Posted on 12/27/2010 12:41:21 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday effectively declared Texas unfit to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions and took over carbon dioxide permitting of any new or expanding industrial facilities starting Jan. 2.
What can you do? Pronounce them unfit right back and continue to operate the state permitting process! The EPA is on thin political ground here and the more Washington overreaches, the more people will come to believe they've crossed the line, so (a) don't worry too much about it, and (b) consider trying to goad them into doing something that will REALLY piss people off.
What would probably happen in practice is that the EPA would sue the state and the feds would withhold "federal grant money". So then Texas instructs state employers to remit their federal tax withholding payments to them instead of directly to the feds, deducts the amount of "federal money" improperly being withheld, and sends the rest on to Washington.
But the original question was what to do if you lose in court. Which brings us to the bizarre paradox of state vs. federal jurisprudence. Having a federal court decide cases pitting the feds against states or groups of states is a ludicrous idea, similar to having federal courts rule on Constitutionality of legislation. Have you ever been interviewed for jury duty? They'll exclude you if you know some of the parties, even one of the lawyers or the judge. So why states view as binding a ruling where they lose to the feds in a federal court is beyond me, but certainly not a state of affairs that can persist indefinitely.
But what's the alternative? you may ask. As bad as the feds are, we certainly don't want to subject ourselves to the whim of some world court, staffed by tyrants and imbeciles, so what's to be done? Well, how about issues like this being heard before a panel of state jurists from states not involved in the immediate dispute. They'd be impartial on the merits of a given case, except for a bias to preserve state power, which is exactly what you want. The bias would be in favor of the state unless they were doing something completely egregious, which is perfect.
You're older than you look. And I say this never having seen you.
Who told you secession was unConstitutional? Lincoln did, but he couldn't read. How could the founding fathers, with a straight face, rule out secession when they had done so themselves less than two decades earlier?
You've cut right to the heart of the matter right there. The feds think (and correctly so far) that they can blackmail states to do things corrosive to the liberties of their citizens using money remitted by the citizens of that very state and other states. If the feds have money left over after discharging their proper duties to bribe states to do things "voluntarily" that means that they have received that many dollars too much in federal taxes and that that amount should be withheld from them in the future. So the state just keeps that amount out of the federal tax remittances of employers and other taxpayers in their state. Problem solved (or at least moved to a more forthright arena)
But there's more to it than that. If the feds think they can bribe our state legislative employees to do bad stuff to us with our own money, choosing between the money and the tyranny is playing the game as they've defined it. It's our money. We have the right to keep the money AND decline the tyranny at the same time.
How do you propose to stop them? Show up with an army division?
Those officers swore no oaths of loyalty to any federal officials. It depends upon their perception of the Constitutionality of the federal actions, which they DID swear an oath to.
I believe “Jackson” had the best answer............
Shoot, if you do all that stuff, there IS no “take it from there”. You’ve completed all legislation forevermore.
Maybe the numbers you saw were absolute numbers rather than percentages like in this ranking. California has the largest population, so even with a little lower enlistment percentage will still end up sending a large number.
Seriously? I thought that was pretty much the consensus.
That’s been my opinion for quite a few years and it has cost me a lot of FR friends. Telling the truth about the man or Laura was not what they wanted to hear.
What was the outcome? I assume they’re still running.
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