Lame Ducks and the Seventeenth Amendment

My good friend and Ohio blogger Brian at Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment writes an interesting analysis of how Congressional "lame duck" sessions work, paying particular attention to the ambitious agenda pursued by the lame duck session of the last Congress. He points to Progressivism as the engine that made such a session possible, in contrast to past practice, in which ethical considerations generally made such sessions relatively inactive.

There is another interesting point that Brian did not explicitly mention: Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment would reduce the motivation for aggressive action during the lame duck sessions. Senators, while limited to six-year terms, served essentially at the pleasure of their state legislatures. Since they were not directly accountable to the people, they knew they (or their successors) would still have to consider the interests of their state. Therefore, the changes from one election to the next at the Senatorial level would be less pronounced. Items that the House pushed through in the heat of passion would surely be delayed or at least given more sober consideration by the Senate.

Lame duck sessions expose the downside of democracy. Having a Senate that is elected by the state legislatures is admittedly undemocratic, but paradoxically is better able to preserve free government. I think this is a good tradeoff.

Blogs I like

Regular readers already know about Rebellion and DumpDC. Here are some other blogs I like:

For those of you who like your libertarianism on the more personal family/neighborhood level, I would like to recommend a blogger who is new to me. Karen DeCoster, a resident of Detroit,  writes on such topics as distracted walking, the nutritional snow job being pulled on schools by Domino's Pizza*, Coca-Cola, and terrorist backpacks. She also is one of the workhorses in Lew Rockwell's stable. Lew Rockwell, a radio talk show host and founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute (a libertarian economics think tank) publishes an extensive compendium of libertarian writing every day from a number of authors.

An Ohio writer I regularly follow is Wood County's Charlie Earl whose littlestuff-minoosha brings the big topics down to a human scale. I particularly like his curmudgeonly style, of which he is justly proud. His most recent posts deal with the bankruptcy of state governments. He was a state representative in the early 1980s, and brings that experience to bear in his political insights. Another Ohio-based blog that I check into occasionally is Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, completely devoted to restoring the states' role in the federal government by returning to the election of U.S. Senators by the state legislatures.

If you want to follow the secession and nullification movements across the U.S. of A., you can get brief news summaries from Bill Miller's Secession and Nullification -- News and Information, and from the Tenth Amendment Center (which also provides model nullification legislation and extensive resources to learn about, and persuade others to support state sovereignty).

Links to other Ohio and libertarian blogs are available on my Links page. 

And if you are suffering from insomnia, and want a sure-fire sleep aid, there's my old blog (2005-2006) on theology and politics, The Middle Way. I suppose it's conceited of me to put it under "Blogs I like," but it was a learning experience that helped train me for the blog you are now reading.

* I'm sure Donato's in Columbus won't mind :)

A pledge to the gullible

I have finally read A Pledge to America, offered up to us by our Congressional Republicans. While I have read some comments on it, this post will only include my impressions of it.

Frankly, I am disappointed. Not surprised, but disappointed.

With this document, the Republican Party has placed itself on the same level as the Democrats. They don't really care about fundamental change that will help us preserve our liberty and stave off economic catastrophe. They just want to get back into power.

The sad part is, they just might get away with it.

Why do I say this?

The Republicans know what we want to hear. The Pledge begins:

America is more than a country.

America is an idea - an idea that free people can govern themselves, that government's powers are derived from the consent of the governed, that each of us is endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. America is the belief that any man or woman can - given economic, political, and religious liberty - advance themselves, their families, and the common good.

America is an inspiration to those who yearn to be free and have the ability and dignity to determine their own destiny.

Fine words. The reference to the Declaration of Independence is a nice touch; which becomes a snare to the unwary reader in the very next sentence:

Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course. [Emphasis added]

The liberties of the people are in danger whenever the government has an agenda -- any agenda. Government is meant to carry out the agenda (if we have to use that word) of the people who elected representatives to it.

We live in revolutionary times. Merely changing an agenda will not resolve the problems we face. It is like trying to treat arterial bleeding with a Band Aid.

The GOP wants to require that every bill going through their Congress contain a citation of Constitutional authority. (I wonder how many times they will cite the catch-all "General Welfare Clause," which does not of itself confer any "Constitutional authority.") The Pledge displays a great deal of confusion on the Constitutional role of government. The following examples, taken from the document, display a rank ignorance of, if not contempt for, the limitations the Constitution placed on the federal government:

• "We pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values." That's nice, as long as the Congress doesn't try to legislate on any of those subjects. I wonder how long the conservative base will stand for silence on abortion restrictions and preventing homosexual "marriages." *
• "Instead of pushing off our long-term fiscal challenges, we will reform the budget process to ensure that Congress begins making the decisions that are necessary to protect our entitlement programs for today's seniors and future generations." Please show me where the Constitution authorizes any entitlement program.
• "We offer a plan to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care." Repeal, great! Replace -- uh, please show me where the Constitution authorizes any government intervention in health care.
• "End TARP once and for all." Good. Now, what will your corporate contributors demand in its place?

The Pledge contains a number of serious political problems as well:

• "We will further encourage small businesses to create jobs by allowing them to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income." About the health care act requiring small business to report purchases of over $600 with forms 1099 to Infernal Revenue: "We will repeal this job-killing small business mandate." "We will help the economy by permanently stopping all tax increases, currently scheduled to take effect January 1, 2011." All of these are baby steps in the right direction, but they only address symptoms. The problem is a system of collecting income tax that is too complex, too intrusive, too expensive, and totally unfair. The best thing to do is to abolish the income tax by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment. The second best thing to do is to institute a flat tax -- no deductions, no exemptions, no "progressive" rates, and no excuses. The rich still pay more than the poor, but get to keep what they earn.
• "With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone and putting us on a path to balance the budget and pay down the debt." Uh-huh. You can't be serious about debt reduction if you're only cutting governmental spending by 4.3 percent! Ohio's state government has routinely cut spending by 10 percent and more in recent years! Restoring fiscal sanity will require sacrifices, both to the Congress and to those who hoped to receive the entitlements.
• The Republicans want to "[impose] a net hiring freeze on non-security federal employees." Now that's a lot of nothing, given the federal propensity to justify almost everything on the basis of "national security."
• They also want to review every government program "to eliminate wasteful and duplicative programs." Then you'll file the report in a box in the National Archives, right? How about sunset legislation?
• "... we will reform the budget process..." Like you did during the George W. Bush Administration, right?
• "We will give all Representatives and citizens at least three days to read the bill before a vote." To read the Health Care Act (2,300 pages) in three days would require a person to read almost 1,500 words of dense legalese per minute, allowing only four hours per day for sleeping and breaks. (The fastest speed readers can read about 1,000 words per minute -- most of us plod along at 200-400).
• The Pledge makes it clear that the Republicans are still pro-war, any war: "We offer a plan to keep our nation secure at home and abroad that will provide the resources, authority, and support our deployed military requires, fully fund missile defense, and enforce sanctions against Iran..." This is not national security. This is more of the same old, same old. National security lies in minding our own business -- getting out of the Middle East for starters -- and in arming our borders and nothing else. The plan does address border security by ensuring that the federal government "fulfills its constitutional duty to protect our citizens and our Nation, working closely with our state and local governments."
• "We will work to ensure foreign terrorists... are tried in military, not civilian, court. We will oppose all efforts to force our military, intelligence, and law enforcement personnel operating overseas to extend "Miranda Rights" to foreign terrorists." I have no objection to this statement, except in what it leaves unsaid. There is no commitment here to habeas corpus, one of the most fundamental human rights. We are untrue to our own commitment to personal liberty, if we decide that an accused terrorist should be locked up indefinitely without a fair trial. Not all accused terrorists prove to be guilty. That "fair trial" can be in military court according to military law, but even the worst of them are entitled to that much.

In summary, the Pledge to America is a slick political document appealing to motherhood, apple pie, hot dogs, and flagwaving conservatism. It offers policy solutions to a structural problem.

What is that structural problem? Just this. The Founding Fathers designed the federal government to consist of three branches that would be competing centers of power -- each jealous of its own prerogatives under the Constitution. They never imagined that the feds would evolve into a state of collusion, where a dictatorial President enlists a rubber-stamp Congress to approve vague legislation that a compliant Supreme Court upholds. Even that collusion could have been prevented if the Seventeenth Amendment (direct election of Senators) had not been adopted, stripping the states of their direct voice in the federal government.

The Republicans preach reform at a time when we need a revolution. Given Washington's love of power, I seriously doubt that the needed structural changes will ever occur on the federal level. This is why I preach secession -- returning power to governments on a more human scale.

So, voter beware. Remember, the lesser of the two evils is still evil. At minimum, support the third-party and dissident Republican candidates who understand the truth and are willing to proclaim it. Better yet, support candidates for the state legislature that will aggressively press for nullification of unconstitutional federal laws -- and if that fails, independence.

* I am not in favor either of abortion or homosexual "marriages", but neither should be regulated by law -- and certainly not at the federal level!

What nullification means

Nullification is an old word in political discourse that has not been heard much since the War between the States, but is again becoming current in light of State sovereignty resolutions being introduced in Idaho, Montana, and Missouri. In the first two resolutions, the State is reserving the right to intercede against Federal enforcement of firearms laws on certain types of weapons; in Missouri, it is to intercede against Federal enforcement of parts of abortion laws.

The theoretical basis for nullification came from the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, introduced in 1798 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It was intended to provide an additional protection for the States against the encroachment of Federal authority in areas not authorized to the Federal government by the U.S. Constitution. I write "additional," because the original protection was the appointment of U.S. Senators by State legislatures, one that was taken away from us by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913.

It has always been a controversial subject; not only between Federal authorities and State governments, but among the people themselves. Ohio's great political philosopher, Frederick Grimke, for example, favored secession as a remedy of last resort, but opposed nullification.

This article, written for the Tenth Amendment Center by historian Thomas Woods, is a scholarly, but readable introduction to the subject.