Posted on 08/19/2010 4:46:30 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake
However, [Thomas E.] Woods adds that the states should not turn to the courts when they believe there is unconstitutional overreach. “If the federal government can just monopolize the determination of what its powers are, it’s going to keep acquiring new powers. The states have to have some counterbalance in check and federal courts, ultimately, for whatever victories you might win once in awhile, cannot perform this role because they are an interested party. They are one of the parties in dispute between the states and the government. You don’t refer disputes between you and your neighbor to your wife.”
The NULLIFY NOW TOUR web site and tour info.
A couple of good links within the article are worth a look also.
Please ~ping~ me to articles relating to the 10th Amendment/States Rights so I can engage the pinger.
I've stopped monitoring threads and unilaterally adding names to the ping list, so if you want on or off the list just say so.
Additional Resources:
Tenth Amendment Chronicles Thread
Tenth Amendment Center
Firearms Freedom Act
Health Care Nullification
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Damned right!!
Great video! I had forgotten about it. Thanks for posting the link.
I agree nully is our best practical way to force the Federal Government to seriously back down .
FWIW, I doubt the states are under any illusions; Woods certainly isn't. The trap set for the states by the federales, inadvertant or otherwise, means many more will soon to be standing in the feral government soup line. And all done with feral printing presses churning out fiat currency that will soon become worth about the same as Monopoly Money.
So be it!
1 - We are close to the point that the federal government will not need to pay off the States in order to get them to obey.
2 - Fighting federal tyranny is infinitely more important than is getting federal money; even the States are starting to understand that.
A simple example is the 21 drinking age throughout the nation. The feds cannot constitutionally determine the minimum drinking age. They can however, keep highway funds from the states that do not comply.
F*** Scotus.
To the state courts: Under-rule (v. overrule) the unconstitutional laws of the rouge federal judicial government.
Not sure it that's a clever play on words or not but I'm partial to "feral" government myself. Hows about "feral rouge government"??? ;^)
Here's an idea - refuse to send the feds any money.
I like the idea of starving the beast and it's occasionally been cussed and discussed on these threads over about the last year and a half with only minimal light being shed on the "issue". I trust someone somewhere within the bowels of the various state governments have looked at viable contingency plans, but that may be more wishful thinking than anything else.
One has to remember the structure of government follows the delegation of authority from the People. The federal government does not have jurisdiction over the states. It cannot force the state to implement a federal law. The federal government has jurisdiction over individuals. Likewise, the state government and local governments have jurisdiction over individuals. That jurisdiction is further limited by the metes and bounds of geography. Finaly, that jurisdiction is further parsed by jurisdiction over subject matter. The federal jurisdiction in that regard is enumerated and is supposed to be specific. The state jurisdiction is general - however the state’s police powers of regulation over the individual are supposed to be constrained to the prohibition of actions that pose a substantial injury to general public health and safety.
The federal government “buys” power beyond that enumerated through the so-called spending power. It bribes the states into participating in a federal program like health care, over which it has no enumerated power. It becomes a parasite off state jurisdiction and authority.
The state, in turn, has expanded its police powers to use regulation to advance or promote a collective public benefit. It is just as much a violator of individual rights as the federal government is of state’s rights.
It's a start. The next step is to realize they have no business bribing our states with our money to pass laws we don't want. I got off on a tangent one time and posted this:
Posts on a number of threads at FR have correctly pointed out the damage done by many types of federal grants, dispensed with strings attached to states, and I’d been meaning to jot down some thoughts on the topic and respond. Of course, now I can’t find any of those threads, so I’ll just start one of my own. In reality, this is an issue of such importance it probably deserves its own thread.The offer of “federal funds” in exchange for the state taking some action desired by the feds is an implicit admission that it’s an issue on which the feds have no Constitutional authority. If a cop tells you to do something, he doesn’t slip you a sawbuck if you do it. Your boss has no pre-existing legal right to demand that you show up for work, so in exchange for you doing so, he gives you a paycheck. If the funds are being paid to influence some issue outside the Constitutional grant of powers to the federal government, that leads to questions about the money itself: Where did the money come from? Either they had money in excess of the amount needed to care for their delegated responsibilities or they’re using money that should be used in that way for things they’re not supposed to be involved in. Then either they’ve overtaxed us and not refunded the overcharge, or they’re diverting funds needed to carry out their proper responsibilities to other ends. Or…(the actual explanation) they’re borrowing money, obligating us and our children for a debt of money used for things they admit they have no authority for.
When used to influence legislation, these grants will be used disproportionately in favor of bills that would be politically unpopular with the state’s voters. Otherwise wouldn’t whatever’s being paid for already be the law? So the feds use our own money to influence our legislatures to pass laws we don’t want, on issues the feds admit they have no Constitutional authority to meddle in. Sounds like a program ripe for termination (and corresponding reduction in taxes or borrowing), right? But there’s still a problem if we just stop doing this today.
The horse is already out of the barn. There's a lot of inertia to legislatures and the public. If the grants were stopped today, five years from now you'd probably find all the laws they paid for (speed limits, helmet laws, seatbelt laws, 0.08 BAL DUI, etc) still in force. The laws have been in place long enough they’ve become the baseline for many. Many people probably even think they’re good and necessary, that their repeal would wreak havoc on the roads and highways, just like people who hate gun rights are always prophesying blood in the streets every time someone proposes rolling back some infringement on our gun rights. If it took 20 years to get people acclimated to the idea that the federal government is allowed to have a say in what they wear on the road, it may take 20 years to educate them and the next generation, that that is not in fact the case.
I get an engineering trade magazine, and there was an article a while back sympathizing with guys who like to work on their own cars, but who’ll now be unable to rotate their own tires because it would confuse the car’s computer about which signal was coming from which tire air pressure sensor. The author seemed to feel that while the loss of autonomy was an unfortunate side effect, it was unavoidable because the alternative would be that we would all have to drive around without automated tire pressure monitoring. Onoz! What does the guy think we’ve been doing for a century now? Just because someone invented this thing, which may or may not solve a problem that doesn’t even appear to exist, I’m expected to be willing to give up the option to do something if it would mean interfering with this system, which I never asked for in the first place. See what I mean? People are idiots! And this guy’s an engineer!
So if we stop handing out highway funds today, the laws the feds bribed states to enact against their own people, with their own money, would probably stay in force, for free!
Perhaps the solution is to keep the funds giveaway rolling for a finite time in reverse. If you want federal highway funds for 2010 and subsequent years, you have to return your DUI BAL, seatbelt laws, helmet laws, speed limits, whatever, to whatever they were BEFORE the federal bribes went into effect. Then keep the new "liberty grants" in force for at least as long as the old anti-rights ones were, to undo the acclimatization damage they did. By stating only that a state must return the law to what it was pre-grant, then if there is a state populated by such government-sucking sheeple that they actually wanted harsh repressive laws absent federal involvement, and passed them without being bribed by the feds, they can keep them. The whole point here is to AVOID butting into the way voters govern their own states. Or, another approach might be to say that if the law didn't change post-grant, then the grants did no harm in that state on that topic, and grants to that state on that particular issue are terminated immediately.
The simplest way to bring the giant to his knees is for EVERY company in America to fire ALL its employees and rehire them as independent contractors. Company remits NO income taxes, No Social Security, NO Medicare, NO Unemployment, etc. Independent Contractors shouldn’t file quarterlies (or file zero tax).
THEN they’ll listen. Just another form of civil disobedience.
There is no Highway Fund. Congress has spent it all. The deception foisted on the states is that they will be promised $$, but won’t deliver. States will continue obeying federales for nothing!
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