Posted on 06/30/2003 6:03:55 PM PDT by B.O. Plenty
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It's time to part company
One political question we have to answer is whether George W. Bush or Albert Gore shall be president, and just which party will control the House of Representatives and the Senate. But I'd suggest that there's a far more important long-run question we must answer: If one group of people prefers government control and management of people's lives, and another prefers liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, and risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences, or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?
Like a marriage that has gone bad, I believe there are enough irreconcilable differences between those who want to control and those want to be left alone that divorce is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.
Let's look at just some of the magnitude of the violations. Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution enumerates the activities for which Congress is authorized to tax and spend. James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, explained it in The Federalist Papers: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State."
Nowhere among the enumerated powers of Congress is there authority to tax and spend for: Social Security, public education, farm subsidies, bank bailouts, food stamps and other activities that represent roughly two-thirds of the federal budget. Neither is there authority for Congress' mandates to the states and people about how they may use their land, the speed at which they can drive, whether a library has wheelchair ramps and the gallons of water used per toilet flush. A list of congressional violations of the letter and spirit of the Constitution is virtually without end.
Americans who wish to live free have two options: We can resist, fight and risk bloodshed to force America's tyrants to respect our liberties and human rights, or we can seek a peaceful resolution of our irreconcilable differences by separating. That can be done by peopling several states, say Texas and Louisiana, controlling their legislatures and then issuing a unilateral declaration of independence just as the Founders did in 1776.
You say, "Williams, nobody has to go that far, just get involved in the political process and vote for the right person." That's nonsense. Liberty shouldn't require a vote. It's a God-given or natural right.
Some independence or secessionists movements, such as our 1776 war with England and our 1861 War Between the States, have been violent, but they need not be. In 1905, Norway seceded from Sweden, Panama seceded from Columbia (1903), and West Virginia from Virginia (1863). Nonetheless, violent secession can lead to great friendships. England is probably our greatest ally and we have fought three major wars together. There is no reason why Texiana (Texas and Louisiana) couldn't peaceably secede, be an ally and have strong economic ties with United States.
The bottom line question for all of us is should we part company or continue trying to forcibly impose our wills on one another?
WorldNetDaily contributor Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
What kind of f***ed up logic is this?
Because the school yard bully is more successful beating up others; Texas is 'making out quite well'?!!!
Man.....some were just born to be slaves.
Hey, I don't make the rules. I just report 'em.
I like your spirit! But for to mollify the post-modernists, maybe severe flogging would be an acceptable compromise for a time. Til people get used to the idea of right and wrong.
That is strictly for the Gedolim to decide. I have nothing to do with deciding such things.
BTW, people still believe in right and wrong. They just believe it's right to practice homosexuality but wrong to eat meat. It isn't the concept of right and wrong itself that needs to be relearned but rather G-d's exclusive jurisdiction in defining which is which.
And my point is that, absent any specific data as to exactly how much money that means and how it figures into the equation, you cannot even presume to know whether or not it takes Texas from a 5 cent deficit to the 1 dollar break even point or above. You have been pushing that implication as if it were fact yet you have no evidence of it and in reality the only stat you give shows the 5 cent deficit.
My guestimate was based partially on emergency spending but there are also other Federal programs, measures etc. that benefit Texas without counting toward it's tax return number, these include farm drought subsidies (1/3 of Texas benefitted from this 27 billion + dollar program which was configured to help several states, thus it doesn't neccessarily count toward Federal direct aid to Texas).
Fine if there are, but unless you can figure them into the equation with actual numbers your assertion remains gratuitous and unsubstantiated for the purposes of this discussion.
There are also Federal Education programs applied at the National level which give monetary assistance to almost all Texas colleges and universities without neccessarily counting toward the tax dollar return level
Then figure them in, recalculate the dollar based total, and we'll see whether or not it is still deficit! Simply speculating that expenditure X occurred does not demonstrate that expenditure X put Texas into break even or surplus range on federal returns.
The disaster was indeed a National tragedy but the point remains that Federal dollars were extensively used to manage, clean up and provide for economic assistance in certain cases.
Pracitcally the entirity of that expenditure was for cleanup and pertained to all states where the debris fell. The feds would have done the same regardless of where it happened, be it Texas, Montana, or Puerto Rico. Economic assistance was quite minimal, and to construe the cleanup expenses as some sort of beneficial return gift from the feds to the people of Texas is, aside from being in poor taste, outright absurd. Some Texas State agencies were also reimbursed by the Federal government for their expenditures.
As they rightly should be! They spent their OWN money assisting the feds. Getting a reimbursement does not make them leaches or put them ahead any - if anything it simply helps them break even!
Federal Emergency Management, US Military, Federal Law Enforcement and National Park Service & US Forestry Service personnel all worked on the mitigation and clean up, at cost to the Federal government (which is the way it ought to be).
Indeed they did. But you have yet to demonstrate how that cost was somehow a monetary benefit to the people and state of Texas rather than simply a federal expenditure on a federal matter that had nothing to do with the state of Texas beyond the strictly geographical circumstance that part of the cleanup happened there. Using your same illogic, one could just as easily, if not more so, suggest that New York and Virginia shortchanged the rest of the nation because they were the sites of 9/11 and money had to be spent on the cleanups there. In reality that is absurd though.
You're right, every Federal installation in Texas, every maritime improvement for the last 100 years, every intrastate highway, rail line or airport, every US Geological survey, Federal Law Enforcement presence, agriculture program, irrigation program, USDA program etc. etc....even chasing around Pancho Villa, all that stuff was free. Geez.
If you are going to make the specified claim that a 5 cent on the dollar deficit is really a surplus, it is your burden to substantiate it. You made that claim yet you have offered ZERO tangible evidence of it.
My original point does still stand. Some Texans complain alot more than their situation really warrants.
Not really. By your own stat - the only authentic and specified stat you have provided to date - Texas is losing 5 cents on the dollar. Therefore we have every right in the world to complain. Other states have the right to complain two including those who lose 10 cents on the dollar. But does the fact that my neighbor got robbed twice mean I shouldn't object to getting robbed only once? That too would be absurd.
Perhaps it is the fact that Texas is a relatively new state compared to the original 13, and some people down your way have never grasped the concept of "E. Pluribus Unum".
South Carolina, one of the original 13, has come at odds with that important but wholly non-binding concept more times than Texas or perhaps any other state. Is it because they are "relatively new" as well? Or is it because they simply don't get along with the loud mouthed yankees who seem to interpret "E Pluribus Unum" as meaning "we get to tell you what to do."
If that means sending some $$$ from one state to another...well it isn't pretty but if it really helps our nieghbors, we'll do it. When we fought the English 225 years ago, the 13 original colonies all helped each other. North Carolina sent it's troops north to fight when needed and New York sent it's troops south when it was time. They didn't argue over who was paying a bigger share of the bill.
If I recall correctly YOU are the one who brought the surplus/deficit on the dollar figures into this debate to begin with. Yet here you are lecturing on why we shouldn't get into disputes over who pays the bigger share? Perhaps a long trip to the mirror is in order.
...and at shutting down trade through what Lincoln called the back door of the confederacy.
Their success or failure had no effect on the outcome of the war
The failures certainly prolongued the war and, had a couple of circumstances been different (for example, had Davis not been captured and taken his government there as was planned) there was some possibility that Texas would be the base for its continuation.
But whatever interpretation may be made of the activities in Texas, the events there contradict your previous implications that no significant yankees attempt was made at invasion.
Lincoln devoted 45,000 men plus a fleet of over 40 warships and naval personel - the largest inland fleet ever assembled on the North American continent - to invade Texas in 1864. By all reasonable standards that is a serious military move comparable in size to any other in the war save the biggest of the big Lee v. McClellan/Grant/Meade/Hooker/Burnside/(insert yankee commander of choice) battles in the east.
That it was thoroughly routed at Mansfield by smaller confederate forces is no doubt a laughable embarrassment for the yankees. But to pretend that it didn't happen or wasn't of a significant size or scope is to deny history.
Looks like 3 to me. Anyhow...
1) my intent in mentioning the shuttle disaster is to point out as per the original argument regarding Texas Secession was that since Texas is still part of the United States, the Federal Government immediately stepped in and invested money and resources to mitigate that disaster.
The federal resources were almost entirely investigative rather than mitigative. They were expended collecting and searching for debris to figure out what happened. Considering that it was the United States' shuttle and not exclusively Texas' shuttle, it is only rational that the United States government as a whole should bear the investigative expenses of collecting and interpreting the debris.
If Texas were not part of the United States (again as per the original secession debate), it is unlikely that the same scenario would have played out and the independant country of Texas would have had to foot the entire bill on it's own (at least at first).
If Texas were not part of the United States, it is unlikely that they would have found any significant interest or value in investigating the cause of the United States' shuttle to crash and therefore would have incurred very few expenses for it. It is also likely, presuming that the two nations were on friendly terms, that they would have simply allowed the United States government to send its people in and gather what they needed at their own expense, much as Britain would probably do if the incident had happened in their skies.
This all goes back to the initial inference I made that Texas has certain uncalculated benefits to being part of the United States that are not directly reflected in how much of their tax dollars they get back according to some chart. Is that so difficult to understand ?
Not at all, however you are being extremely presumptuous and vague as to what you classify as an uncalculated benefit. You are also neglecting other uncalculated costs incurred by Texas out of membership, among them having its laws prohibiting abortion and sodomy overturned against the state's will or popular desires.
2) Yes I brought up the surplus/deficit argument to begin with in response to the inane argument regarding Texas secession. The point was that Texas has and still recieves benefits nearly equal to or exceeding what they send to Washington in tax dollars.
All that you have been able to physically substantiate is a five cent on the dollar deficit. In a vague sense, that could be stretched into "nearly equal to" though in the interest of precision it is still a 5 cent deficit. It is certainly a stretch to conclude from that figure that Texas' benefits exceed what is lost without further data and, as your more recent arguments indicate, also entails value judgments as to what actually constitutes a benefit.
This doesn't even include intangibles like the incentives or programs available to Texas businesses that help them compete in national & international markets.
Nor does it include intangible detriments such as Texas laws on abortion and sodomy being overturned against their will, Texas policies being forced into compliance with undesired and unnecessary environmental regulations, and any number of other similar harms inflicted by the government. But seeing as intangibles are by their very nature subjective, you cannot with any ease establish a mathematical surplus/deficit relationship between them or attempt, as you do, to cite them as tilts upon an existing mathematically established deficit on the dollar.
If your sole indice for determining whether being part of the United States is that you get back exactly the same as you give, then we would certainly be better off without you. Where I come from, we call people like that "selfish".
Then why do you have such an objection to Texas seceding?
3) Finally I have to add this...you had to sink to the loud mouthed Yankee insult.
There is no wrong in accuracy and truthfulness. If yankees do not like that characterization, they should take responsibility for their own behavior and improve their much-despised image in the rest of the country. That, unfortunately, is something that the yankee culture has never learned to do dating back for some three centuries.
So that you are not totally misunderstood; how much tax is too much? 10%? 30%? 70%? 95%?
Does the government empower the people, or do the people empower the government?
Do the states owe the government, or does the government owe the states?
Where you come from, what do they call fair? 70-30? 50-50? What?
No need for insult. I'm not a yankee.
Besides, secession is all about slavery.
We don't have any slaves. As we all know; if the South had only freed their slaves first, yankees would not have had any problem with secession.
So I quit pinging him.
When I am busy I rarely ever read replies to my posts. I would wager that over the years I have read way less than a third of the reponses to what I write. I suspect the same is true of billybob.
I know he has been working on a rather involved brief to be filed before the Surpreme Court. That is what he does for a living. I suspect the amount of work involved in the research is very demanding. I wonder if some of the things BillyBob posts are just to see if the responses contain anything he has overlooked in the brief he is preparing. Perhaps he uses some posts to find overlooked angles that might need to addressed.
But I doubt if he would ignore a post because he disagrees with you. More than likely he did not read it, or you were trying to take him down a path he had been down many times before and did not have time to go down it again.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.