What If the Tea Party Wins?

center for american progress ^ | 09-16-2011 | staff

[bronxville]

Just an FYI.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

The only plan I have for the Constitution is obey it!

[nhwingut]

Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it.

LOL.

[Adder]

Who ever wrote this is effin nutz.

Why do we have to deal with those idiots?

[bronxville]

Where did you find that...rotflmao

[nhwingut]

Where did you find that...rotflmao

Very first paragraph.

[bronxville]

I should have read it before I passed it. :)

[sodpoodle]

****In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care.****

We have just learned that this man obviously hates his mother.

[nhwingut]

Get used to it. This is a preview. They have nothing to run on.

The Tea Party will have you eat rotten meat and sour milk and moldy cheese. LOL!

[webstersII]

Wow. I thought the Tea Party stood for “Taxed Enough Already”.

I had no idea it was the movement to promote low wages and rotten meat for everyone.

[Admin Moderator]

Please stop bypassing copyright restrictions imposed upon Free Republic. Today we had to remove the Associated Press photo you posted in the first response.

Our previous notes to you requesting that you please follow Free Republic’s copyright rules:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2687118/posts?page=2#2
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2731800/posts?page=22#22

Updated FR Excerpt and Link Only or Deny Posting List due to Copyright Complaints
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1111944/posts

Thanks.

[Turbo Pig]

Common wing nut, EVERYONE knows that selling rotten meat to people is the best way to make a profit and keep customers...Maybe THAT’S why you aren’t a filthy rich millionaire, you aren’t thinking outside the box :-)

[mamelukesabre]

haha

this is hilarious.

[Chuckster]

Comment #1 removed by moderator

Dude!

[AlaskaErik]

Center for American Progress is all I need to know. This is nothing more than fear-mongering propaganda from a George Soros front group.

[digger48]

Of course I want my granddaughter to eat rotton meat. I usually try to keep the good stuff for myself.

If she wants better, she can get her little butt out there and get a job and pay for it.

Little slacker just turned 3 and she still thinks life is all fun and games.

jeesh.

[ml/nj]

families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care

It IS so much nicer to have anonymous strangers who live 2000 miles away pay for Mom.

ML/NJ

[cc2k]

from the article:

---

The Constitution gives Congress the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” thus empowering the federal government to levy taxes and leverage these revenues for programs such as Social Security and Medicare. A disturbingly large number of elected officials, however, insist that these words don’t actually mean what they say

---

Actually, the man who wrote those words into the constitution, Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist #41 said that those particular words were an introduction to the specific enumerated powers and did not convey any powers in addition to the specific enumerated powers that followed. Here's Madison's words on the subject:

From Federalist #41:

---

It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare. "But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.

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Unfortunately, the courts have ruled on a different constitution when they accept the "general welfare clause" argument. Court decisions which allow that as a more general power always place a period after the introductory clause, after the words "throughout the United States;" By placing a period there (where the founders used a semicolon), the courts have treated that as a very general and basically unlimited power.

We will be free from these usurpations only when the Supreme Court goes back to the original document and rediscovers the semicolon at the end of that prhase, and removes the period they have substituted to justify their "progressive agenda."

---

Happy Constitution day, September 17, 2011.        — cc2k

[marstegreg]

****In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care.****

Now, now, we all know it is easier to make grandma take a pill and pass on as she is no longer a productive member of the “Federal Family” (I believe that is buried in Obamacare bill)