, though everyone knows better. But there it is: Gibbon is an explicit inspiration for your bated Wickard.
As for the Clean Air Act, that’s all well and good. But I was talking about water, obviously. I ‘ll eat my hat if the phrase “navigatable waterways” doesn’t pop up any time they want to justify backyard pond regulations.
As for the part about “carriers” such as railroads, you have it backwards. Gibbons was decided in the 1820s when hydrocommerce (if that’s a word) was king. The principle that the feds can meddle with railroads whenever and wherever they want, even on lines that don’t cross borders, came later and was inspired by Gibbons.
By the way, I think Gibbons had a good effect. And it was in line with the intent if the commerce clause, which was to prevent interstate trade wars. Had it been after the 14th amendment and had they struck the state monopoly on steamship passage down on 9th amendment antimonopoly principle I’d be all for it. But they didn’t, and they acted unconstitutionally.
I’ll believe it when I see it on April 15th.
Having interacted with you for many years here on FR, I’d install you in that job in a heartbeat.
The more Ithink about it the more I realize how apt is your choice of the term “commercial operator” for understanding how wrongheaded is our post-Gibbons and more importantly post-Wickard Constitutional mindset. The law struck down in Gibbons conferred a monopoly on some steamship service operating within New York. That service was certainly a commercial enterprise, but in what did its commerce consist? Ferrying passengers across the river? No, that’s navigation, not commerce. Where was the commerce, then? Why, when the passenger bought the ticket, that ‘s when. Thar was a commercial transaction. The rest is what was laid for in the commercial transaction, not the commerce itself.
Whence this notion that whatever a “commercial operator” does is commerce? Not so. Commerce is commerce, and calling navigation, manufacturing, storing, and all the other actions of commercial enterprises commerce is unjustified by common experience and the dictionary.
Marshall had to have his way, partly out if the noble instinct to strike down unearned privilege. But after navigation became commerce later railroad travel was too. Eventually so was manufacturing and everything else done for a buck, and entirely within one stare too. Then anything that affects commerce is commerce, and finally almost not doing anything, at least according to four SCOTUS justices.
unearned privelege.
Republicans going to refund all the money workers paid into “govt. handouts” like social security and medicare all their working lives? Didn’t think so. The politicians will consider all the money paid into those programs by workers as belonging to the politicians.
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