Jan 26, 2011 | Constitution, Tea Party
Almost all political pundits were amazed with the extent of the Republic Party victory in the midterm elections when sixty-three congressmen and six senators were replaced, making this election perhaps the biggest one-party swing in the House of Representatives since 1932. Certainly the republicans had not earned it. Their departure from constitutional limited government, the free market, and fiscal responsibility during the George W. Bush administration amplified in the Barack Obama administration, resulted in the Tea Party movement. Moreover, their endorsement of slow socialism, as opposed to fast socialism as espoused by most democrats, certainly did not endear the GOP to the majority of Americans who mostly wanted big government to just leave them alone.
The Tea Party movement was responsible. It moved the Republican Party closer to America’s core values (now those of the Tea Party), even causing them to pull the badly neglected Constitution out of their pockets (some few actually carried it with them to use as some kind of prop when needed) and open the previously unturned pages. That said, they actually read it in The House of Representatives and should be applauded for having done so. Those of the opposing party probably had to go online, or to a bookstore, to find a copy. We still await Senator Harry Reid to follow suit with a similar reading in the U. S. Senate. The democrats probably will not do so as many no longer even pretend to follow it. I hope that I have shamed both political parties with their measure of neglect of this document.
So what about the December political tsunami? The election gave the clearest rejection of the political direction that has been given in several decades. What should a congress do, realizing that they have proceeded down a path that so alarmed a majority of their fellow citizens? Let them slow down and walk away with some dignity! Instead, in total contempt of the American people, the 111 Congress accelerated their disregard for limited constitutional government, fiscal responsibility, and the free market. They were so “hell-bent” in the opposing direction it was as though there had been no election. With their “the sky is falling” type of legislation, the rejected party bulldozed forward. Americans were hit with at least seven major pieces of legislation that had to be approved within a month and before the new congress was seated, each of which should have had at least two months of hearings and serious debate before a vote. One party government still prevailed for another month, and “Yes We Can” was still their war cry.
Among them was a revision of food legislation, the new Food Safety Bill, in place since 1932, gave expanded power on domestic production to the Federal Government and cost an estimated 1.4 billion to implement. A new Nuclear Arms Treaty with Russia (START) in which Russia threatened lawmakers not to alter the treaty’s terms as they wouldn’t renegotiate if anything were changed. Why did we not wait for the new congress rather than let those removed from power in three weeks have final say? We cowered under Russia’s intimidation strategy, and both the President and Vice President went to the phones pushing for quick acceptance. Debate was limited. Yet another major change allowed gays to serve openly in the military.
Everything was placed on fast tract. Another major piece of legislation was The Dream Act, designed to assist young illegal immigrants in becoming citizens if they attended college or joined the military. It alone, of all the measures, failed. Then came the compromise extending both unemployment compensation for the nth time, at an estimated cost of $858 billion, and the Bush Tax Cuts. Finally, there was the bill funding the government, due early last fall but not legislated prior to the elections as the party in power did not want their fiscal irresponsibility “flash-lighted”—a mere 1.3 trillion dollar bill—laced with gobs of self-serving pork. The bill passed as is until March. Funding the government and the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts were the only two issues that needed fast track status. The new congress could do everything else.
This collection of sweeping laws, the most in a single month in my lifetime, is dubbed December’s Political Tsunami. The vast majority of which was at odds with the message of the mid-term voters: slow down, the sky is not falling, and more debt must cease to be the solution to every problem. So many changes in a mere 3 ½ weeks were head spinning.
Jan 12, 2011 | Constitution
Newsweek, November 22, 2010, featured an article “God of All Things,” with President Barack Obama shown with six hands handing out “presidential blessings” in all directions. The sub-title, “Why the Modern Presidency May Be Too Much for One Person to Handle.” The article goes on to quote a staff member who reported, “Some days around here, it can almost be hard to breathe.” A senior adviser added, “sometimes the only way to bring the president important news is to stake out his office and ‘walk and talk’ through the hall.”
This is not a new problem the magazine noted, “The growth is exponential in these last 50 years, especially the number of things that are expected of the president.” Therein lies the problem—we want a king. We want someone to do everything for everybody—a God if you will. Obama wants to be like Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt, a trans-formative president.
Then without knowing it, Newsweek gave the solution. “Both men ran slim bureaucracies rooted in relative simplicity.” They continued, “Neither had secretaries of education, transportation, health and human services, veterans’ affairs, energy, or homeland security, nor czars of pollution or drug abuse…. Lincoln had time to think…. that kind of down-time just doesn’t exist anymore.”
And therein lies the second problem that is at the heart of this column. Most, if not all, of these things are not in Article II of the Constitution nor have they been added by way of amendment as outlined in Article V of that document thus they are unconstitutional. Presidents, in their thirst for power and /or proclaimed expediency, have empowered themselves to the point of “kingship” with their worshipful, unchallenging, party followers (whether democrat or republican) quite willing to look the other way as government grows beyond its ability to be efficient. Its ever enlargement is choking-out the president and he is doing it essentially with his own hands by his enlargement of bureaucracy. At any time he could remind the people of his real constitutional powers but he will not as that would drastically reduce his power that is beginning to look limitless.
The answer to this strangulation problem is simple. We must return to the Constitutional powers of the President as outlined in Article II only adding to them by way of amendment as described in Article V—no exceptions! Under the Constitution the president has but eleven powers. Lets identify them: 1) “commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States” including the militia when called into actual service of the United States; 2) supervise departments (cabinet) each presumably established by the Congress (George Washington had but four); 3) grant reprieves and pardons; 4) make treaties with the help of the Senate; 5) with Senate help fill positions established by law such as ambassadors, ministers and judges; 6) fill vacancies “during recess of the Senate;” 7) make recommendations to Congress on the state of the union; 8) convene both houses on special occasions and handle disputes with respect to convening (Prior to the 20th Amendment, ratified on Feb 6, 1933, Congress convened on the first Monday in December and were out before Christmas—maybe three weeks.); 9) receive ambassadors and other public ministers; 10) makes certain that “laws be faithfully executed;” and, 11) “commission all the officers of the United States.”
Simply stated the president has two supervisory powers over existing organizations and two shared powers with the Senate, otherwise he pardons, recommends, appoints and entertains. That is it!! Notice the absence of power to make any rules and regulations on us. This is the job of Congress alone.
Adherence to this list would drastically reduce the bureaucracy that is choking the President allowing him to be efficient like his two model presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt. Newsweek magazine, without realizing it, identified bureaucracy as the cause of inefficiency–the executive branch has grown too big to be efficient. Two side benefits would result: we would have more liberty and he would have more time to think.
Jan 4, 2011 | Constitution
by Dr Harold Pease
Everyone recognizes natural law in science. Eat too many cherries have diarrhea. Run naked in the sun too long have sunburn. Jump from an airplane without a parachute have broken bones. But are there natural laws that apply in government as well regardless of culture, language, race, wealth, or time?
I ask my female students if it is ever right, under any circumstances, for someone to rape them even if the law said that it is okay. No woman has said yes to that question or ever will. Then there must be absolute truths—natural law if you will—and law before there was written law.
During the 1970’s, Montana had no daytime freeway speed limit because natural law says that people will drive the speed to which they feel safe, and they did. It worked for a decade. Speed signs simply read, “Reasonable and Prudent.” Today they have speed limits because the Federal Government mandated their returning to them or forfeit any federal highway improvement funds. They complied.
Cicero, a Roman philosopher and politician prior to the time of Jesus Christ, was first to put the principle of natural law in print when he said. “Nor may any other law override it, nor may it be repealed as a whole or in part… Nor is it one thing at Rome and another at Athens, one thing today and another tomorrow, but one eternal and unalterable law, that binds all nations forever.”
The Founding Fathers identified three inalienable rights based upon natural law in The Declaration of Independence—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The U. S. Constitution, using the same base, finally harnessed government as never before enabling, as long as it was followed, the freest nation in all history. Limiting federal government power enabled the people to gravitate to that which they did best which Adam Smith explained, “unintentionally promoted the economic welfare of the nation as a whole.” The world was presented with the first “rich” nation where a vast majority of the people were rich in the eyes of the vast majority of the rest of the world. Simply said, man was “led by an invisible hand (natural law) to promote an end which was no part of his intention” which brought wealth. Instead of the ancient destructive philosophies of shared poverty, it made us stunningly wealthy. Natural law, moreover, was also the base for most of the Bill of Rights.
Consider the following natural laws hypothesized by the great French philosopher Frederic Bastiat. “Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims.” When he can, man prefers to “live and prosper at the expense of others” this is a derivative of a higher natural law that postulates that man’s “instincts impel him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.” “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.” Consequently the “safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” When the function of government changes from protecting property to violating it “then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.” In which case, “political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing.” Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent. The law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice. “Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to send it in.”
There exists a cause and effect relationship in matters of governance that is predictable, as for example, “vengeance begets vengeance. “ All forms of government and governmental matters ought to be molded around the concepts of natural law, and human nature. They cannot be avoided nor defied without a natural consequence. As it now stands, and has for much of the six thousand years of recorded history, matters of government are structured or enacted oblivious to them. Conversely, they prefer to defy or deny them. We want gratification without consequence.
An in depth study of the writing of the Founding Fathers justifies the statement that they collectively had a much greater understanding of human nature and cause and effect relations than has any group ever assembled in the past or present. Yet the Constitution and their writings are hardly considered today, hence we have lost an awareness of the importance of this understanding. The inevitable consequence of this neglect will be the loss of individual liberty even with public support. Our ignorance is killing us. As said in the movie Star Wars, “So this is how liberty is lost, with thunderous applause.”
