"Let's focus on one issue: the U.S. Senate. It's clearer than it has ever been that it's just a collection of elected officials, behaving as if they're independent actors with no restraint. It's as if they have no allegiance to anyone. ..."
Evidenced by the alleged stealing of the 2020 elections by desperate, elite Democrats and RINOs, federal and state governments have been pirated by organized crime front-ending itself with very corrupt, constitutionally undefined political parties imo.
Regarding Senate, I hope patriots understand that one of the very few peacetime reasons that you'd want to contact a member of congress is if you were having problems with the U.S. Mail Service, the mail service arguably one of the very few main powers that the states have actually expressly constitutional given the feds to dictate federal domestic policy.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
"10th 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."
"From the accepted doctrine that the Unite d States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.
In other words, most "federal" domestic policy is actually based on stolen state powers, and likewise stolen state revenues uniquely associated with those powers imo.
More specifically, post-17th Amendment (17A) ratification federal lawmakers are continuously stealing from the states by means of constitutionally indefensible appropriations bills imo.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
In fact, the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had clarified that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had left the care of the people uniquely to the states, not the federal government.
”Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government [emphases added]. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
Probably most constitutionally "asleep at the wheel" patriots need to ask themselves, "How many unconstitutional “Brooklyn Bridges” (Social Security, Obamacare, etc.) have I bought from my state's crook federal senators as a consequence of abusing my 17A powers?"
In fact, and respectfully to FReepers, consider that patriots hypothetically could have replaced ALL federal senators TWICE since Obama 2010 midterm elections if patriots had a clue about federal government's constitutionally limited powers.
The bottom line is that the states desperately need to get rid of the unconstitutional middleman, the unconstitutionally big federal government, from “helping” the states to manage their revenues.
More specifically, Trump's red tsunami of patriot supporters need to start supporting Trump-endorsed state lawmaking candidates ASAP to do the following.
Trump-endorsed candidates need to stop unconstitutional federal taxes and unconstitutional interference in the affairs of the sovereign states by leading ALL the states to effectively "secede" from the unconstitutionally big federal government by repealing the 16th (16A; direct taxes) and 17th (popular vote for federal senators) Amendments.
Once 16&17A are gone, unconstitutional federal taxes permanently stopped, each state will ultimately find a tsunami of new revenues (imo) that can be used to increase teacher salaries, also salaries of police and fire departments for starters.
Let's also include new state funding for infrastructure maintenance in that list. Undoubtedly many other state social spending programs as well to replace former unconstitutional federal spending programs.
Additionally, no more forced compliance with Democratic politically correct and unconstitutional federal gender-related civil rights protections in order for school kids to eat likewise unconstitutional federal lunches paid for with stolen state revenues for example.
In fact, Justice Louis Brandeis had seemingly reflected on Bingham's words (above) when Brandeis volunteered his "laboratories of democracy" metaphor to emphasize the unique power of the states to serve the people, ultimately depending on the kind of state social spending programs that the legal majority citizen voters of a given state want.
"[...] a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." —Justice Louis Brandeis, Laboratories of Democracy.
Corrections, insights welcome.
Bump for later reading. I always learn so much from your posts.
Very good.!! Thanks for that... :)