Sovereign Domains

In examining the decision in the Obamacare decision (and I will use the pdf page numbering, not that of the Court), it is important to keep in mind what I have gone through in two prior posts about Sovereign Powers and the domains of them.  I utilize the works of Fred Saberhagen’s SWORDS Series to illuminate this, and it is worth going over the functions of Swords as each of them is a Sovereign Power and that defines their Domain of power:

THE SONG OF SWORDS

Who holds Coinspinner knows good odds

Whichever move he make

But the Sword of Chance, to please the gods

Slips from him like a snake.

The Sword of Justice balances the pans

Of right and wrong, and foul and fair.

Eye for an eye, Doomgiver scans

The fate of all folk everywhere.

Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, how d’you slay?

Reaching for the heart in behind the scales.

Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, where do you stay?

In the belly of the giant that my blade impales.

Farslayer howls across the world

For thy heart, for thy heart, who hast wronged me!

Vengeance is his who casts the blade

Yet he will in the end no triumph see.

Whose flesh the Sword of Mercy hurts has drawn no breath;

Whose soul it heals has wandered in the night,

Has paid the summing of all debts in death

Has turned to see returning light.

The Mindsword spun in the dawn’s gray light

And men and demons knelt down before.

The Mindsword flashed in the midday bright

Gods joined the dance, and the march to war.

It spun in the twilight dim as well

And gods and men marched off to hell.

I shatter Swords and splinter spears;

None stands to Shieldbreaker.

My point’s the fount of orphans’ tears

My edge the widowmaker.

The Sword of Stealth is given to

One lonely and despised.

Sightblinder’s gifts: his eyes are keen

His nature is disguised.

The Tyrant’s Blade no blood hath spilled

But doth the spirit carve

Soulcutter hath no body killed

But many left to starve.

The Sword of Siege struck a hammer’s blow

With a crash, and a smash, and a tumbled wall.

Stonecutter laid a castle low

With a groan, and a roar, and a tower’s fall.

Long roads the Sword of Fury makes

Hard walls it builds around the soft

The fighter who Townsaver takes

Can bid farewell to home and croft.

Who holds Wayfinder finds good roads

Its master’s step is brisk.

The Sword of Wisdom lightens loads

But adds unto their risk.

(end of the song)

Federalism is a means of dividing Sovereign Power into different Domains and then placing those Domains in whole or in part in different parts of government.  The US Constitution tells which branch of government gets which power, and that power is part of the Sovereign Power: it is that Power of a Nation expressed via its State through its government.    All Nations are equal in the Sovereign Power, there is no greater or lesser amongst them as they all express that Power because they are Nations.  Like individuals some Nations are larger than others, some have greater resources than others, and some are blessed by geography while others are accursed by same.  These things, like our own natural liberty in the realm of individuals, do not matter as all Sovereign Powers are equal amongst all Nations.  Indeed the Sovereign Power is bound up with the very individuals that create the Nation as a Nation only exists where there is the basis for it and that basis does not start on high, with the Nation, but on low with marriage.

When looking at the Obamacare decision it is necessary to also remember that the Domains of the Sovereign Power to each branch of government are discrete: they are defined and exist within a defined space and are separated from each other.  In this distribution within a federalist system there are ‘checks and balances’ that are not only amongst the three branches of federal government but also between the federal government, the State governments and the people who are the source of the power that is being used by these governments.

For Chief Justice Roberts there is a major decision that was made in the following way in the second page of the decision:

The Anti-Injunction Act provides that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person,” 26 U. S. C. §7421(a), so that those subject to a tax must first pay it and then sue for a refund. The present challenge seeks to restrain the collection of the shared responsibility payment from those who do not comply with the individual mandate. But Congress did not intend the payment to be treated as a “tax” for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. The Affordable Care Act describes the payment as a “penalty,” not a “tax.” That label cannot control whether the payment is a tax for purposes of the Constitution, but it does determine the application of the Anti-Injunction Act. The Anti-Injunction Act therefore does not bar this suit. Pp. 11– 15.

There is a difference between paying a tax and paying a penalty: a tax is levied upon a transaction while a penalty can be levied upon an action alone not just a transaction.  Both are attached to doing activities, however, while the ‘mandate’ is levied against those doing nothing.

These topics cover two separate Domains of Power granted to Congress, which are the taxation power and the commerce regulation power.  Let us take a look at these powers in the Constitution in Article I:

Section. 7.

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

[..]

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

[..]

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

[..]

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

[..]

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Section. 9.

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

[..]

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken. [Amendment XVI see below]

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

AMENDMENT XVI

Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913.

Note: Article I, section 9, of the Constitution was modified by amendment 16.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Congress gets Domains of taxation and regulation of commerce and they are discrete and differentiated in that taxation (and any other revenue bills) must start in the US House of Representatives.  Penalties can be non-monetary (such as prison sentences or hard labor) and those can start in either House of Congress, but anything that requires taking money from the people or the States must start in the US House of Representatives.  Thus the labels are important as those labels that the US Congress assigns for taxation indicate that such bills that garner revenue started in the US House of Representatives, not the Senate.  It may seem a minor quibble, but the Affordable Care Act started in the US Senate, which can neither levy taxes nor have penalties with monetary revenue generation for the federal government.  If the argument is that this is a tax, then the bill should be struck down due to its lack of legitimate originating body.  Within the US Congress the people have determined that it is only the House which can originate such bills (they can be started in the Senate but then must be redone as a House bill, passed in the House, then passed in the Senate as a House bill).

As the US Constitution is a limiting power system (as the power outlays in the main body and Amendments IX and X enforce) there is a limitation in the power of taxation:  “…provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”

This is the Common Defense and General Welfare clause and it relates directly to taxes, duties, imposts and excises for generating revenue.  In referring to ‘the United States’ instead of ‘the several States’, the taxation power relates to the entirety of the Nation taken as a unit: it is not a power that allows it to be broken down to separate between individual States or amongst the people.  When Chief Justice Roberts refers to “The present challenge seeks to restrain the collection of the shared responsibility payment from those who do not comply with the individual mandate.” he is trying to construe that health care insurance is something that is treated for the Nation as a whole and yet there are other ways to garner health care other than through insurance.  Health care is garnered  by and amongst individuals who live in States, and those States each have separate jurisdiction over those things not delegated to the federal government, and it can be done through any means an individual wishes which includes sole reliance on charitable institutions.

As the Common Defense and General Welfare are put together, they are considered a single object defining the taxation power.  The taxation Power Domain starts broad in Section 7, but is refined in Section 8 so that it cannot be used tyrannically.  Because both Common Defense and General Welfare of the United States relate to the Nation as a single whole, any taxation power is administered equally across all States as a single whole.  Taxes are levied upon activities and they are in a clause in Section 8 that deals with activities of trade: taxes, duties, imposts and excises.

Even further there is the forgotten part of the General Welfare clause that is added to Common Defense and General Welfare: “…to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;”  By using the word ‘and’ there is the direct connection of these three objects: Debts, Common Defense, General Welfare.  These are treated as a single object due to the ‘and’ between them: taxes, duties, imposts and excises are to be collected only for these things.  The Debt of the United States is its federal government’s debt.  Similarly the running of the Common Defense for the Nation is done by the federal government.  The General Welfare of the Nation is done via external trade and assuring regularity of internal trade amongst the States which is a power granted to government.

Does healthcare fall into any of these categories?

1) It does not fall into the Debt.  It is incurred by individuals in the States, under the regulatory apparatus of the States.  Healthcare does not fall into this object category.

2) It does not fall into the Common Defense.  Healthcare is done as in internal and individual purchase for individual needs for medicine, medical examination, medical care and medical treatment.  If a pandemic requires federal intervention because it acts like an invading enemy, then the US military will deal with it.

3) It does not fall under the General Welfare.  The General Welfare deals with trade that is between Nations or between States and is attached to the regularity of imposts, duties, and excises, which are all specific taxes dealing with trade.  It is their specificity to trade, and the negative power structure of the overall Constitution that limits the federal government to these trade based forms of taxation for trade (otherwise they would just be taxes without restriction within this Domain of Power).  As healthcare is purchased locally and is not an item of inter-State trade (until such time as States wish to regularize this amongst themselves as the several States), then there is no entry point to tax it at the federal level.  If it was an item of inter-State trade it would be limited to duties, imposts and excises, not other forms of taxation.

In each category for the Domain of the Taxation Power granted Congress, health care is not seen as part of its Domain because it is not for the Nation taken as a whole or for the trade amongst States either.  In trying to set up regulatory law on health care, the Congress has created law where it has no Power Domain.  Because there is no Power Domain for Congress to exercise power, there can be no definition of a ‘shared responsibility’ as that responsibility is, indeed, not shared but falls to individuals and the States.

Yes this is a condemnation of Medicare, Medicaid and any other attempts for the federal government to have anything to do with healthcare.  That includes offering tax write-offs and subsidies via the tax code.  By having no Power Domain in this realm, Congress has not the power to act.  For the Affordable Care Act to be a tax it must have the proper starting point (the US House), the proper subject (the United States as a unitary whole), the proper object (Debt, Common Defense, General Welfare) as taxation is the activity.  This is due to the SVO sentence structure of the English Language and when reading the US Constitution the drafters were mindful of their language and the internal logic of the sentences so that they had proper Subject, Verb, Object agreement.  For the Affordable Care Act to have its implementation be the Verb of taxation it must have the proper Subject and Object to complement it.

It lacks those things as a tax.

In this I have disagreement with Chief Justice Roberts: he cannot parse out a sentence in the US Constitution.

As Chief Justice Roberts didn’t reference the Commerce Clause in regarding taxation, it is worth noting that ‘the several States’ wouldn’t cover the Affordable Care Act as there are no ‘several States’ seeking to implement a system of regularizing health care amongst them.  Even if there were States doing that and the federal government had any role to play, it would be limited via the explicit language in the General Welfare Clause to duties, imposts, and excises.  Thus all Clauses dealing with ‘amongst the several States’ do not apply to the Affordable Care Act.

Do note, however, that the regulatory part of the of the Commerce Clause would allow for penalties up front, such as trading in contraband goods.  Penalties in the Commerce Clause can go directly to non-monetary ones, while penalties in taxation are only for the non-payment of taxes: taxes are not penalties but a cost put on the activity of trade.  Taxes are the overhead of trade, in other words.  When Congress speaks of penalties, they can be applied immediately to illegal trade, while penalties for taxes are for non-payment of taxes.  This is a distinction with a difference as the penalties show up at different phases of the activity involved and have different types of consequences and severity within the limits of the separate Domains of Power.  Both Domains do cross on activity by type, yes, but they have different functions based on types of activities: it is very hard to tax illegal trade thus it requires a different set of penalties, while payment of taxes is done on legal trade and the non-payment of taxes (the inactivity of paying the tax overhead) has the stated purpose of generating revenue , first, and penalizing non-payment, second.  Thus one can garner penalties for illegal trade (or legal trade done illegally) and the other is for legal trade, done legally but not garnering the given tax overhead for that legal trade.  In the case of legal trade done illegally anyone doing that can face direct penalties for doing same and have tax non-payment liabilities also show up.  A single action can be a breach of two separate Domains of Power for different reasons.

A further restriction on the Tax Power is:  “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”  If the Affordable Care Act is a capitation tax that is apportioned by any other means than by Census or income (Amend. XVI) then it is not given to be within the Tax Power Domain.  The Affordable Care Act offers up this ‘tax’ only to those who do not purchase health insurance: it is not done by Census or income.  Therefore if the basis for the Tax Power Domain is used, then it cannot be done via this Clause, either.

On page 5 of the decision… amazing how much analysis you can pack into a single paragraph on a single page, isn’t it?  This section deals with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Breyer and Kagan:

(a) The Spending Clause grants Congress the power “to pay the Debts and provide for the . . . general Welfare of the United States.” Art. I, §8, cl. 1. Congress may use this power to establish cooperative state-federal Spending Clause programs. The legitimacy of Spending Clause legislation, however, depends on whether a State voluntarily and knowingly accepts the terms of such programs. Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U. S. 1, 17. “[T]he Constitution simply does not give Congress the authority to require the States to regulate.” New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 178. When Congress threatens to terminate other grants as a means of pressuring the States to accept a Spending Clause program, the legislation runs counter to this Nation’s system of federalism. Cf. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U. S. 203, 211. Pp. 45–51.

Notice how the Justices left paying for the Common Defense out of the Clause?  Yes they are trying to make a point but the Object of the Clause is compound and self-reinforcing giving it added definition, thus refining the scope of the power.  And what is the view for not upholding the Medicaid changes?  Fascinating to read this taking the entire ACA into consideration “The legitimacy of Spending Clause legislation, however, depends on whether a State voluntarily and knowingly accepts the terms of such programs.”

The entire ACA is attempting to force a large change in how each State operates.  If the States don’t agree to it then, like in Medicaid, its legitimacy is questionable.  Mind you, this is reading the exact same programmatics which is the ACA into changes into Medicaid which is a federal to State system of money transfers with strings attached.  Just like ACA.  The ACA goes further in purporting power to the federal government to set up ‘health care exchanges’ in States that don’t voluntarily agree to set up their own.  By the logic of the 3 Justices involved, that would be outside the bounds of the Constitution.

Do these Justices even bother to think about what they are writing and the context in which they are writing it?  Talk about compartmentalized thinking…

At that point, due to the similarity of structure and Power Domain that ACA has with Medicaid (voluntary agreement structure State-federal), then the obvious way to get a 7-2 decision to strike down the ACA is just not to agree to it at the State level.    That is because the ACA does foist off a lot of structure onto the States without trying to get the States to agree to it, per State.  That is the same structural problem with Medicaid that has just been ruled out of bounds for the federal government to do.  And the moment one State opts out of all of the ACA, then it is the federal government no longer treating the States or the people equally which then should bring down the entire structure completely.

Mind you, if the States started doing that with Medicaid, something similar might be in store for it, as well.  Really, with these three Justices on the five part of 5-4 striking down, and the other 4 wanting a complete striking down, the first case with ACA of a State just refusing it entirely should get you that 7-2 majority for the ACA, which would invalidate the entire structure due to equal application of the law and this not being something set up amongst the several States but put upon the States by the federal government.

So, by page 5 on the upholding side, there is the Chief Justice being unable to parse a sentence, and he is joined by Breyer and Kagan in being unable to see the similarly structural qualities of the ACA to Medicaid, and the result of what would happen if a State does not voluntarily accept the ACA… which is the point of the entire case brought by the States.  Hmmmmm… just how stupid are these people in black robes, anyways?

Hey, I haven’t even gotten to the logical inconsistencies around page 38 of the pdf.  You don’t have to go that far to find stuff that is most disturbing in this decision.

Since so many are looking at a more general preface on page 12 of the pdf, lets see what the general view of the Court is:

Our permissive reading of these powers is explained in part by a general reticence to invalidate the acts of the Nation’s elected leaders. “Proper respect for a co-ordinate branch of the government” requires that we strike down an Act of Congress only if “the lack of constitutional authority to pass [the] act in question is clearly demonstrated.” United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629, 635 (1883).Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

May it be said that it is not the job of the Court to save the politically chosen representatives from their own inability to actually craft a law and that it is also not the job of the Court to shift the Power Domain of an act of Congress from one venue to another as the origination of that power is not that of the Court but Congress.  Trying to change those Power Domains to make a law ‘work’ is not the job of the Court: it is the job of the Court to make sure that the laws crafted within a given designated Power Domain of Congress or the President are Constitutional.  It is not permissive reading that is going on, but changing of Power Domains that are not given nor granted to the Court to do.

Yes those labels do have meaning and designation of which Power Domain the crafted laws is made to fall under.  The Court is no more given nor capable of doing that than is the President: only Congress can do that.  If they didn’t do it right, the idea isn’t to change the Domain but to send it back to Congress and tell them to do it right.

The Court cannot protect the people from our choices and they cannot shield Congress from its own incapacities and must point them out so that the Nation can get Constitutional laws drafted by the Congress in the proper Houses of Congress, properly ratified that do not seek to impose power in Domains not granted to the federal government.  When labels are changed by the Court to save the Congress from its incapacities neither the people nor the Nation are served and the Court has failed to do its job as it is given to do.  This isn’t about policy but simply doing the job one has volunteered to do in the way you have agreed to do it.

Identity Politics Calculus

President Obama has put Identity Politics on display with his attempt to put forward an immigration policy (and having that being questioned by Neil Munro from the Daily Caller) that would selectively not enforce immigration law upon certain categories of illegal aliens.  Unfortunately as Congress has already debated and not passed versions of such laws, President Obama has forgotten that his duty is to uphold the laws set by Congress as this is an Article I power given to Congress and not delegated as a policy issue to the President.  Presidents can have ‘feelings’ about laws, but the job of the President is to enforce the laws of Congress and to let Congress know when he thinks such laws have problems and work with Congress to get such laws amended.  That is the job of President as Head of Government: execute the laws set by Congress.

Now, beyond the fact there is no Constitutional standing for a President to set such a policy, this move can also be seen in the Identity Politics prism as a crass play (and one known by President Obama as not being able to stand a legal challenge, but that would take time) to pander to Hispanic voters.  When playing the Identity Politics game, however, an action to try and get support from one group can often show insight into how a politician views other groups within his or her support domain.  In other words, such a policy direction will give an insight into how other groups that traditionally support the Democratic Party are being viewed by President Obama.

A few groups come to mind for this:

1) Big Labor – In theory the Labor Unions would love to have new, young Hispanics as part of the dues paying membership.  Unfortunately the timing of events is such that with the defeat of the Big Labor led recall vote in WI of Gov. Scott Walker, and by the direction of Public Employee Unions (and general labor law) amongst other States such as IN, IL, NY, CA… note that these are not typical ‘Red’ States… and having asked for and not gotten President Obama to show up on their behalf in WI, Big Labor is getting a message from President Obama: Nice knowing you, send cash!

Unfortunately no matter how many new, young Hispanics come in, the general tenor of the population towards Unionization (not just PEUs but all Unions) is in the decline and in the modern era of being able to compare job offers, individuals can often find a better job without Union overhead than one with Union overhead.  Putting in a raft of new, young illegal aliens and helping them to find work in preference to Citizens also means that these individuals will tend to be at the lowest end of the pay scale and not readily amenable to Unionization.  Plus in shops where low skills and low costs are needed, these individuals will be in direct competition with Unionized labor.  While there are pipe dreams from Big Labor on getting a perennial raft of new union members, the fact is that unions are being side-lined to a very small part of the work force over the last 5 decades and are now in single digits for percentage of the overall workforce.

2) Hispanics – Even with a naked pander, this is something that if the Democratic Party wanted to get done in 2009-2010 it could have done so as it had majorities in both Houses of Congress.  Any promises made by Democrats are, thusly, coming with a built-in discount on future expectations: if you can’t pass this as law when you have both Houses and the Presidency, then what good are you?  Naked pandering can back-fire if it is seen as an insult to the intelligence of those being pandered to, and that is the risk of this piece of political calculus by President Obama.

The other factor that plays into the identity politics game is that Hispanics are in the majority Roman Catholic.  In passing Obamacare and then setting it up as part of a ‘War on Women’ on mandatory payment for contraceptive services, the process of Obamacare is running straight into a 1st Amendment clash with religious organizations that provide health care, and the main point on this pushback is… the Roman Catholic Church.  It is a piece of political calculus to try and bring religious implementation of moral doctrine into secular domains, against all the protections against such in the US Constitution, and by taking on the RCC the Obama Administration also ends up taking on Hispanics.  As this is an ongoing set of legal battles, they do not fade from the view of the devout, and President Obama can be seen as giving the back of his hand to religious moral teachings while trying to offer a carrot on immigration policy.  Being coerced and cajoled to just ‘play along with the man’ is not a good recipe for success especially when you have railed about the excesses of the power structure when out of office.  By taking up such means beyond what is given as law, President Obama also then brings into play another splinter of Identity Politics.

3) Legal Immigrants – Play by the rules and uphold the systems.  Those who apply to become citizens, learn civics and then demonstrate what they know to get citizenship are having their hard work demeaned by President Obama who is offering goodies to those who refuse (for whatever reason) to join the legal system and play by the rules.  It doesn’t matter how long they have been in the US, who brought them, or any other thing: once they are adults they are given adult decisions to make and must act as a good citizen of their Nation of origin.  Legal immigrants do this, they uphold the Law of Nations and domestic law by doing this.  Illegal aliens do not do this and erode the Law of Nations and domestic law of the US and any Nation that has treaty obligations with the US on immigration.  No matter how ‘nice’ someone is, there is a difference between upholding the law and not upholding it, and special favors are not to be given to those who do not uphold the law as a matter of policy.

Since a large number of Hispanic families are first or second generation of legal immigrants, they have a large stake in upholding the legal process and are demeaned by being told that now they shouldn’t have done the right thing and followed the law and that those not following the law will be granted special protection from the law by not having it applied equally to them.  If a President is short of funds and personnel to uphold the laws set by Congress he needs to say so and send the ball back into Congress’ court to either find more funds, amend the law or change the enforcement of it to fit the will of Congress.

4) Poor Working Citizens – If you are poor and still have a job in this economic climate, you are in a select class of people that are doing the hard scrabble work of providing for your family to keep their heads above water.  Now with a change of enforcement policy, you will be competing against illegal aliens who can undercut your pay (albeit under the table, but that is a problem of getting employers to follow the law) and take your job while being protected from deportation by the federal government.  The working poor are on the front lines of this problem and if citizenship is demeaned for them, and special favors and protections are given to those who do not follow the system, then those putting such policy in place can only be seen as hostile to the working poor.

This is a demographic that votes in preponderance for Democrats historically, although some of that has been eroding the last 20 years.  The Democratic Party was once the standard bearer for the poor in America: the citizens who vote who have been given support by Democratic politicians and institutions to continue voting in the goodies from government.  Government is, however, now broke, by and large, due to the giveaways and wealth transfer from working rich to working and non-working poor.  When nearly half of the population pays no income taxes (yes they do pay into SSA, but that is not investment, just a tax) and when half of all households get some form of government support (local, State, federal) then there is a class that is expected to show gratitude by voting for those giving them the handouts.  Those handouts are not economically based and breaking apart the budget of not just the US, but all of Europe and other Nations that have embarked on this foolhardy scheme of over-taxing the rich to give goodies to the poor.  Now the door of participation in the economy can be seen only as being undermined by protecting illegal aliens and the working poor American Citizen is being told that they will be forever in the working poor to non-working poor by government fiat of unconstitutional policy.  You aren’t just being told the game is rigged against you, those doing that telling are now doing the rigging right before your very eyes and they want to shut the door on the pathway towards the middle class and achievement… as the goodies system collapses and soon won’t be there for you, your children or any other of your friends who are also part of the poor in America.

5) Black Americans – This demographic represents 10% of the electorate (give or take and it varies by State) and voted in the 90% range for President Obama.  President Obama has done nothing to help out African-Americans in the US and is actively trying to hurt the working poor Black American Citizen who partake of being part of the working poor Citizenry.  All of the problems seen for the working poor, in general, are double for the Black community which has had its once coherent neighborhoods broken up through ‘Urban Renewal’ (started by President Truman), and then put into government supplied housing (as part of the ‘Great Society’ under Johnson): all large scale policies meant to impoverish Black Americans, take them out of being home owners, and then break up the multi-generational culture by putting housing in place that barely catered to a two parent family.  Putting in ‘activists’ and race baiters, and then adding in goodies through the CRA for home loans (after destroying the community based S&L system via ‘securitization’ ushered in by Nixon), the Black community has been pushed around, broken up and had its once vibrant culture eroded and corroded to the point where being young and black in America corresponds to being unemployed, single and often with a rap sheet added on.

At some point the African-American community will start to walk away from identity politics as it has now made the poor, poorer and the rich aren’t even being brought down into the middle class, and yet the government coffers are running on red ink and soon won’t be able to provide any support that was promised to the neediest by politicians.  If the Democratically backed ‘Jim Crow’ laws of the South weren’t just plain awful, then the plight of Black America would be seen as the true tragedy it really is.  In many ways those who did the abusing of Black America under ‘Jim Crow’ then changed over to the goodie providing culture that did even worse than just killing you: it impoverished you, took your property under legal fiat, densified your population into government housing that would have made the USSR cringe, cut off pathways to excellence by degrading Public School performance by softening the rigor of education (this is the tragedy of lowered expectations), and now seeks to lock a large percentage of the Black Community into poverty by depriving yet another generation of opportunity by protecting another identity politics splinter: Hispanics.  This is pitting the legal poor against the illegal alien, and raising tensions between Black and Hispanic communities.

All in one policy presentation.

This is the problem with ‘identity politics’: no one is just one thing.  And when you promise new goodies and protections at the expense of other parts of the splinters that are at the root of ‘identity politics’, the end state is not a coherent group voting for you and, in fact, the likelihood of chaos increases no end as faction is set against faction on the most personal of scales possible: within families and communities.  At that point government is seen as the causer of the problem, not the upholder of equality of application of the law.  Chaos is what happens when you don’t apply the law equally to all: it makes the system one of favors, not of process.

That is why we have a Constitution guaranteeing equal application of the law and protecting the rights of all Citizens.

When you announce you are no longer doing that, you are announcing that your will is above that of the elected representatives of the People.

That never ends well.

Gold into Lead

The concept of Law of Nations is descriptive in form, no proscriptive in type, which is to say it describes the powers of a Nation and which domains they fall under.  Law of Nations does not tell of how to make a Nation, it does not decree what a Nation shall and shall not have as powers, and, instead, merely describes the powers that all Nations have by being a Nation.  From this comes the concept of ‘sovereign powers’, which are those powers that accrue to a Nation’s government and are those things which all citizens agree are necessary to have as the formulation of that government.

A republican government is one of distributed and de-centralized powers within a Nation State, and any Nation utilizing a republican form of government can determine which bodies within a government get which powers and how they are assembled.  In general this has meant executive powers (those things like external relations with other governments, running the government bureaucracy, and administering law) has been placed into a branch separated from legislative powers (drafting internal laws, by and large) and judicial powers (the review of cases to determine them in fact and in law).  These are in no way ‘co-equal’ powers as they each have their own domain in which they are sovereign exercises of a Nation via Law of Nations. 

The Treaty of Westphalia came about to end the 30 Years War, which had been pitting Catholic Nations against Protestant Nations to the tune of 15% to 20% of the population in those areas ravaged by war being killed, and that is outside the plagues and other artifacts that attend war when it destroys infrastructure and leaves famine in its wake.  During the 30 Years War Nations would change sides due to the religious affiliation of their leaders as those changed from generation to generation and the religious beliefs of the population were expected to change to that of the sole sovereign.  The end of the 30 Years War saw the general agreement that amongst the three main sects of Christianity (Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism) that there would be tolerance at the Nation State level for these sects and no attempts to change the existing religious beliefs of individuals due to a change at the top of the power structure.  Church was not separated from State by this, but the State agreed that to have a civil population that is not put at strife nor forced migration to the deep sorrow of all, there must be the removal of religious bias by the Nation State for its own people amongst the three sects of Christianity.  Post-Westphalian Law of Nations reads with that firmly in place, and by the time of the Founding of the United States this conceptual doctrine had undergone expansion to all believers in the realm of the citizenry.  The National government could not dictate which church or sect one should belong and held power to ensure that all laws would be administered equally and without bias to all religious communities.

The United States, itself, started out the Revolutionary War under the Articles of Confederation which is a form of republican government.  By forming from British Colonies the United States gains the Treaty of Westphalia due to the Restoration of the Monarchy as that family was covered under the Great Peace by name and all are to continue on its establishment forever after as part of the Eternal Treaty.  Thus these new States that formed under the Articles of Confederation are Westphalian States and they exercise powers as part of a joint agreement of association under the Articles of Confederation.  States are, thusly, the powers behind the United States under the Articles, and keep that Confederal government under a tight leash as it has only a narrow range of diplomatic and trade powers assigned to it by the States.  The Confederal government had no broad taxation powers to pay off the Revolutionary War debt and no military organization held separately from the States.  What it could do was assign a portion of the National Debt to each State to figure out how to pay off, and that it did by population.  This meant that the Southern States, rich with trade and agriculture, were able to handle their debt burden while the Northeastern States, without bountiful trade, were finding that the taxes were rising on the population and impoverishing the very farmers that should be the fount of agricultural trade.  This came to a boiling point as a Revolutionary slogan of ‘no taxation without representation’ was now finding that highly populated cities like Boston and Hartford could administer higher taxes on rural settlements to the benefit of the larger trading houses in those cities.  By 1786 this had come to a boiling point in MA where ex-Revolutionary War soldiers were not getting their benefits for having served in the war, had not gotten back pay, and were now finding their farms being taxed into non-existence. From this the Shayesites manifested as one in a long string of local uprisings and was the closest to getting to the arms and supplies of a local State arsenal and turning into a second Revolutionary War.

There are many reasons for having a federal government that has powers to tax member States and centralize debt burdens with the foremost being that a Confederal System wasn’t working.  Many proposals for redrafting the Articles had happened and the Annapolis Convention in 1786 recommended another Convention for 1787 to try and iron out these problems.  What was needed was a system that got larger State buy-in for a National government, with powers of taxation across all States.  Any stronger and more centralized government is a threat to individual liberty and freedom and to keep this new federal government from overstepping its bounds there must be a system of checks and balances of that government.  This is achieved in multiple ways via a system of sovereign power checks and balances within the government and, more importantly, it puts the taxation and budgetary power in a part of a bicameral legislative body and it is that part which is directly tied to the Revolutionary goals of being represented for taxation.  The States are the bodies that must sign off on this new form of government and they are given a say in the other part of the bicameral legislative body as a form of check and balance within the legislative branch, itself. 

While the internal checks and balances are most lauded by schoolteachers, the external checks and balances held by the States and the people are often overlooked or omitted entirely.  The States were given the tax collection power for the federal government because of the good reason that they had some veto in legislation coming from the House and could seek a politically satisfactory revenue stream that met National obligations without impoverishing local communities.  Further the people had a say through their representatives of what should and should not be in a federal government under the Constitutional form agreed to by their States. 

The primary mover of the sovereign powers is that they are enumerated and restricted in scope via a charter of negative powers derived from individual negative liberties.  By enumerating these powers they are, at the same time, restricted to that enumeration just by being put in place.  This schema is bolstered by the Amendments IX and X, which puts all other rights, liberties and powers to the States and the people as the people are the source of all such things and the creators of society and its organ called government.  There are other checks on federal tyranny, such as the freedom of speech, assembly and utilization of arms which are also upheld under the Bill of Rights, which forms along the older tradition of the Magna Carta as absolute guarantees beyond all other statements and verbiage, laws and decisions: the Bill of Rights exactingly tells that the enumerated powers are restricted and that it is the people that hold all the power in this Nation.

This concept of following the actual text of the Constitution to find out how it works in multiple places is structuralism.  I have gone over this conception put forward by Nicholas Rosenkranz in two prior posts centering on the subjects and objects of the Constitution.  English as a language has an SVO system which is: Subject, Verb, Object.  Objects are acted upon by Subjects and that action is the Verb in the sentence.  Structuralism is not Original Intent doctrine nor is it Strict Constructionism doctrine, as the first looks outside the Constitution for intent and the latter examines power outlays, checks and balances.  Strict Constructionism, coming first, does not rely on the utilization of English sentence structure nor does it seek the reinforcing language within the Constitution that clearly defines words and their meanings contextually.  If there is primary intent for the Constitution it must be reflected in the actual sentences and clauses within the document, and if there is a construction to those outlays then that derives from the actual structural integrity of the written sentences and clauses.  By knowing Law of Nations, English Common Law and having a good biblical foundation for individuals being directly granted rights and liberty, the US Constitution reflects a deep rooted understanding in human nature and the things that humans do on this Earth.

When understood in a structuralist context, the power grants contained in the Constitution are pretty clear on what they do in this complex system because of the way they are stated.

Article I, Section 8, US Constitution, the ‘Commerce Clause’:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

That seems pretty simple, right?  Look at the entities involved and you see a continuity: foreign Nations, the several States and Indian Tribes.  This is a clause that deals with sovereign entities and it is not differentiating between foreign Nations, the several States and Indian Tribes, thus the power domain is the same for all three of them.  Do ‘the several States’ mean the entire Nation, as a whole?  Utilizing structuralism it is necessary to find out how the States are dealt with elsewhere in the Constitution and what the meaning of those clauses and phrases are in regards to their approach to States and in the type of qualifications being applied.

The United States is in the Preamble and it applies to all of the States in the Nation as a whole, without regard to any State or sub-set of States.  Thus the United States is a whole entity, indivisible and complete made up of all of the States that are United together.

In Article I, Section 1 this is also how Congress is labeled: Congress of the United States.

The first appearance of ‘the several States’ is in Article I, Section 2 with regards to the House:

Section. 2.

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

Here there is a recognition that each State has a different form of government (albeit republican in form) and that there are variations between States in how their legislative bodies work.  In this ‘the several States’ refers to the differences between States and among States and such differences are recognized and respected.  Further in Section 2 there is addressing of representation and taxation, and do note that the language of the first sentence is changed by following Amendment(s):

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

Here there is recognition that ‘the several States’ are of those in the Union, but does not include Indians who are not taxed nor 3/5ths of all other people.  The latter portion refers to non-free people and the former to Indians living in tribal territories recognized later as having sovereign domains within any State.  Indians living within State domains would not fall under that auspice and would be held in the enumeration to be represented as part of the population of the State, not of some other entity.

At this point there is a difference between the United States as a whole entity and the several States, which recognizes the individual States as separate entities within the larger Union.  Is this applied elsewhere with other powers?  Going back to Article I, Section 8 and before the ‘Commerce Clause’ is the first clause which is the ‘General Welfare Clause’:

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Here are two instances that bolster the Preamble and Article I Sections 1 and 2, in which the United States is treated as a whole.  Most particularly telling is that the second part of the clause specifically enumerates that Duties, Imposts and Excises are uniform throughout the United States.  There is no exception in that, no mention of ‘the several States,’ and no power grant for the federal government to differentiate between the States with this power.  From that the United States must mean the entire Nation, as a whole, not as divisions nor parts and this power cannot be subdivided beneath the level of the entire Nation, as a whole.

The next clause again follows in the structural framework already laid out:

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

This is where our National Debt comes from: the federal government borrowing in the name of the entire Nation.

After that is the Commerce Clause which is then followed by this clause:

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

Here is where those wishing to emigrate to the United States are regulated by sovereign power delegated to Congress for external affairs.  For sovereign power over Bankruptcies, that is set at the National level by Congress and is applied to the United States as a whole, equally.  In one clause two forms of sovereign power under Law of Nations are delegated to Congress.

Now skipping down a bit, there is in Article I, Section 9, another and different look at the States:

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

That first clause is interesting as it is a passive voice clause, which is to say it is not specifically enumerating a power (the Congress shall have power to…) or restricting a part of any government from doing something (like in Amendment I, Congress shall pass no law…).  Because it is passive and has no direct indication of who it is being applied to, the examination is then one of who gets the positive powers of duties and taxation?  In the federal government that is Congress which gets the positive power for this, thus the restriction is on the States and that branch of State government that normally applies taxes and duties.  Thus this a prohibition on the States from imposing a duty or tax upon goods exported from other States.  This is carried through in the next clause, which also prohibits the free movement of vessels between States and is a further stoppage of getting payment to enter a State from another State.  As payments are usually a function of an executive power, this is a prohibition on the exercise of a power which is in addition to the prior prohibition which is usually from a legislative branch.  In these two clauses are prohibitions of State power both on both legislative and executive branches of government, although those powers may end up anywhere and these clauses stop all use of them by the States.

This is the third way that the Constitution address States, and that is in powers States cede to the federal government or are prohibited from exercising on their own in regards to other States.

Now what is very interesting is that the power restrictions have relaxation points to them, which is to say areas in which they can be utilized given certain conditions.  Article 10 establishes those conditions and they are the ‘escape hatches’ of the power restrictions:

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Escape hatch one is for things that cannot be foreseen, like Gypsy Moth or Med Fly spread in which pests that are harmful to the agricultural system of a State need to be eradicated and re-importation of such pests stopped.  Also this covers such things as inspection of vehicles for safety reasons, or to establish the amount of wear and tear on infrastructure so that certain vehicles must pay for special passage: that money goes not to the State but the federal government.

The third clause of Article I, Section 10 is one that I think of as the State Self-Preservation Clause in that all the normal martial restrictions and foreign policy restrictions laid upon the powers of a State are removed for invasion or imminent Danger which will not admit delay.  Got an invasion by a foreign power via sneak attack?  The States do not have to wait for the federal government to respond.  Have an insurrection that is threatening the tranquility of the State?  Again the State is not barred from action by having to wait for the federal government to respond.  Have an earthquake, pirates rampaging through the streets, or UFO’s landing to mutilate livestock and abduct citizens?  Hey!  That is the sort of thing that cannot be written into a Constitution, so the States get wide leeway in dealing with sudden threats to their very existence: they do NOT have to wait for permission to act as the State IS a sovereign power that is RESTRICTED by the Constitution ONLY.  The US Constitution is not a suicide pact, in other words.

From this the third addressing of the States is one that also is qualified and recognizes the sovereign nature of the States.  Without such restrictions, the States would have those powers if the State constitution allowed it to the government of that State.

Yet another way the States are addressed is as single States.  This is seen in Article I, Section 8 dealing with areas under direct Congressional authority for lawmaking:

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;

Individual States are addressed in the granting of land to the federal government for the District and for other forts, magazines, etc. dealing with necessary functions of the federal government in particular the military.  Note that Congress must ask for such land and the Legislature of the State must grant the federal government use of that land.  These are not permanent land grants, however, as the retrocession of the part of DC in VA and the various returning of old bases and such to States have happened, as well.  The grant of the use of land is a voluntary one and EITHER side may pull out of that grant, which also recognizes that the power over the land in question belongs to the States, not the federal government.

Four ways to address the States: as part of the whole of the US, in the several as sovereign entities making up the US, in the restriction of power by these sovereign entities with exemptions, and as single States for the use of land.

Now fast-forward to the present day.

What is the US federal government in that it is not given to be in?

Land and property via the FHA, Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie: the federal government should have no say over the mortgage system of the United States, as a whole, nor amongst the several States as land is not part of inter-State commerce.  The federal government ‘created’ a ‘national market’ through GNMA via the bundling and securitizing of loans (which is to say the US government determined if loans were good or not) and allowed cross-State banks to go into residential and other property systems.  To be clear the federal government in picking up the backing of loans is not starting such loans… that is done by applying regulations to the banking industry via things like the Community Reinvestment Act… and utilizes intermediaries which wanted into this new ‘market’ and put the government on the hook for the ‘secured’ value of those loans.

This is how the FHA builds up control over a portfolio of property: by being the backer of organizations that hold them.  As a ‘quasi-governmental agency’, Fannie and Freddie are the conduits for this FHA control, and yet nowhere is any federal involvement in holding State lands granted save by permission of the State involved for each and every property as passed by Legislative acts.  For ‘quasi-governmental agencies’ Fannie and Freddie have open pipelines into the Treasury and that other ‘quasi-governmental agency’ the Federal Reserve.  The Federal Reserve acts as the intermediary for US borrowing and holds a good portion of the US debt.  It was created and designed by the banks, themselves, and pushed through Congress and put into power and given shielding from oversight by Congress.  To this day it is hard to say exactly which banks are in the Federal Reserve Board and how they conduct their operations.

How has this worked out?  First it killed the S&Ls, and that was by design, not bad luck.  Savings & Loans had restricted, local portfolios which gave them insight into the local community and how it works.  S&L’s worked to foster local businesses, make sure families had stable employers and generally had a pretty low return on investment and pretty high overhead.  Yet they were extremely conservative on lending so that bad loans did not flow out into their communities as these institutions rested on local solvency.  Larger, national banks could under-cut and outperform these institutions, which they did, to the detriment of local economies but to the great benefit of inter-State banking regulation at the federal level which now had a say in local property transactions.  The S&L was something that grew up within States for local markets and were regulated as such and given protection from national banking and lending institutions that catered more towards commercial and industrial lending.  When that guarantee of a local market was broken by federal law, the structure that allowed the S&L structure to exist for low profit and conservative lending and borrowing practices went with it.

Yet the federal government is granted no power in this sector.

The Commerce Clause recognizes the States as separate entities and the ones that are the backers of the federal government. To regulate banking amongst the several States the federal government must actually work with the individual States to set up such an arrangement that would then be run by the States.  The role of the federal government in the Commerce Clause is to regularize commerce amongst the several States and to help States put organizations in place via assent between them as the federal government does via Treaties with foreign Nations and Indian tribes.

It does not get this power from the coinage and currency power, either:

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

Coinage and regulation of value is linked to the value of foreign Coin and to a fixed set of standards to measure them by.  It is not creating a fiat currency but one that has measured value that can be affixed to coins which are traditionally of a metal.  Yes paper currency is a nice and handy way to move value around, and when it is backed by measured and standards of metal with value then it represents that value and can be exchanged for it.  Do note that it is only after the establishment of the Federal Reserve by the Wilson Administration that the sequestration of valuable metals by the FDR Administration then move the Nation from a coinage and paper currency with value to one with only representative value that you couldn’t get.  With the Nixon Administration that final link is broken and the coin of the United States is now fixed only to relative value, not absolute value.  Yet the power of the Coin, the Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause, taken together, do not allow the creation of the Federal Reserve, the outlawing of holding precious metals, nor the creation of an entity or entities to go into the local markets of States and ‘regulate’ them.

What that took was the Wickard v. Filburn case of 1942 in which a farmer grew beyond the quota of grain to feed cattle on his farm and otherwise utilize home grown foodstuffs.  That was seen by the SCOTUS as involving a ‘national market’ as the farmer didn’t have to buy grain and that grain was sold on commodity exchanges as part of a national market.  By not participating in a market the farmer had a negative impact on the market by not taking part in commerce in it.  The idea of a ‘national market’ for such regulation had already been started with the Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Trade Commission, and yet each of those rested on the shaky ground of the federal government getting oversight of ‘national markets’.  To do that both the Commerce Clause and General Welfare Clause were deployed, and yet each has specific ways of addressing the States that are at odds with each other.

The General Welfare Clause addresses the whole of the United States which is all the States and all the parts of the United States as a unitary whole.  That is the way ‘the United States’ is utilize throughout the rest of the Constitution and it has a specific and structural meaning to it: the whole of the United States as a Nation.

The Commerce Clause addresses the several States and recognizes their sovereignty by addressing them in that way.  This is how ‘the several States’ is used elsewhere in the Constitution and it has a specific meaning: the States as sovereign actors as part of the United States with independent authority within the Nation.

Neither of these Clauses actually allows for rationing of wheat or being able to tell farmers how much they can and cannot grow, and the FDR Administration was doing that work even before the onset of WWII.  None of the clauses actually allows for a Federal Reserve to act as the intermediary for US debt nor to regulate its currency as that is a direct function of the federal government and cannot be passed off to any other organization but one directly controlled by the federal government.  Only by intentionally expanding federal power by misconstruing the actual words can the federal power expand and it does so at the expense of the sovereignty of the States and the rights of the people.

The Wickard case allowed for the navigation of waterways to become yet another ‘National market’ in the sense that navigable waterways are a necessity to the States and that all States are effected by them.  Yet the Clean Air and Water Act moves far beyond that, and the navigable airways, and puts federal power in where it does not have such power.  Setting navigation standards for the air and waterways is one thing, seeing them as part of an larger ‘environment’ that requires protection is something else again and not handed to the federal government as the unitary whole power does not grant authority over the several States where actual navigation, work, mining, and industry takes place.  Again if the federal government felt there was a need for such work the way to get that organized is not in the federal government, which doesn’t have the sovereign power over these things, but to get the States to work out a system to yield cleaner air and water as implemented by each State as part of that framework.

That is how it is addressed for the vital functions of elections, so one would think that minor process procedures which are also addressed in the exact, same way should be handled that way as well.

Moving on to the ‘entitlements’: you aren’t entitled to them because Congress isn’t given the power to make them.

That is the actual rendering of Social Security via the SCOTUS as I went over previously, as two cases establish that you do not have an ‘account’ with the federal government.  You have, from the Helvering v. Davis decision in 1937, a tax imposed by Congress and such funds are not earmarked in any way for anything, but put into the general funds.  Congress does fun things with bonds and funding the government to give appearances that there was a ‘lock box’ but even by the Johnson Administration getting ability to openly raid SSA it was pretty well known that SSA tax funds weren’t, actually, directed at SSA.  Johnson ended the charade, not change what was actually going on.  On the outward side you have whatever Congress wishes to pay out, you have no ‘account’ to draw upon, no actual property in the US government.  That was ruled on in the Flemming v. Nestor case in 1960.

Congress did the same with Medicare and got the States on the hook for some fund matching with Medicaid.  Neither are an ‘entitlement’, both are paid out of current revenue and there is no ‘account’ set up for you with any value in it.  Any value you perceive is in political wishing, the actual value is the cost of postage, paper and ink to get that paper to you to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling that the federal government can actually ‘help’.  Currently these three entitlements are in the red, and for SSA it is so far in the red that it is cashing out future securities and adding to the current debt by doing so.  They had to be paid sometime and that sometime started a couple of years ago.  In the realm of private businesses this condition is known as ‘bankrupt’ and ‘insolvent’, and for SSA it is liquidating solvent assets to gain liquidity as a temporary holding measure.

Yet in no place in the US Constitution is giving ‘entitlements’ actually allowed to the federal government via its enumerated powers.  Again the General Welfare Clause addresses the United States as a unitary whole and that is the clause most often addressed for handing out these goodies.  If the federal government wanted to address the poor and needy, the sick and infirm, the method is to work with the several States to create ways so that they can manage such problems if they want to and do so in a regularized way that is suited to each State.  And if the States didn’t want to form up such a thing, then it wouldn’t be formed.  If a few wanted to do it and could find a way to do so that was agreeable to them and didn’t infringe on the commerce of other States, then they would be welcome to do so.

So much current federal power rests upon the Wickard case that it isn’t funny any more.  The absolute expenditure of money to fund ‘good things’, which means taking money from taxpayers to assuage the consciences of those who do not like finding themselves as the center of providing charity which is part and parcel of our responsibilities for our positivee and negative liberties, starts a corrosive effect on the general population in morals and ethics.  When our governmental institutions, which are only organs of society, take power from society itself in the positive realm of building ties and private institutions to care for the sick and needy, society as a whole (not in its parts) is lessened.  Each individual has liberty robbed from them in both the taking of such ‘entitlements’ because you have the obligation to care for yourself and sustain yourself with your fellow man removed from you as an individual, and from those who are on the giving end, which are the taxpayers, as the government is the least efficient, most authoritarian way to provide any service ever devised by man.  That sort of system is wonderful for protecting borders, sustaining a military and protecting commerce from pirates, but is less well suited, indeed generally ill-suited, to doing such things as providing health care or even ‘managing’ energy on a National scale.

A purposeful intent that can be read from the structure of the US Constitution is that the people are to be left to their own resources outside of the few and necessary functions of government so as to provide for themselves, each other and create a diverse and robust system amongst themselves.  The people are capable, government is seen as a negative weight on individuals, society and the Nation which makes it only a necessary evil that can serve a few useful functions.  To get a strong and diverse energy sector or health care sector, say, requires no government intervention at all at the federal level not just because it isn’t granted power to do so, but because it is a centralized system that is then a single point of failure.  When an individual fails in their duties to their fellow man, that is a minor happening and the individual can right his or her ways to do better.  When government fails in carrying out its powers it puts the wealth of the Nation, the rights of the citizenry and, indeed, the very existence of the Nation at risk.  This doesn’t just go to not enforcing our borders and seeing international scofflaws go unaccountable, but goes to the root of deficit spending which now threatens to impoverish ourselves, our posterity and snuff out the light of liberty on Earth, possibly forever.

When the Framers put the Constitution together they were mindful of past successful Nations and their fate in history: they turned into Empires, became decadent and then debauched (in turn) and then either imploded or were invaded to lose the cultural identity that had been present before the Empire existed.  Not so bad for the ‘Great Man Empires’ of Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great as their lives demarcated the extent of the cultural effect they had and while you can still hear about Alexander’s exploits sung about in Afghanistani villages today, they are not speaking Greek when they do so.  Rome, on the other hand, lost its republican structure years if not decades before Julius Caesar and it was only at the end of his life that Octavian realized that his debauched life had proven to be the final corruption to kill republican spirit in the population once and for all.  Clearly large scale republics have problems, and ours is one of them.  Yet ours rests on a foundation of not just republicanism but in the understanding that our self-evident and unalienable rights to act upon this Earth are held by each of us.  It is this understanding that is hard to corrupt and snuff out that offers the promise of renewal, rebirth and a final conquering of authoritarian and totalitarian ideas of government as being useful or even good ways to govern amongst men.

Yet we have a class of politicians and elites in the world who still think they know how to run your life better than you do.

They wish to transmute the gold of our understanding into lead, and then into iron chains with chaos, blood and ruin.

You cannot depend on government to stop this for you, that lesson is drawn by seeing how far restricted government can turn evil in a mere three generations.  No matter what the intent of those who started this process of spinning the anti-alchemical dream into being, that process is now running its course and now comes back to you.  Only you can be a positive actor in creating society, and government only be a useful function by removing those that would be toxic to such society from society and when government fails at that prime task the task of renewal begins not at the top, but the bottom.

Always remember the credo of The Prisoner, played by Patrick McGoohan:

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered.  I am not a number, I am a FREE MAN.”

When the time comes will you be numbered amongst the free or merely numbered?

Are you willing to spin gold, with all the difficulties of that, or accept lead attached to your limbs?

Can you tell the difference between who is spinning gold and who is turning gold into lead?

Would you dare to spin gold when lead is all around you?

Because it all comes down to you.