Are you ready to restore state sovereignty?

It is a question all those supporting states’ rights initiatives need to ask themselves.  Once answered affirmatively the struggle for educating others truly begins.  It is easy to claim we support our sovereignty, to lend our voice to state resolutions, perhaps even support legislation with some teeth, yet how will we withstand the opponents who simply point to the dollars we are willingly cutting off?

Glen Warchol ran what is perhaps the shortest piece seen in the Salt Lake Tribune in recent history.  In 10^th Amendment cold turkey he quickly leaves us with the truth about what we are asking for and how we must accomplish it.  He describes a very brief conversation between U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  Rep. Chaffetz asked what it would take for the federal government to recognize the 10^th Amendment rights of the states, a fair question asked to someone who could truly articulate the answer.  “Stop taking their money,” is the answer Warchol reports and it is an answer known to be the true, root challenge.  We must stop taking the money and mimicking the income tax system as a start to reclaiming sovereignty.

A friend was attending a local town hall meeting Tuesday night.  Regarding their support for 10^th Amendment state duties they were in the vast minority.  At the meeting were 2 Utah State Representatives and 2 Utah State Senators.  Besides the irritating fact the majority of those in attendance wanted more government intervention there was an eye-opening comment from one of the state senators when asked about Utah’s 10^th Amendment rights.  She simply brushed the matter aside with the age old trump card.  She spoke quite plainly that 23% of the state budget came from the federal government and people were not willing to give those dollars away.

There it is, two sources corroborating the very fact 10^th Amendment efforts suffer in the media, political circles, and neighborhoods across the country from the dependency these federal dollars have created.  Right now there are a lot of citizens jumping on the wagon of states’ rights, it is fun after all and there are some really cool people involved in this movement!  Some of the politicians involved are genuine supporters of our heritage, statesmen in a day when that breed is endangered, yet many are simply coming on board for resolutions or weak legislation as a way to win more votes.

Opponents, even those who appear to be supporters, are not willing to stop the federal flow of dollars but then again, neither are most citizens.  I know, some of you already understand the federal dollars being used as a carrot would not exist if it were not ripped from the state citizens’ pocket, which is not the point of the opposition.  The point they want to press is those who truly want our state sovereignty restored really want to take money from the sick, poor, down-trodden, and hungry.  Supporters want to end federal funding of schools, roads, and more.

How foolish, in these tough times, can such nonsense be?  Supporting the 10^th Amendment is nothing more than a stunt for publicity or a failure to understand the dollars and lawsuits being put at risk.  Don’t confuse facts with fiction here!  Don’t mistake the Constitutional plans for a Federalist Republic with today’s necessary, representative national democracy.  So the spin of opposition goes and grows in the ears of your neighbors, sovereignty is not sounding so promising for them.

Are you ready to stand in opposition to federal funding of vital entitlements your neighbors need?  Are you blind enough to think the state and local governments will really care for life, liberty, and property better than federal intelligence?  Can you seriously defend the notion you and your neighbors, city, county, and state officials can actually govern better by governing with less federal interference?  How foolish, in these tough times, can such nonsense be?

As Gary Alder points out there are many in the 10^th Amendment movement who are like young teenagers demanding their parents treat them as adults.  If their parents dare say Okay will the teenager be ready?  Will you be ready to tell your legislators to stand up to their duty, quit accepting federal funding, and quit being the tax collector for all federal waste?  How will you stand in front of your neighbor who relies on a federal program administered by the state and tell them this is best?  After talking with you about our heritage will they be ready to give those dollars away?

None of this will be easy and the ‘federal dollar denial’ card will be played relentlessly in a game of poker that will take many chips from your stack.  Ultimately our Posterity’s liberty is at risk. You must be ready first, and then you must educate yourself on the benefits of our Constitutional order of separation of powers; checks and balances involving states’ duties in controlling federal usurpation.  You must firmly commit to the idea of the lowest level of government being the government that is best.  We will first lose federal inflow before we ever can stop federal outflow and many will cry foul, fool, fiend!  Look in the mirror and ask yourself, honestly, are you ready to restore state sovereignty?

Gary Wood [send him email] is the State Chapter Coordinator for the Utah Tenth Amendment Center

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

There has been much media attention that the federal Highway Trust Fund is running out of money and going broke. Last year, an $8 billion infusion of money was required to keep funding whole, and this year Congress will have to come up with an additional $5 billion to $7 billion by August. It is projected that an additional $8 billion to $10 billion will be needed in 2010.

How hard should Michigan be crying over this projected shortfall? Michigan has chronically been classified as a “donor state” when it comes to how these federal transportation dollars are allocated. In layman’s terms, what this means is that when Michigan citizens pay federal gas taxes at the pump that that they only see roughly 94 cents of it flow back to their state. The latest rankings put Michigan 46th out of the 50 states in this regard.

On top of that, federal road dollars have become one of the top tools that Washington uses to fiscally coerce states into passing laws. If you wonder why Michigan has seat belt use as a primary enforcement offense, or has a legal drinking age of 21, it is partly because the federal government will withhold federal road dollars if we don’t comply.

Whether you agree or disagree with these policies has nothing to do with whether or not it should be acceptable for the federal government to use our money in this manner, where they play states off of each other who are all too happy to take another state’s money if one doesn’t comply. This has been threatened with a wide variety of laws regarding everything from vehicle weight limitations to outdoor advertising to junk yard control, clean air compliance, REAL ID, and more. The carrot has become a stick.

This has also helped to perpetuate a mindset where we are always chasing federal dollars, using our matching money on such things as “street beautification” at times when many of our highways and bridges are crumbling.

I also anticipate federal dollars will be attached soon to include such proposals as putting mandatory GPS units into our cars for a so called “per mile” tracking tax. Such fiscal coercion has led George Will to recently call Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood the “Secretary for Behavior Modification.”

While I join other Michigan lawmakers in their call to get the federal government to give Michigan its fair share of money (it is ironic that our “donor status” means that the federal government will give us less money by about the same amount we would need to turn around and give back to them in order to qualify for all federal matching dollars), questions regarding the long run viability of the program also offer us an opportunity to ask another fundamental question: Should the program even still continue?

If Washington stopped levying a federal gas tax, a state could then raise its own gas tax by an equal amount, making it a revenue neutral proposition for its taxpayers while guaranteeing that all the money would stay at home. Federal strings would be cut, allowing states to spend money on their most pressing priorities without fear of losing federal dollars or being forced to pass tangential laws that may or may not be in the best interests of its citizens.

If it ain’t broke you shouldn’t fix it. But in this case – if the federal Highway Trust Fund is going broke, the best thing may be to let it stay that way and put states back in control.

State Rep. Paul Opsommer [send him email] was elected to a second term in the Michigan House of Representatives in November 2008.  He represents the residents of Clinton and Gratiot counties.

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.

The House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to broaden federal support for embryonic stem cell research, stepping up a confrontation with President Bush over a thorny scientific and ethical issue that Democrats hope to capitalize on in the next election.

The vote, 253 to 174, was not enough to overturn a likely presidential veto of the measure, which would authorize federal support for research using stem cells derived from excess embryos that fertility clinics would otherwise discard.

Apparently, Congress believes that if the feds don’t fund it, such research wouldn’t or couldn’t be done. But, it’s never compassionate to spend other people’s money for political benefit. Federal funding of medical research guarantees the politicization of decisions about what types of research for what diseases will be funded.

As with most government programs, there is nothing, whatsoever, in the US Constitution that allows the federal government to expropriate tax funds from the population for scientific research programs such as stem cell research.

But, the Constitution is not just a good idea, it’s the law…

The powers granted to Congress are for the most part enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. To clarify that Congress is limited only to powers expressly granted to it in the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment was written.

And one of the many powers that were not delegated to the United States federal government was scientific research. Take a challenge and try to find an authorization for scientific research in the Constitution. (here’s a hint, you’ll never find it)

Therefore, to be for federally-funded stem cell research is to be against the Bill of Rights.

The greatest casualty of centralized government decision-making is personal liberty.