“All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”, Lord Acton

We can rephrase Acton’s observation and apply it to today’s world by saying that the more power we grant to our elected officials, the more corrupt they will be.

In 1994, the republican candidates for the House of Representatives used their “Contract With America” as a campaign tool.  In this “contract”, along with other things, prospective representatives promised to implement these reforms on their first day in office.

• FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
• SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
• THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
• FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
• FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
• SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
• SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
• EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.

Do any of those promises even begin to resemble today’s reality?  In a 2000 issue of Forbes Magazine, Edward H. Crane, President of The Cato Institute declared that the Contract with America had failed.  Saying,

Consider: Over the past three years the Republican-controlled Congress has approved discretionary spending that exceeded Bill Clinton’s requests by more than $30 billion.  The party that in 1994 would abolish the Department of Education now brags in response to Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union Address that it is outspending the White House when it comes to education. (emphasis added)

The republicans who ran on a limited government platform became the new generation of spenders and central planners.  In both 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush campaign featured promises to reform Social Security by allowing citizens to own their own retirement savings. Saying things like,

We want to allow younger workers to take some of their own money & put it in safe investments so that $1 trillion grows to $3 trillion. The money stays within the system.

and,

If we don’t trust younger workers to manage some of their own money, it’s going to be impossible to bridge the gap without causing huge payroll taxes or major benefit reductions.

So how is your privatized retirement savings account performing?  Instead of privatizing social security, President Bush and the republican congress gave us medicare expansion, the Patriot Act, TARP and a GM bailout (among other things).

From 2006 through 2008, Barack H. Obama provided limited government rhetoric of a different sort.  He promised to close the detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year and to be out of Iraq in 16 months.  Then Senator Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid also railed against the Patriot Act, saying,

Senator Obama, 2007:

“This is legislation that puts our own Justice Department above the law.  When National Security Letters are issued, they allow federal agents to conduct any search on any American, no matter how extensive or wide-ranging, without ever going before a judge to prove that the search is necessary.”

Representative Pelosi, 2005:

“This is a massive invasion of the privacy of the American people, not just some idle threat.  The Washington Post reported last month that the FBI hands out more than 30,000 national security letters per year, a reported hundred-fold increase over historic norms.  How did this happen?”

Senator Reid, 2005:

“Now, what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas, but not in this instance.  It’s in some federal data bank. That’s what the Patriot Act is doing to the American people. And we have to make sure that big brother doesn’t take over this country.”

Now, 18 months after the people of this country have entrusted these officials to act upon those words, there is still no visible horizon in Iraq; we’re still holding detainees in Guantanamo Bay; and the democrat house, senate and president not only didn’t repeal the Patriot Act, but they renewed it!  Beyond the Patriot Act, the executive branch of government has also claimed the authority to assassinate American Citizens with no involvement from the legislative or judicial branches.  Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence, testified that,

“We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community, if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”

Where, oh where have our passionate defenders of civil rights gone?

In his Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), Thomas Jefferson wrote,

“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.

Have we seen “a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers”?  I know my answer.

What has gone wrong?  In Federalist 51, James Madison wrote,

But the great security against a gradual concentration of those several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional and personal motives to resist the encroachments of the others.  The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of the attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.  The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.  But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?  If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.  A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions… (emphasis added)

We have written about incentives here.  Unfortunately, today the incentives are wrong.  The Seventeenth Amendment has misaligned the interests of our Senators and our state legislators have forgotten their role as one of Madison’s “auxiliary precautions”.  A century of consolidation later, our government has become so powerful that it corrupts nearly everyone who arrives there.  Further, we the people have forgotten our own role as the primary control on government.

As the e-mails, blog posts and articles counting down the days to the November elections appear, 100 days, 99 days, 98 days, …., it is important to be consider that November is not the solution to our problems.  Remember Lord Acton,

“All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The solution to our problem is not to find the right people and send them to Washington.  By all means, vote the bums out, but if that is the end of it, the new crop of bums (from both parties) will forget their limited government rhetoric just as surely as their predecessors did.  We have a continued role to play as an informed and active citizenry.   We must remind our state officials of their duty to protect the Tenth Amendment.  We must remain informed about our local, state and national governance, acting when necessary to protect the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.  We should focus, especially, on our state and local representatives, since decentralization of power serves their interests and ambitions.

Here in Pennsylvania, we should be encouraging our elected officials to support the following legislation, regardless of who wins in November,

• Tenth Amendment Sovereignty Resolution, declaring sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment and demanding that the federal government cease & decist from Unconstitutional actions;
• Nullify the Federal Health Care Takeover (such as the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, Health Care Freedom Amendment or the Federal Health Care Nullification Act.);
• Firearms Freedom Act, exempting firearms built, sold and used exclusively within the state from federal regulation;
• Real ID NonCompliance, stating that Pennsylvania will not participate in the invasive federal RealID legislation.

If we are going to set Pennsylvania free, November is the beginning, not the end.

Steve Palmer is the State Chapter Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Tenth Amendment Center.

Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given

If there were any doubt that our constitutional protection has been lost, that doubt should be removed by the congressional vote subjecting the personal health care decisions of every American to central governmental authority.

By an extremely narrow majority, the House of Representatives has crammed a profoundly unpopular and unconstitutional measure down the throats of the American public: And not only unpopular and unconstitutional, but expensive enough to virtually ensure our nation’s eventual bankruptcy.

Unless it is overturned, nationalized health care will complete the process of changing the Founders’ system of a government dependent on the people to one where the people are dependent on the government. Citizens will be thoughly re-molded into subjects.

The unseemly legislative conduct (the Founders would have called it “corruption”) leading up to the vote have communicated even to those previously not paying attention that federal politicians are now absolutely, utterly out of control. The majority in Congress has rendered it perfectly clear that there is no constitutional or legal restriction they will not violate.

As congressional rumblings about the recent Citizens United decision have suggested, protections for free speech may be next.

There is no “good” response to these outrages – that is, “good” in the sense of easy and foolproof: After all, the very people who perpetrated them also control America’s nuclear arsenal. There are only responses that, while difficult, offer real hope of success. Here are a few:

* Widespread court challenges, on every colorable constitutional, legal, and technical ground we can think of. State governments can take a leading role in this, by virtue of the fact that state governments are more likely than individuals to have standing in federal court. State governments and officials also have much to lose if the feds are allowed to complete their health care takeover.

* Health care provider non-compliance: To the extent they can, physicians and other providers should opt out of the system. Their choices include partial or complete refusal to participate in Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs; refusal to take any but direct-payment patients; reduced work hours; and even career change and early retirement. Students considering a medical career should now reconsider. Given the ominous nature of the federal health care coup d’etat, my guess is that a lot of this will happen anyway.

* State constitutional amendments. One excellent idea is the amendment proposed in many states guaranteeing that the state will never participate in any system that denies patients and physicians the right to their own health-care decisions.

* Civil disobedience. This should include state non-compliance with federal health-care mandates and peaceful resistance by providers and citizens at every level. The model here should be the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

* Redoubling efforts for the 2010 elections. The people responsible for this bill should be cleaned out of Congress – all of them. In addition, we need to gear up for 2012 and ensure that state lawmakers elected in 2010 fully understand their constitutional obligations.

* Amend-to-Save. A clean sweep of Congress is not enough. There is now no escaping it – we need amend our Constitution to save it, or we will not have any Constitution left.

There is nothing new in this last proposal. Our fathers, grandfathers, and their predecessors all adopted constitutional amendments designed less to change the system than to preserve it. Again and again, the American people adopted formal amendments to rein in the politicians and restore or reinforce Founding principles.

Thus, the Ninth Amendment made clear that federal powers were not to be interpreted too expansively. The Tenth Amendment clarified that the central government had no authority other than that granted by the Constitution. The Eleventh reversed a Supreme Court opinion that conflicted with the dominant understanding of the ratifiers. The Twenty-First Amendment restored control over alcoholic beverages to the states, where the Founders had left it. The Twenty-Second Amendment restored the two-term presidential tradition set by Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. The Twenty-Seventh, although not finally adopted until 1992, had been proposed by James Madison and sent to the states by the First Congress. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth (the post-Civil War amendments) were more radical, but also principally fulfilled the ideals of the Founding.

Now we need a Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Ninth, and Thirtieth Amendment – not so much to change the Founders’ Constitution as to restore it. How? Congress will not reform itself. Fortunately, the Founders recognized that when Congress veered completely out of control, there had to be a way to amend without its consent. Hence, they wrote into the Constitution a procedure whereby two-thirds of the states could propose amendments, which would then be drafted by a convention, and approved only if three-quarters of the states ratified them.

We now have no choice: We are going to have to use that method. That’s why state legislative races are so important this year.

Rob Natelson is Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Montana and a nationally-known expert on the American Founding. After a quarter of a century in academia, he is leaving this year to fight full-time for freedom at the Independence Institute in Golden, Colorado. His constitutional publications can be found at www.umt.edu/law/faculty/natelson.htm. The views expressed here are his own, not to be attributed to any organization or institution.

From the article:

Despite having no experience in education, Neil Bush is the founder of a Texas-based company called Ignite! Learning, which, since 1999 has peddled strange little devices called “Curriculums on Wheels” (COWs) to schools state and nationwide. Rather than anything bovine, COWs actually resemble bright plastic droids or office chairs gone terribly wrong. Described as “computer/projectors,” it’s not really clear what they do or how they work, and a cursory look at the company’s website does not help. (Apparently it involves swivel action.) Regardless, there are COWs for different subjects: the Math COW, the Science COW (“the ultimate classroom sidekick!”) and the Social Studies COW.

But here’s the kicker – Neil gets (surprise, surprise) federal funding for his COWs! It’s just another miracle provided to you and I by the No Child Left Behind Act.

Well, of course, there are some people who aren’t happy with this, and another acronym is speaking out against the possible impropriety:

Recently, a three-month investigation by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) revealed that schools are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, including No Child Left Behind funds, on Neil Bush’s COWs. “It is astonishing that taxpayer dollars are being spent on unproven educational products to the financial benefit of the president’s brother,” CREW’s executive director, Melanie Sloan, said in a press release.

There’s definitely a problem here.  But, where I see both Liliana and Melanie missing the mark is that they seem to focus primarily on the symptoms rather than the cause. Melanie’s statement is representative of this; “…It is astonishing that taxpayer dollars are being spent on unproven educational products…”

While it is a potential waste to spend money on unproven educational products, this isn’t the biggest problem. The real issue is that the federal government should not be taking your money and spending it on local concerns – at all.

First of all, there’s nothing in the Constitution which authorizes the federal government to engage in such spending. Readers of this site are probably quite familiar with the fact that the Constitution was written under the principle of “positive grant.” What this means is that the federal government can exercise only those powers which are specifically given to it in the Constitution. Everything else is left to “the States, respectively, or to the people.”

Constitutional arguments aside, there’s also a principle that needs to be followed – the idea that centralized bureaucracies are always loaded with corruption. Remember, it’s not the abuse of power that we should be most concerned with, but rather, the power to abuse. The ability to spend vast sums of money will inevitably lead to more and more corruption in government.

As long as this kind of spending exists, there will always – always – be corruption through kickbacks, contracts with friends and family, and the like. Unless we accept this reality, we’ll always end up with the short end of the stick when trying to improve education in this country.

Whether it’s Bush and his brother getting favored status and federal funding, or a future president and their family getting rich from your income, doesn’t really matter. As long as the power exists, it’s liable to be abused. And that’s the sad truth.