Whether a person is Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Radical, whatever, there has to be some common ground in America linking us all as one Nation. That would be embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Either you believe in what our Founding Fathers dedicated their lives to, or you don't. On the other hand, the signers of those two documents didn't agree among themselves on many things. But they did put their differences aside to come together on certain principles.
No matter your political bent, there are some basic questions that have to be asked. Where do you stand on these issues today?
1. Do you think the US Constitution (with all of the Amendments) means what it says and it should be followed to the letter? Or, should it be just a guide and treated as no more or less than whatever we (the courts) think it means? Some consider the Constitution to be an ‘evolving’ document that the courts can interpret and mold to modern thinking. (The Founding Fathers were all just a bunch of rich, old, white men living in the 18th century. They couldn’t possibly have known what the 21st century would look like, so the Constitution must be way out-of-date, don’t you know.)
2. Is it OK for the Federal government to usurp the powers reserved for the States by the Constitution? Does the 10th Amendment mean anything today?
3. Does the “commerce clause” of the Constitution (Congress has the power to “make regular” interstate commerce) give the Federal government the right to regulate all commerce in the US, of whatever origin & destination? That is, if there is commerce which does not leave the boundaries of a state, can the Federal government regulate it? (There is a not-so-famous case in 1942 about a farmer who grew wheat for his own consumption. The US claimed the right to regulate it. And won.)
4. Is it OK for the Federal government to take 70% of the assets from a certain group of people and give it to another group? Doesn’t the Fifth Amendment prohibit taking of property without due process? There’s been no due process in the GM case. The deal brokered by the Obama administration awarded 30 cents on the dollar to the bondholders (supposedly the first in line to be satisfied in any bankruptcy case) but awarded a 55% equity stake in the ‘new’ GM Company to the labor unions. (Of course, the US taxpayers “invested” $19 billion in GM but the Treasury recovered none of that money, which I’m not even counting.) Was the 5th Amendment violated?
5. If the Federal government doesn’t ‘own’ GM, then what do these mean?
a) Obama fired the CEO of GM.
b) The ‘car czar’ is dictating the number and type of autos to be built.
c) It was reported the office of the President ordered a change in Chrysler’s advertising budget.
d) Dealerships were selected for closing by some arbitrary criteria (never explained to the dealers) and in one instance a dealer met with a congressional representative and was reinstated as a surviving dealer.
So, is it OK for the Federal government to be in the auto manufacture business?
6. Was it OK for Congress to pass the TARP Act and for Paulson and Geithner (Treasury Secretaries) to issue all of the bailouts? It started with Secretary Paulson under Bush proposing to buy toxic assets, which I opposed, and it ended up with the United States buying stock in bank corporations, which I vehemently opposed. Isn’t that corporate ownership by the government? In some instances, banks were strong-armed into taking the money and turning over stock shares. The Federal government owns 40% of Citigroup and soon the Treasury Secretary or the President can dictate it do whatever. It’s just a big piggy bank to disperse money -- a “slush fund.”
On the other hand, some of the TARP money is being paid back by the banks, but Sec retary Geithner said he is going to keep it for later disbursements, and not return it to the General Fund to pay off the national debt, which is what the statute required. Another “slush fund”?
7. Were you OK with the “stimulus bill”? Were you OK with no one even reading the 1000-page bill before it passed? How can that be called prudent governance? What happened to transparency and accountability, which were supposed to be hallmarks of this administration?
8. Is it OK that 75% of the stimulus bill won’t be spent this year? What was the bill all about, anyway? I haven’t figured that one out.
I saw a list of projects supposedly submitted by my city – it was a joke to call them “shovel ready.” We don’t even have an idea of what most of them should be. One line item I remember was “Delaware Creek Channel Improvement Project” for $7 million. (Not the River of the same name over near New Jersey – we have our own small facsimile, thank you.) There are no plans today to spend anywhere close to $7 million!
My conclusion was someone put together a whole bunch of projects from cities all over the country -- through the National Conference of Mayors, or something. I think it ended up being just a wish list of things the cities would try to do if a ton of money was thrown at them, and then Congress totaled it all up and it was $787 billion. My city alone is $1.2 billion. But if the haphazard way of coming up with that number was repeated all across the country, then calling it a “stimulus bill” is way off the mark. There’s no way even most of the money can be spent anytime soon.
And now the 'cap and trade' and 'health care reform' bills are winding through Congress. This is all about power and increasing the reach of the Federal government. It seems all wrong to me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)