Diminished States' Rights

A few weeks ago I read an opinion piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I cannot recall who the author was, but his premise was that ever since the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution states' rights has been on a fast track to decline.

What is the Seventeenth Amendment? It allows for the popular election of U.S. senators. Previously senators were elected by state legislatures.

How is this a bad thing? The Framers' intentionally designed a bicameral Congress so that each house balanced the other and represented two vital interests in our union- state autonomy and the need for federal authority as demonstrated by the total failure of the Articles of Confederation which lacked hardly any centralized or federal powers.

Under the new Constitution the lower house was to be elected directly by the people every two years. Direct election allowed for the people's voice to be heard at the federal level. Election of representatives every two years allowed for rapid turnover and the introduction of current viewpoints into the policy making process.

To balance vox populi, James Madison and the other Framers designed an upper house, the Senate. The Senate was to be elected every six years by the various state legislatures to represent the power of the states. As such, senators played an extremely important role in ensuring that federal power did not usurp state authority and through longer terms, that their votes were not swayed by today's headlines.

Remember, the U.S. Constitution spells out specific powers assigned to the federal government and reserves for the people and the states all other powers. The role of the House and Senate is to guard against an all-powerful federal government from encroaching upon the rights of the people and the rights of states.

Once senators became answerable unto the people, states' rights began to decline faster than had already been the case (thanks to men like Presidents Jackson (D) and Lincoln (R)).

Our form of government was designed to balance conflicting interests. Executive vs. Legistlative vs. Judicial. People vs. Government. Federal vs. States. The Seventeenth Amendment has tipped that balance of power too much to the favor of the federal government.

Perhaps we need to consider whether this amendment born of the Progressive Era has caused more harm than good in terms of our nation's long term health and survival. Maybe it is the right thing to do, but then again maybe it destroys the foundations of our system of checks and balances.

Either way, we need to return to principles of liberty and freedom or we will surely suffer the same fate as Europe's failed socialist and communist systems (Greece, USSR, East Germany...) which placed it faith in the hands of an all-knowing, all-powerful federal government.

Where are the Democrats?

House Democrats promised to reform Congress after the Republican scandals. Now Democrats are hiding out instead of investigating whether Congressmen benefited from VIP loans from Countrywide. Loans that you and I probably could never get.

You see, both the Democrats and Republicans are corrupt machines with designs for big government. No matter which of the two parties you elect, they will do all in their power to benefit themselves and their party by creating more and more federal programs to benefit their special interests.

Libertarians have only one interest- the Constitutional freedoms guaranteed to us. That means smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.

White House Escalates War of Words With Fox News - Political News - FOXNews.com

White House Escalates War of Words With Fox News - Political News - FOXNews.com

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The left and liberal media continue to falsely paint Fox News as somehow a radical, right-wing news organization. The Pew Research Center's analysis of the 2008 campaign shows quite the opposite. It is CNN and MSNBC which are blatantly unfair, unbalanced and partisan in its news coverage.

The left, intent on its goal of creating a socialist state where individual thought is suppressed and the state controls every aspect of our life, wants nothing more than the restriction of our freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. And so they attack Fox News as being conservative and deny its reporters access to the president (not until at least 2010, The White House now says).

Our liberties are being crushed faster than ever by this far, far left government. We must speak up for our Constitutional liberties and rights before it is too late. We need to support the Libertarian Party in its fight for our liberties and freedom as it battles a Democratic Party intent on a socialist government and a Republican Party intent on pushing its conservative moral values on us through big government policies. The point is, the GOP is not the answer. The GOP wants big government too. Just look at what they did under President George W. Bush and a GOP Congress.

Competition and Accountability in Education

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I believe the U.S. Department of Education is unconstitutional and should be abolished. But beyond the Constitutional issue education is also an intensely local issue. Parents in each school district know best what types of schools best suite their children- not a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Department of Education's budget doubled under President Bush from $33billion to just under $70billion. Wayne Allen Root asks in The Conscience of a Libertarian, "Anyone think that education improved by double? Anyone think our kids are twice as smart? Education is failing precisely because the federal government is involved." President Obama has thrown another $130billion in stimulus money for education on top of the $70billion baseline budget- that's $200billion for education! Throwing money at teachers unions will not solve our problems when teachers are basically given tenure regardless of performance of their students.

Want more evidence federal involvement in education is the problem? Root points to an international study of industrialized nations' 15 year-old students: "Out of 30 industrialized countries, U.S. students ranked 25th in math and 21st in science." The Department of Education has been around since President Jimmy Carter. Lotta good it's done.

The right path is to abolish the Department of Education and return education to the state and local level.

In the October 12 issue of Fortune there is an interview with the head of New York City's public school system, Joel Klein. Mr. Klein is a graduate of New York public schools, Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Before taking over NY schools in 2002 he had never worked in the field of education.

Joel Klein has been a catalyst for change by injecting crazy ideas like accountability, competition, autonomy and leadership into each local school. His changes are bringing about results. For instance in 2005 the drop out rate was 22%. Last year that had declined to 14%. The graduation rate in '05 was 47% but spiked to 61% in 2008.

The key to his success has been giving each principal the authority to make independent decisions as to how he or she runs the school, including extended days, extended weeks, community engagement and more. In short he has empowered them and provided them the leadership training they need to be successful.

Teachers are now being paid differently based on results in their schools, the need to send better teachers to schools most in need and the subject matter they teach (science teachers should be paid more then physical education teachers). Additionally, he is firing people who do not produce results and even closing entire schools that are failing.

We need to seriously look at implementing real-world principles of accountability, competition, leadership, choice and autonomy into our education system if the U.S. hopes to compete in the global economy of the 21 century. Otherwise we will quickly be overtaken as an economic power.

Richmond Times-Dispatch Editorial Board

The past few days the RTD Editorial Board has published some great comments. In one editorial they take the Republicans to task for complaining about Creigh Deeds and the Washington Post's use of Bob McDonnell's 20 year old thesis. Wasn't it just two months ago that the GOP was digging into Justice Sotomayor's past to call her unqualified for use of words like "wise latina" in previous speeches? Way to call them out, RTD.

In today's paper they call out the inconsistency of GOP and Democratic ideology with regard to crime and punishment. Democrats are generally against the death penalty and long jail terms for drug crimes, arguing that neither are deterrents for murder and drug dealing. Republicans argue for both capital punishment and laws like three strikes and you're out for repeat drug offenders because they claim that these laws help lower murder rates and drug crimes.

Yet both parties fail to remain consistent to their principles when it comes to hate speech. Democrats generally champion hate speech laws like the Matthew Shepard Act which will extend "protection" to gays in an already long list of protected classes for crimes motivated by hate. The GOP, otherwise tough on crime, generally opposes hate crime laws.

To the GOP, if capital punishment is a deterrent for murder, why wouldn't a hate crimes law prevent hate crimes? And to the Democrats, if those same laws actually do prevent hate crimes, why not support capital punishment and mandatory sentences for drug pushers?

The answer is special interest groups that donate money to keep these parties in power. Right wing religious conservatives with a social agenda dislike gays so the GOP opposes the Matthew Shepard Act. Gays and politically correct big government liberals want to stifle any and all speech that they deem offensive and against their far left agenda, even at the expense of the First Amendment.

The Libertarian Party is the Party of Principle. Freedom of speech should be protected and laws like the Matthew Shepard Act and current laws on hate crimes continue our federal government's assault on individual liberty. Murder is murder and we do not need thought police in Washington suppressing speech. I do not have to like what my neighbor is saying, but he has a Constitutional right to say it.

Feeding the Federal Beast

Here is a link to Cato Institute blog entry on the insane salary and benefit information on federal government workers.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/08/24/federal-pay-continues-rapid-ascent/

A constant theme of my postings has been the federal government's over-stepping of its bounds into areas that the Constitution does not permit. We should be eliminating these federal agencies and departments, lowering federal taxes and empowering states to solve these issues at a more local level.

As the blog above indicates, not only are these un-Constitutional agencies bloating the federal budget, but ALL federal employees are overpaid when compared to the average wage in private industry. The average federal wage is $79,197 as compared to $49,935 in private industry.

Big Government Democrats and Republicans grow the size of government, hire more employees and further strengthen the dependency of more and more Americans on the federal government for either a handout or a paycheck. In either case, it's our tax dollars being used to pay for it.

We need to elect (Libertarian) politicans who will seriously slash federal spending and bring federal employee wages more in line with private industry. My mother was a federal employee. Most federal employees do great work, but the facts show that most are grossly overpaid when compared to their peers in private industry.

People shouldn't enter public service to get rich. If that is your goal then private industry should be your calling. Our politicans have forgotten with whose money they are playing.

A Third Way

In today's Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial pages the editorial staff comment on the sad, sad state of the Republican Party.

"The Republicans' biggest problem is not their ideology but their lack of one. Stigmatized as rightists, behaving like leftists, and ultimately standing for nothing, they're in the worst of all possible worlds," quotes the editors of another article by Christopher Caldwell, "The Southern Captivity of the GOP."

The RTD staff and Caldwell are correct. The GOP stands for nothing and everything all at the same time. The Libertarian Party literally describes itself as "The Party of Principle." What principles are those? Smaller Government. Lower Taxes. More Freedom.

Republican talk a good game, but when elected behave exactly like liberals. It is time for Amercia (and especially our media) to pay attention to America's largest third party.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/opinion/editorials/article/ED-CALD24_20090823-165804/287875/

A General Alarm! You gotta fight for your right to...

Without a doubt our Founding Fathers wrote our Constitution to specifically limit the powers granted to federal government and reserve them to the people and the states. Unfortunately the slow march of time has weakened the resolve of both the people and the states in defense of their liberty, thereby allowing our federal government to slowly but surely steal our freedoms.

James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 46, “The ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone.” He goes on to say, “But ambitious encroachments of the federal government on the authority of the State governments would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of a general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted.”

A general alarm!

Yes, a general alarm should be sounded. Correspondence should be written and spread to all the people.

“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 powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which…concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State,” wrote Madison in The Federalist No. 45.

Quite the opposite seems true today. The federal government’s scope of power has been allowed to expand well beyond the explicit restrictions of the Constitution. We must demand a return of our sovereignty, of our freedom, of our liberty.

How can you do this? Most immediately, contact your Representatives and Senators and tell them to reject a government health care option. Tell them to focus on tort reform as one effective way to reign in the cost of health care. Let’s start by trying to fix the current system before replacing it with a government “solution.”

Longer term I strongly encourage you to support liberty by voting Libertarian. Republicans are for big government and Democrats are for bigger government. We lose in both cases. The lesser of two evils is still evil. But there can be a third way. That is through a grassroots movement of the people to reclaim their liberty from an economically and personally intrusive federal government.

Cato Institute Video on Why Big Government is Bad

Here is a great video covering why big government spending is bad for the economy. Smaller government, less taxes, more freedom. Vote Libertarian.

The Reality of Capitalism

Alan Greenspan, in his book The Age of Turbulence, frequently refers to a theory put forward by Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter. This theory is call creative destruction and is explained thusly: "A market economy will incessantly revitalize itself from within by scrapping old and failing businesses and then reallocating resources to newer, more productive ones" (Greenspan, p. 48).



Throughout the first 150 years or so of our country the federal government allowed market forces (Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" and Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction") to work through cycle after cycle. But starting in the late 1800s in reaction to the industrialization of the Western world, socialist theories like Marxism began to gain momentum in the political discourse.



One the one hand you have the Enlightenment view of the world wherein political society is created by the consent of the people for the protection of property rights. As time moved on and society advanced, distinctions between wealthy and poor grew greater or at least more clear. By the time of the Industrial Revolution, the class conflict became an issue for socialists such as Marx- the other hand. Market forces, property rights, man selling his labor to capitalist vs. exploitation of labor that must be rectified, redistribution of wealth, government intervention at the expense of property rights of a free society.



By the time of the Great Depression Marxism and Keynesianism (government intervention in economic cycles, especially troughs) became embedded in Democratic Party policy and to a lesser extend Republican policy (see Eisenhower, Nixon and Bush 43). President Franklin Roosevelt took unusual, extra-ordinary and some would argue, unconstitutional authority to create interventionist programs. These programs took taxpayer money (from the newly passed Income Tax Amendment) to re-distribute wealth, a goal of Marxism and Communism. Since the 1930s we have seen periods of regulation and de-regulation as political power and economic conditions have changed.



Our Founding Fathers, however, wrote our Constitution based on the Enlightenment ideas of Locke and Rousseau, where property rights (i.e., "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence) are to be protected by a government bound by checks and balances. The Constitution was written such that the federal government's powers were specifically enumerated and virtually all other powers belonged to the states and the people.



President Obama and the Democratic Congress are steamrolling over the Constitutional restrictions and directly manipulating the market, preventing "Creative Destruction's" regenerative powers from bringing about a stronger recovery. As Greenspan argues in his book, the primary role of our government is the protection of property rights. The moment that the government re-distributes wealth, it takes away the fruits of our labor and hands it to someone else. The moment the government enters into private industry, it crowds our private investment and the property rights of others (GM/Chrysler vs Ford; private insurance vs. public insurance).



The reality of capitalism is twofold. First, it is dependent on a government that protects property rights and avoids regulation. Government is inefficient and incapable of running an economy (see USSR, East Germany, Cuba). Second, capitalism ain't always pretty. Markets will boom and markets will crash. Government intervention destroys property rights and individual liberties by taking from those who have risked their private property (capital investors) and redistributing those gains.



Today, Congressman Barney Frank is about to lead his financial sector compensation wage limitation bill to victory in the House. Today, Congress is about to add $2 billion more to the Cash for Clunkers program- taking your tax dollars and handing it out to others, for what gain? This week, the US government became a 34% owner of Citigroup and continues to own parts of GM and Chrysler. These government interventionist, redistributive policies are squashing liberty and property rights. Furthermore, it is retarding the creative destruction necessary for capitalism to work most effectively. Finally, it is wasting your tax dollars. That is to say, wasting your income which is the property you have gained through the sale of your labor in the free (albeit, now heavily regulated) market.



Consider what government interventionist policies mean to the functioning of our economy. Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."



Just look to California to see what the future will be like for the United States.