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later
A very good article and a point I’ve been making for a while. The 16th and 17th Amendments and the Federal Reserve Act allowed the government access to unlimited money to finance the massive and now unaccountable administrative state.
great article m
in 1912 the entire government ( feds, state, county, city ) consumed 7% of GDP.
today it’s 42%
Excellent and very accurate article. Well worth the time to read.
Woodrow Wilson: the worst there ever was or will be.
Good article. However, I submit that the end of the Republic began with the 14th amendment whereby the country transformed from states united (united States), to the corporate United States
Let us not forget that Progressive Republican Presidents, William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, preceded VERY Progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
Income tax, direct elect Senators, and the FED were products of Progressive Republicans.
Thanks for posting. BUMP!
The most important question that was ever proposed to your decision, or to the decision of any people under heaven, is before you, and you are to decide upon it by men of your own election, chosen specially for this purpose. If the constitution, offered to your acceptance, be a wise one, calculated to preserve the invaluable blessings of liberty, to secure the inestimable rights of mankind, and promote human happiness, then, if you accept it, you will lay a lasting foundation of happiness for millions yet unborn; generations to come will rise up and call you blessed. You may rejoice in the prospects of this vast extended continent becoming filled with freemen, who will assert the dignity of human nature. You may solace yourselves with the idea, that society, in this favoured land, will fast advance to the highest point of perfection; the human mind will expand in knowledge and virtue, and the golden age be, in some measure, realised. But if, on the other hand, this form of government contains principles that will lead to the subversion of liberty — if it tends to establish a despotism, or, what is worse, a tyrannic aristocracy; then, if you adopt it, this only remaining assylum for liberty will be shut up, and posterity will execrate your memory.
Momentous then is the question you have to determine, and you are called upon by every motive which should influence a noble and virtuous mind, to examine it well, and to make up a wise judgment. It is insisted, indeed, that this constitution must be received, be it ever so imperfect. If it has its defects, it is said, they can be best amended when they are experienced. But remember, when the people once part with power, they can seldom or never resume it again but by force. Many instances can be produced in which the people have voluntarily increased the powers of their rulers; but few, if any, in which rulers have willingly abridged their authority. This is a sufficient reason to induce you to be careful, in the first instance, how you deposit the powers of government.
So far therefore as its powers reach, all ideas of confederation are given up and lost. It is true this government is limited to certain objects, or to speak more properly, some small degree of power is still left to the states, but a little attention to the powers vested in the general government, will convince every candid man, that if it is capable of being executed, all that is reserved for the individual states must very soon be annihilated, except so far as they are barely necessary to the organization of the general government. The powers of the general legislature extend to every case that is of the least importance — there is nothing valuable to human nature, nothing dear to freemen, but what is within its power. It has authority to make laws which will affect the lives, the liberty, and property of every man in the United States; nor can the constitution or laws of any state, in any way prevent or impede the full and complete execution of every power given. The legislative power is competent to lay taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; — there is no limitation to this power…
And are by this clause invested with the power of making all laws, proper and necessary, for carrying all these into execution; and they may so exercise this power as entirely to annihilate all the state governments, and reduce this country to one single government. And if they may do it, it is pretty certain they will; for it will be found that the power retained by individual states, small as it is, will be a clog upon the wheels of the government of the United States; the latter therefore will be naturally inclined to remove it out of the way. Besides, it is a truth confirmed by the unerring experience of ages, that every man, and every body of men, invested with power, are ever disposed to increase it, and to acquire a superiority over every thing that stands in their way. This disposition, which is implanted in human nature, will operate in the federal legislature to lessen and ultimately to subvert the state authority, and having such advantages, will most certainly succeed, if the federal government succeeds at all.
In a free republic…
Brutus #1 - Anti-federalist
UNaccountable bureaucrats in an out-of-control EXECUTIVE branch. Checks & balances? Where? More like gangs of co-conspirators.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. - list of grievances; Declaration
https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/a
True but it does not go far enough when talking about the United States.
The US Dollar is the reserve currency of most of the world. As such dollars are held by governments and wealthy individuals for participating in international commerce and as a hedge against the collapse of their own currency.
So the Federal Reserve actually taxes the entire world every time in increases the number of dollars in circulation.
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve; a more powerful group of seven men probably do not exist.
FMCDH(BITS)
Curry sums up what we have for years been discussing on FR though he has not yet arrived at plotting the way forward out of the abyss. Let’s do that for him now.
Repeating here an illustration of how reform of the US Senate may be addressed in the Article V Convention of States:
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AMENDMENT XXVIII (’Federal State Rebalancing’)
To restore the foundational structure of State Legislatures to Congress, the following amendment is proposed:
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Section 1.
Senators in Congress shall be subject to recall by their respective state legislature or by voter referendum in their respective state.
Section 2.
Term limits for Senators in Congress shall be set by vote in their respective state legislatures but in no case shall be set less than twelve years nor more than eighteen years.
Section 3:
The seventeenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
************************************************
Bump to the top
One of our worst presidents.
bkmk
I don’t want to imagine a modern day when corrupt State legislators get to hand pick Senators, yuck.
The 16th amendment was passed in 1909, sadly by a GOP Congress, sadly it had wide support from both parties and all 3 major candidates in 1912.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/61-1/h28
This is the House vote, just 14 Republicans and ZERO democrats voted no. In the Senate it was 77-0
But Wilson and his democrat Congress did do a lot of damage, and here’s a fun fact, Wilson and a heavily rat Congress were elected because the GOP vote split in 1912, for anyone that thinks that would be a good idea. Wilson got fewer votes than WJ Bryan did in 1908, and 435 electoral votes.
A Progressive is a Repressive.
......Nineteen-thirteen gave us the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution. That year also saw the creation of the Federal Reserve. This burst of changes marks the effective beginning of the Progressive Era in American politics, the era in which we now live. Wilson was to do much more that would once have been considered out of bounds, but these three changes were enough to change everything. In 1913, the fundamental agreement the Founders made with the American people about the relation of the states and the federal government was broken......
