Posted on 04/13/2013 9:42:21 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Mark is working on another book. Every night it seems, he wants to bust out and talk about it, but his publishers have put the ixnay on too much disclosure. Still, he shows a little leg now and then. That happened in the second hour of his show last Thursday, April 11, 2013.
With the help of sixteen rinos, Dingy Harry got 68 votes to proceed with a gun control bill that few, if any Senators had read. After wailing on the lack of process and regular order, Mark focused on the nature of the Senate and how it differed from the institution of our Framers.
Mark Levin:
“The Federal government’s powers were supposed to be limited. Defined. Enumerated. The Federal government wasn’t supposed to have all of this power. It wasn’t supposed to have plenary power; the plenary power was with the States. (Relates how in times past one could easily have a face to face with State legislators from your home town) Some States are great, some suck. But that’s not the point. The point is that the federal government is worse than any State; is it not? That’s what happens when power is concentrated. That’s’ what happens when limits are thrown off. So, we’re fighting battles we shouldn’t have to fight, and they’re coming one after another after another. They’re bipartisan. I want you to keep something in mind, this is very important, IMHO.” (wails on the 16 rinos who threw in with the rats over gun control/2A.)
“I want to ask you this question, what’s the purpose of the US Senate? I’m serious. Originally, the US Senate was supposed to be made up of members who were sent there, to this body, from the State legislatures. See, the States that gave birth to the federal government, they WANTED A SAY in what the federal government did. So they said, okay, we’ll have a popularly elected House of Representatives elected every two years; there was a lot of debate over the term, but they settled on two years, and then they said, ‘We’re going to have this Senate. And one of the main reason s we’re going to have this Senate is, well of course the main reason is WE THE STATES need a say in this, some position in this government we are creating. But they also said, look, the Senate will slow down, ya’ know what might become a fad, or a movement, a temporary sort of mob activity, because we’ll give them longer terms, and because Senators won’t be elected directly by the same people who elect House members, but they’ll be elected indirectly by the same people, through their State legislatures.”
“Instead what we have here really is a body that has no point. There’s no point to it. Do these Senators really represent their States? I mean this guy Wicker and his vote today, does he really represent Mississippi? These two jerks from Georgia, do they really represent GA? No, they got on a boat, with Manchin, who really doesn’t represent West Virginia, and “Mark what do you mean, he doesn’t really represent, I mean the people elected him . . . “ No, I didn’t say he didn’t represent the people of GA or MS, I said the States of MS or GA, because right now they have no say in anything. So what’s the point of the US Senate, will somebody please tell me? I don’t know exactly. Well, I know what the Constitutional powers are, THAT’S NOT THE POINT. My point is why have two bodies if they’re both popularly elected?” No matter how you change the terms, they don’t represent the States, or they represent a district, yiptido!"
"I don’t think there is a more useless body than the US Senate, in terms of its structure today. And how did it happen? In 1913, that the 17th Amendment was ratified, giving direct elections to Senators. Well, it’s the same way things happen today. Radical populists, and so-called Progressives, whom I call Statists, . . . because in the end that’s all they are, big government types, they pushed this movement, . . . both the 16th and 17th Amendments in the same year. (more on amendments in general) This movement has undermined our system, as it does today. This is why there is a disconnect, there’s an absolute disconnect, so if you’re a Senator you can change from day to day who it is you think you represent or claim to represent. (rant on who or what do Senators represent, the people, states . . . ) IOW you do whatever the hell you want in the name of the people, the Constitution . . . and so forth . . . and you’re really doing it TO the people and UNDERMINING the Constitution. It’s an ugly, bizarre institution right now."
"That’s what I’m saying. We understand the House of Representatives. We may not like what it does but we understand what it is supposed to do, don’t we? Its peculiar, this Senate. I’m going to talk of this down the road. . . . because I think what’s necessary here, well . . . I’ll talk more about it down the road, because in many ways I think we’re banging our heads against the wall."
The 17th fundamentally altered the structure of our government. The division of power between the federal government and states was destroyed. Without the institutional means to secure their interests, to enforce the 10th, to keep the feds to enumerated powers, it was only a matter of time before James Madison's prediction was fulfilled; we have a consolidate government of plenary powers. The 17th is the reason we have runaway government.
Save your snark. Just answer my question.
Your ping makes it sound sweet, when if fact like me you think it is a deadly amendment, along with its evil twin the 16th, aimed at the heart of the republic.
An excellent point. I will do that.
While I agree the 17th gelded the Senate and States Powers, there is nothing in the above that is remarkable or noteworthy other than the off hand comment about Senators actually reading it.
The rules of the Senate are on cloture are 100% senate rules with no constitutional issues at all. They own it, they encumber themselves with it.
I already answered it.
You missed it apparently.
Again, I respectfully disagree that 17A is the problem. 17A did not delegate any new powers to Congress.
What 17A indicated, imo, is that parents weren't making sure that their children were being taught the Constitution and its history in the nation's schools, particularly the Founding States' division of federal and state government powers, such powers evidenced by the Constitution's Section 8 of Article I, Article V and the 10th Amendment.
As a consequence of decades of indifference to the Constitution, Constitution-ignorant voters have been tricked by OWG factions to abuse their voting power by electing corrupt federal lawmakers who blatantly ignore the federal governmet's constitutonally limited powers.
Whatever you do, don’t read what Mark had to say.
What does separation of powers mean to you?
I meant no snark in my previous post.
More importantly, what they don't understand is that the money being spent belonged to the states. Now it is taken at the federal level via the 16th amendment and spent there or doled back to the states with strings attached.
What if the states never gave that money to the federal government, and instead spent it locally via state legislative authorization? Roads and bridges would get fixed. Jobs would grow locally. It would vary by state based on each state's needs.
Instead, the federal government taxes the money away from state use and then gives it to Egypt and Syria, spends it on failed alternative energy programs, or pays illegal aliens to reside here with food stamps.
Return control of the Senate back to the states, and then give the states a say in how much money is taken from them and how it is spent.
-PJ
Read 10th Amendment.
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.
Again, given that the states have never amended the Constitution to delegate to Congress the specific powers to establish most federal taxing and spending programs established since FDR's New Deal programs, also including abortion, euthanasia, banking, environmental protection, agriculture, healthcare, etc., the Founding States made the 10th Amendment to clarify that government powers to regulate such things are automatically reserved uniquely to the states.
Justice John Marshall had further officially clarified that Congress's is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of such issues, essentially any issue which Congress cannot justify under its Section 8, Article I-limited powers.
"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.
What the 17th did was make the national party bloc more important than the state.
With the need to now run for a seat instead of lobby the legislature for it, the need for campaign funding was strong. With 33 elections to fund every two years, there were synergies gained from forming national party campaign committees to coordinate party fundraising and disseminating funds. If a Senator wanted to benefit from this, he had to align with the party bloc's wishes, not the state's wishes.
Eliminate the elections and make the Senators have to lobby their legislatures again.
-PJ
State participation is essential.
Here is a short post:
Jacquerie post #18: "Tell me what war will accomplish."
INVAR post #20: "It TOOK WAR to establish our liberty from tyrants.
It will TAKE WAR to preserve what is left of our liberty from tyrants."
Any talk of war today is as foolish as it was when Fire Eaters proposed secession and war in 1860 -- as their answer to protecting their most valued "peculiar institution".
It didn't work then -- instead accomplished the just the opposite.
It won't work now.
A different, lawful peaceful, course must be found.
When we are standing in in the pouring rain waiting for our daily bowl of fish eye soup in the FedGov Socialization and Reeducation Camp No. 23, will that be a good time to discuss “other than peaceful” means?
Good luck with that. There is no example in all written human history of such a thing happening.
Or - to quote John Adams - “Liberty lost, is lost forever”.
War will be the last freedom this people have in determining their fate, either at the hands of a genocidal state - or because they resisted the genocidal state.
Such is history.
One we were warned would happen to us by both scripture and the Founders.
Cows may not vote, but their owners are sure sick of not having their vote mean squat in state legislatures in the USSA!!!
Earl Warren most certainly should have been impeached and re-assigned to cleaning out gutters in rural dairy barns for the rest of his unnatural life!!!
We are no closer to your vision today than Slave Power was in 1860, when lunatics took over their asylum, started and declared war on the United States.
Then and only then were they and their "peculiar institution" utterly doomed.
Article 3, section 3:
You said it: "futile"
INVAR post #37: "War will be the last freedom this people have in determining their fate, either at the hands of a genocidal state - or because they resisted the genocidal state. Such is history."
See my response to central_va in post #39 above.
So what do you mean, "this people"?
What "people"? Your people? Who are your people, Kemosabe?
Some special race, religion, ethnicity, culture or, what is it, political beliefs?
Whatever you imagine your people are, I can promise you they are not the majority of anything, and will not chose civil war so long as they can still vote the b*st*ards out of office.
So, I'd say you obviously know nothing of war, especially most civil wars.
To suggest such things is simply insane, and seriously, you may neeed counseling for that.
No sane person advocates civil war to change a still-democratic political body.
So I'm telling you: go get help.
Don't be a danger to yourself and others around you.
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