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I usually don’t crosspost articles, but this one was too good to pass up. We’ve said repeatedly that the USA has transformed from a free republic to an oppressive empire: in a free republic, each member state is sovereign, in the US Empire, unelected bureaucrats in Washington set “policy” on all things imaginable: from what elements you can get out of the ground to what foods you can grow on your land. Anyhow, as this article points out, it appears the Federal Government is poised to remove all doubt about the state of the Republic:
It has become clear the Federal government is the driving force behind the financial troubles of the States; every Federal incentive
is for the States to overspend as explained in The Nature of the Beast, judicial activism, the general welfare, and the butterfly effect, and What went wrong with our Republic.
Who benefits when the States go bankrupt?
This recent article from the New York Times lets the cat out of the bag.
“Some states are so burdened that the only feasible way out may be bankruptcy, giving Illinois, for example, the opportunity to do what General Motors did with the federal government’s aid.”
Do what General Motors DID? Would the Federal government now come in and OWN the State thus replacing the Governor with a hand-picked buddy of the President? Would the State Legislature be dissolved and replaced with advisors to the President? Or would it all be done behind the scenes as a “shadow government” to let us keep the illusion of a Republic?
Dan Kanna [send him email] is the outreach director for the New Hampshire Tenth Amendment Center
link: The United State of DC? – Tenth Amendment Center Blog
Russell D. Longcore writes for DumpDC about how the existing power structure makes it impossible to “reign in” the Federal Government in any meaningful way:
There is a new crop of legislators in Washington right now, bent on bringing Washington’s spending to heel. Let’s consider just a few reasons why Washington cannot retreat from its course. DC is a runaway train that cannot leave its tracks to take a new direction. It must fulfill its destiny to make the fall of Rome look like playtime at kindergarten.
1. Political philosophy
The first consideration for the new Republican House majority is that the Democrats control the Senate and the White House. No substantive piece of legislation has a snowball’s chance in Hades of being enacted in the next two years. All the House majority can do is try to embarrass the other party. Gridlock should not be confused with fixing Washington.
The overarching political philosophy in Washington is that the Federal goverment should be involved in every facet of human action. DC and the entire Power Class believe that the Constitution is irrelevant, and that Washington may do whatever it chooses to do without restriction. If you wish to argue with this statement of philosophy, please send us the name of one person elected that has never voted for some legislation that violates the US Constitution. I do not even think Dr. Ron Paul can measure up to this standard, but I could be wrong.
DC believes that every Federal dollar spent is necessary, or else why would they spend it? And cutting spending is a tacit admission that some Federal spending is not necessary, which betrays the underlying philosophy.
With this philosophy in place, most of the spending done at the Federal level violates the Constitution. So, when the aforementioned philosophy is the air that Washington breathes..the presupposition for all government action, how could they consider cutbacks? That would be tantamount to an admission that they have been committing crimes against the Constitution for decades. Can you imagine that happening?
2. Military spending
The Pentagon and the private industries that supply the military figured out long ago that in order to protect themselves from budget cuts, they would place manufacturing plants and suppliers in every state of the USA. The job base was widely dispersed throughout the country and hundreds of billions were spent everywhere. Consequently, when some Congressional crusader recommended budget cuts for the military, nearly every Congressman would be placed in the untenable position of voting in favor of eliminating jobs in his/her district. Same goes for domestic base closings. Entire economies get developed around a military base, and the closing of a base would mean economic devastation on a local level.
So, if Washington closed military bases on American soil, voters get pissed. If Washington stopped paying for weapons systems we do not now or may never need, voters lose jobs and get pissed. If Washington closes foreign military bases, they have to either bring home the troops to America and house them inside our borders, or they have to release them to be civilians again. One costs money directly, the other creates a spike in unemployment…and the voters get pissed, especially the soldiers now without a job. The US military is being used as a giant jobs program right now, and no one in DC wants to be responsible for cutting jobs.
And don’t forget…war is foreign policy by another means. Washington’s belligerence around the globe promotes our oil industry at the same time we are the world’s largest supplier of military hardware to all the other nations. Washington is not going to change foreign policy voluntarily.
Military spending will not be significantly cut by this Congress or any subsequent Congress.
3. Federal Borrowing
Washington now borrows about 50% of its budget annually. That means that of every dollar DC spends, 50 cents is borrowed. Washington is not ever going to slash its budget by 50% to live within its tax collections. Federal borrowing is entirely out of control. The Federal Reserve has been buying Treasury Debt to artificially prop up DC spending, which is like paying for an IOU with another IOU. Washington cannot even slow down its borrowing, and it will likely get worse because they have to keep rolling over old debt. At some point, Washington’s interest obligation will exceed its tax revenue.
4. The Dollar, banking and the Federal Reserve
The Keynesian economists in Washington have spread the disease of central banks, inflation and fractional reserve banking to every nation on earth. Every financial system, every currency on earth is entangled it the Washington web. There is no way to fix the system and Washington can only keep propping it up and kicking the economic collapse can down the road.
If the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, the dying economy would erode further and faster. If they lower interest rates any more, which are already near zero, they will be in effect paying banks to borrow money. So an interest rate increase is out of the question.
The world is swiftly moving away from the dollar, and moving toward a new world reserve currency. China is poised to use the renminbi yuan as the new reserve. The Federal Reserve and Treasury collude to pump trillions of paper dollars into the world economy, diluting the value of each existing dollar. Washington cannot forsake the dollar, or allow any other form of money to be legal tender. They have to ride this boat over the falls.
5. Entitlement spending
Over the years, most of the big spending programs have been amended to protect them from cutbacks. Many of them, like Social Security, Medicare, etc., have automatic budget increases built into the law. These programs affect a huge percentage of the population, and as the Baby Boomers age, more will be entitled. No politician wants to cut Grandma’s monthly check.
Secession is the only logical solution to these five unfixable problems.
The state that secedes most successfully will carefully craft a system of governance that severely restricts government action.
Secession formally ends any state’s relationship with Washington. Therefore, Washington’s debts cease to be any responsibility of that seceded state.
A seceded state, now a new nation, would have no Federal Reserve mismanaging its money.
A seceded state would have no social programs that steal money from one taxpayer to give it to another taxpayer.
A seceded state would only have a militia to protect itself from invasion.
Conclusion
Washington DC is a disease. It has become a plague upon mankind. Every nation of the earth has become sick with “DC-itis.” And when DC dies, many other nations will die soon thereafter. The effect on populations worldwide will be the worst plague to ever hit mankind.
But Secession is the Last Hope For Mankind. Who will be first?
DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.
© Copyright 2011, Russell D. Longcore
Alan Caruba has an excellent article over at Warning Signs on the subject of nullifcation and its necessity. Here is an excerpt:
The great issue of our times is the same great issue of the 1830s. The question is whether Congress can pass legislation or the President issue executive orders that are not authorized by or consistent with the Constitution?
The federal government is a republic composed of separate and sovereign republics.
What recourse do the States have individually and in combination when the central government acts in a fashion that is contrary to the limits and enumerated powers of the Constitution?
The answer, other than an appeal to the courts, is nullification. This term is defined as the assertion that States can and should refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal laws.
The RT America interview from yesterday (December 20, 2010) has now been posted on Youtube. This is the full version that isn’t cut off at the end. Check out out!
A couple of days ago Nikki Haley, the governor elect of South Carolina, was in Washington, D.C. attending a luncheon where the president of the United States was speaking to the newly elected governors of several states. This event didn’t garner many headlines as it is basically a “pity” meeting where the all powerful president hosts the powerless governors, basically to give us the illusion of a federal government that gives a damn about the formerly sovereign governments of the several states.
This event would have been non-news if all had gone as planned, but apparently Haley wasn’t satisfied with the dog and pony show so she decided to press Mr. Obama on a couple of key issues. First, she questioned him about the healthcare legislation:
Haley says she told Obama that South Carolina could not afford the health care mandate, and that it would cripple small businesses.
“I respectfully asked him to consider repealing the bill,” she said, to which he clearly stated he would not. “I pushed him further and said if that’s the case, because of states’ rights, would you at least consider South Carolina opting out of the program?”
Obama told her he would consider letting South Carolina opt out, she said, if the state could find its own solution that included a state exchange, preventing companies from bumping people for preexisting conditions and allowing insurance pooling.
“I think it’s something we go back to South Carolina and start crunching,” she said. “This is not about expecting what’s given. This is about saying we’re going to fight this every step of the way and use every option possible.”
link: Haley: Obama might let S.C. opt out of health care | The Post and Courier, Charleston SC
There are several things that we should examine here: first, this is good news, and it is a good sign. This shows that Nikki Haley shares Mark Sanford’s “South Carolina first” attitude.
Second, while we should applaud Haley for asserting states’ rights, we must also point out that she does not fully understand the concept: we have a right to govern ourselves. If we are governed by Washington, D.C., then we are serfs and not free people. When you have a right to something, you don’t ask permission, you simply assert your right. Haley would have been better served to say something like this: “… because of states’ rights, South Carolina will be opting out of this legislation.”
Finally, Obama’s response gives us some insight into the mindset of a dictator, of an imperial master who rules over his slaves. He said he would consider letting South Carolina opt out, if the state could create it’s “own” solution, so long as that solution was based on the same premise as his solution. In other words, if we totally disagree with his premise and we think free enterprise and voluntary exchange are the proper solution, then he won’t “let” us opt out. This is what we’re up against, and it perfectly illustrates the illegitimacy of the federal government, and the reason we need Independence.
The next issue that Haley brought up with Obama was the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository:
Haley said she also asked the president if he would honor the federal government’s commitment on developing a nuclear waste repository. When he said he would not revisit opening Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, “I said, ‘Then give us our money back.’”
The site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas was proposed to house more than 4,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste from South Carolina’s Savannah River Site. The state and Washington have sued over Obama’s attempt to kill plans for the storage site after decades of study.
“SRS has done a good job, but that was a temporary solution. It was never meant to be a permanent solution,” Haley said she told him. “The federal government has reneged on its promise, and the people of South Carolina want their money back.”
South Carolina’s power plants and its customers have contributed more than $1 billion over nearly 30 years to a permanent repository.
She says Obama pledged that he would have Energy secretary Steven Chu call her promptly.
Now this is a smaller issue, but I think Nikki actually took a better approach on this one. Here she asserted the people of South Carolina’s sovereignty, as she demanded our money back from a federal program that had (as per usual) failed to live up to its end of the bargain. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t mention the wording of Obama’s response, though it does say that Obama promised to have Steven Chu call Haley about the issue. I sure would have liked to have seen his face though.
The important thing here is that Haley demanded our money back, and rightfully so. The people of this state funded a program to house nuclear waste and that program has been essentially cancelled. If any nation did the same thing to the United States federal government, they’d probably be accused of harboring WMD and an invasion would follow. In demanding our money back, Haley basically said that we have a right to be respected as a state and that our contracts should be honored. Now she just needs to demand our independence by pushing the General Assembly nullify any and all federal legislation that controls the lives of the individuals in our state, and assert that we retain the right of secession should the federal government not respect our rights.
I don’t think that Nikki Haley was thinking about that when she confronted the president. I don’t think that she’s a staunch supporter of political independence for South Carolina. However, she hasn’t even started serving her first term as governor yet, and she’s already picked up the torch of fighting back against the federal government from Mark Sanford. Hopefully we, the people of South Carolina, can influence her to join our cause.
Do we actually hold those truths to be self-evident that Jefferson wrote about in 1776? Do we actually believe that it is possible for “one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them”?
If so, then we believe in the right of secession.
There are two major facets to the secession question: 1) morality and 2) self-interest. These two items do not necessarily align with one another. When the U.S. Civil War [sic] began, the rationale for war on both sides was highly complicated. The North entered the war for two primary reasons: 1) Keeping the Union from dissolving by force and 2) forcing the issue of slavery. The first reason was immoral and the second was moral. Yet the first reason was Abraham Lincoln’s primary reason for using force to bring the Confederacy back into the Union. Lincoln felt slavery was morally wrong, but he did not declare war because of slavery. He declared war because he believed the federal government should be the highest authority in the land, and that states had no right to self-determination. Abolition was not his primary goal.
In 1916, US President Woodrow Wilson called for volunteers to go off to fight in World War I. Regarding the conflict as a foreign affair, relatively few Americans answered Wilson’s call. And so, the US Congress passed the Selective Service Act of 1917 and forced on pain of imprisonment hundreds of thousands of young men to join the Federal army. They were then sent off to participate in the great massacre. Of those the Feds shipped off to Europe, one hundred sixteen thousand were killed. Another two hundred thousand were wounded.
Thank goodness no South Carolinians were wounded or killed in the awful slaughter! As an independent republic, the Palmetto State remained vigilant but neutral, trading with the entire world and refusing to be drawn into the war. In South Carolina there was no conscription, massive government spending, restrictions on free speech or any of the other blows against liberty the people of the United States were forced to endure.
During the 1920s, the US Federal Government created a bubble in the economy and when the inflationary boom burst in 1929 and market forces tried to correct the mal-investments encouraged by the cheap money and credit of the 20s, the Feds over-reacted with stimulus plans and costly public works projects. The gold standard was abolished, allowing the US government to print all the dollars it wanted. Property rights were grossly violated across the United States. Economic freedoms were curtailed, culminating in the 1933 confiscation by President Roosevelt of nearly all the privately-held gold in the US. Massive continued government interference kept the economy down, creating and prolonging the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until the end of WWII.
Thanks goodness South Carolina was able to avoid the Great Depression! The Palmetto State had no central bank and no paper currency to inflate. Rather than enduring a boom and bust during the 20s and 30s, South Carolinians experienced gradual, steady growth. While unemployment reached twenty-five percent in the United States, this was not the case in South Carolina. In fact, the State acted as a magnet, welcoming highly-skilled professionals from the US and elsewhere. Gold and silver coins and certificates continued to be circulated, the market remained free and there were no trade barriers. While most countries copied FDR’s example and followed the US down the drain in the 30s, South Carolinians were pretty well off and offered a counter example to the world – one of economic freedom and relative prosperity.
As war broke out again in Europe at the end of the 1930s, Roosevelt did all he could to try and bring the US into the conflict. Suffering from the Great Depression and remembering the slaughter of WWI, the last thing the vast majority of people in the US wanted was another international war. And so it took a great deal of work by FDR and others in the Federal Government to completely alienate Japan to the point where Japanese leaders felt they had no choice but to attack the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Twenty four hundred Americans were killed in that attack, turning public opinion around in a single day. Another four hundred thousand Americans were killed when they were sent overseas to fight the Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Japanese and others. At least sixty million people were slaughtered in what was the most horrible and tragic event in human history. The United States capped off the war by vaporizing two Japanese cities full of defenseless women, children and old folks, killing around a quarter of a million people in the blink of an eye, with many more suffering and dying slowly of radiation and burns after the bombing.
Thank goodness South Carolina was able to avoid World War II! The Palmetto State, much like Switzerland, remained armed and neutral throughout the whole horrible affair. As a result, no South Carolinians were conscripted, sent over-seas and killed. There was no pro-war propaganda put out by the State like there was in all the belligerents, including the US. The war interrupted trade and this did effect the SC economy but overall South Carolinians fared well during the 1940s. The free and open market, negligible government spending, gold and silver money and neutrality policy saved the people of the State from the miseries experienced by large portions of the rest of the planet.
There was the war on the Korean pennensula in the 1950s, which the US government joined, resulting in the death of over fifty thousand Americans. Oh, and then there was the awful mess in Southeast Asia during the 60s and 70s. Many tens of thousands of Americans were conscripted and sent to the jungle and returned home in boxes or missing limbs. The war was largely financed with inflation, of course, and this led to the economic troubles of the 70s. South Carolina kept to her neutrality and for her people there was neither inflation in the 60s nor a bust in the 70s. The Palmetto State’s economy kept right on growing at a slow, steady pace.
Thank goodness the people of South Carolina have been spared all the killing, loss of liberty and economic suffering the United States government has forced upon its people over the last century or so! We have surely been fortunate. Yes, it was certainly a wise decision on the part of our ancestors to maintain our independence, remaining well outside the Union.
