Donald Sensing penned an interesting blog post the other day. He doesn’t believe another Republican will ever be President. In the post he pointed to a court ruling meant about nothing to the Obama regime. An appeals court ruled that Barack Obama was violating the law regarding the closure of a nuclear waste dump site.
In a rebuke to the Obama administration, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada.
By a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the commission to complete the licensing process and approve or reject the Energy Department’s application for a never-completed waste storage site at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was “simply flouting the law” when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close the proposed waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The action goes against a federal law designating Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste repository.
And they made a poignant statement
“It is no overstatement to say that our constitutional system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner asserted in this case by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” Kavanaugh wrote. “The commission is simply defying a law enacted by Congress … without any legal basis.”
(emphasis added)
Obama shrugged his shoulders.
As per the commander-in-chief, the NRC has declined to conduct the statutorily mandated Yucca Mountain licensing process. This essentially destroys the project, which the U.S. government has been working on since the early 1980s to be the nation’s sole repository for high-level nuclear waste. In 2010, the NRC, then led by Obama appointee Gregory Jaczko, ordered the licensing process terminated.
It is the tip of the iceberg.
The IRS targeting of conservative groups? Sure it happened, but so what? We’re not stopping.:
In a remarkable admission that is likely to rock the Internal Revenue Service again, testimony released Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp reveals that an agent involved in reviewing tax exempt applications from conservative groups told a committee investigator that the agency is still targeting Tea Party groups, three months after the IRS scandal erupted.
In closed door testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee, the unidentified IRS agent said requests for special tax status from Tea Party groups is being forced into a special “secondary screening” because the agency has yet to come up with new guidance on how to judge the tax status of the groups.
The NSA was guilty of thousands of privacy violations. The regime response? Duck oversight.
It would be easy to read too much into the report. Many of those incidents can be chalked up to carelessness. For instance, a programming error mixed up the 202 area code (Washington, D.C.) with the Egyptian international code and the agency ended up collecting a “large number” of domestic call records.
But other violations — small in number but significant in form — go to the heart of what is so disturbing about the agency’s vacuum cleaner approach to surveillance: It’s too easily abused. One program swept up both foreign and U.S. e-mails for months before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled the practice unconstitutional and shut it down.
Still, it’s not even these “mistakes,” as the NSA called them Friday, that are most disturbing. (Though it’s worth asking whether an agency with such access to Americans’ private communications can afford to make thousands of mistakes.)
More bothersome is the hint in the latest disclosures that NSA is trying to hide its excesses from overseers.
Obama’s NLRB appointments were found unconstitutional. He thumbs his nose at the Court.
Following Friday morning’s appeals court ruling that Barack Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional, union attorney (and current NLRB chairman) Mark Gaston Pearce vowed to ignore the court’s ruling.
In a statement posted on the NLRB’s website, Pearce stated:
“The Board respectfully disagrees with today’s decision and believes that the President’s position in the matter will ultimately be upheld. It should be noted that this order applies to only one specific case, Noel Canning, and that similar questions have been raised in more than a dozen cases pending in other courts of appeals.
In the meantime, the Board has important work to do. The parties who come to us seek and expect careful consideration and resolution of their cases, and for that reason, we will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”
“The parties who come to us seek and expect careful consideration and resolution of their cases…”
Wait. What?!?
Obama is raising taxes without Congress and is spending the proceeds as he see fit:
If you like your ridiculously high cell phone bill, there’s good news: President Obama wants to make it even higher! The president is pushing a plan to raise money by hiking cell phone fees and use the revenue generated to wire up local schools with high-speed Internet access. The idea of allowing states and towns to figure out how to pay for their own Internet access is evidently anathema to this administration, as is the idea that government should stay within its constitutional boundaries.
He’s also planning to do this without input from Congress, via the Federal Communications Commission, according to the Washington Post. Congress, not the executive branch, is empowered by the Constitution with the ability to levy or reject taxes.
By circumventing Congress, the president would also avoid hearings, debate, and give and take — what we used to call the legislative process. Now it’s just the government and its functionaries blackmailing the citizenry.
Obama reveals the existence of sealed indictments if he is of a mind to do so.
The DNC collects information on you from your neighbors:
Of course that is desperation on the Democrats’ part. Trying to deflect attention from the White House invading people’s privacy, the Democratic National Committee is making real news by admitting flag@whitehouse.gov was used to collect data on people being turned in by third parties.
And the response from Congress?
As the lawless scandals are exposed — Benghazi, gunrunning in Mexico, misuse of the NSA, the IRS crippling the opposition in 2012 by illegal denials of tax exemptions — the president and his allies have been fast and furious in ginning up his base by playing the race card so often it’s worn to a mere stub.
Still, to the outrage of many the media and his followers insist we must treat him as if he were a sacred cow.
President Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.
Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.”
He continued: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. . . . It looks like there may be some better ways to do this, let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”
Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.
Granted, any president may decline to enforce statutes he believes are unconstitutional. But Obama is making no such claim here. Basically, he is admitting that parts of law are impossible to enforce on the deadlines imposed by Congress — deadlines he signed into law. He’s also admitting he doesn’t want to have Congress make these changes, for fear that if lawmakers get their mitts on this unpopular program, they would at least debate far more extensive changes than he’d like.
Congressional Democrats, and some Republicans, may agree with the numerous delays, changes and special favors. But the president invites chaos when he picks which parts of Obamacare to enforce, and which, in retrospect, he has decided are unworkable or unwise.
In a recent news conference, Obama acknowledged that congressional modification of the law is preferable to these White House fiats: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up (House Speaker John Boehner) and say, ‘You know what? This is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. … Let’s make a technical change of the law.’ That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do, but we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to, quote-unquote, ‘Obamacare.”’
Tweaks? Obama isn’t making tweaks. He’s trying to circumvent major flaws that began flaring when the law was enacted. Hence the many carve-outs, delays and special deals that have been piling up since he added his signature to Obamacare on March 23, 2010.
Obamacare doesn’t work. But back to Sensing:
The goal of the entire Democrat party is to be the permanent, sole political authority in the country. This is the actual transformation that Barack Obama promised to great applause in his 2008 campaign. And we are getting transformed good and hard:
[I]nstead of the new birth of hope and change, it is the transformation of a constitutional republic operating under laws passed by democratically accountable legislators into a servile nation under the management of an unaccountable administrative state. The real import of Barack Obama’s political career will be felt long after he leaves office, in the form of a permanently expanded state that is more assertive of its own interests and more ruthless in punishing its enemies. At times, he has advanced this project abetted by congressional Democrats, as with the health-care law’s investiture of extraordinary powers in the executive bureaucracy, but he also has advanced it without legislative assistance — and, more troubling still, in plain violation of the law. President Obama and his admirers choose to call this “pragmatism,” but what it is is a mild expression of totalitarianism, under which the interests of the country are conflated with those of the president’s administration and his party. Barack Obama is the first president of the democracy that John Adams warned us about.
Obama can do this not because the Constitution or law authorize it. Most definitely they actually prohibit it. He is getting away with it because there is no one who can stop him and almost no one who wants to stop him. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, in the Democrat party is in the slightest interested in reining in Obama’s expansion of executive diktat because they know what few of the rest of us are awakening to: the Democrats are never going to lose that executive authority again. Let me be clear, with a promise to elucidate another day: there is never going to be another Republican president. Ever.
The media will not examine Obama’s imperialist manner because they do not want to. They agree with it. The courts are literally unable to enforce their rulings contra this administration; Obama ignores them at will and without consequence. The Republicans are dominated by the Political Class and lack the numbers, influence, collective will and ideological conviction to rein in the administration even if they had the ability to do so, which they don’t.
I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that Obama had been monitoring all GOP communications.
And one wonders what would happen if Obama evoked Executive Authority (after all, it’s not a “normal political environment”) and decided not to leave office. Courts mean nothing, the Senate wouldn’t mind and the House is full of spineless GOP cowards. If you search for the definition of the word “obsequious” you’ll find “See: White House Press Corps”
Who’d force him out? Besides, that’d be racist.
What would tyranny look like in America? Look around.
Will no one stop him?
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
@another vet:
Another interesting fact: during the “war,” the black soldiers of the North were buried separately from their white counterparts. The South, which did have black soldiers as you stated, were buried right along with their white counterparts.
Slavery was an abomination. It still is as it exists in nations all across the globe. But the history of slavery in the North seems to have been wiped from the slate. Where is the mention that cities on the Eastern seaboard were built on the back of the slave ship trade? Where is the discussion of how northern states maintained slavery into the war, since the Emancipation Proclamation only affected the Confederate States?
The North feared the political clout of the Southern states from the very beginning. The Southern states wanted slaves counted as one person for the purpose of the census, but the North, fearing the strength that would give the South in the Congress, did not want them counted at all, finally settling on the 3/5th number. By 1860, the North had grown due to European immigration; the Irish were cheaper to work than slaves and the industrial age had been introduced to the Northern states. But the nation was still agrarian and the South was kicking the North’s tail economically and the North resented/feared that power. That resulted in laws and tariffs that affected only the South and were prejudicial toward the North.
And let us not forget that Lincoln, himself, seemed to double deal. In one speech he said there was no reason for bloodshed in defending Fort Sumter, in another, in New York, he stomped his foot saying “It may be necessary to put the foot down firmly” when it came to Fort Sumter. He had promised Virginia that if they remained in the Union he would abandon Fort Sumter; “If Virginia will stay in, I will withdraw the troops from Fort Sumter.”
History is taught that the South wanted war. I believe that is wrong. I don’t think anyone wanted war with the South more than the abolitionist industrialists who wanted to crush the South for both slavery AND economic purposes. The South was financially strong, cotton was king and the industrialist North knew it.
But history is written by the victors, and so for 152 years we have been taught that the South was the aggressor, that the South was only concerned about keeping slavery and that it was the responsibility of the North (who cared little for the Negro outside of the abolitionists who wanted to free the slaves in the South and intended to keep them there). What most people don’t realize is that if emancipation of the slaves had been important to Lincoln, he would have signed the Proclamation at the onset of the war, not years into it.
@Tom:
This is true. With the invention of the cotton gin, demand for cotton soared. The North was becoming very prosperous refining cotton and making cotton goods. Many southern plantations went to one crop, that being cotton. But there was nothing in place to replace the slaves, no machine to pick the cotton. That wasn’t perfected until 193-something.
Slavery was an issue, just not the only issue. The North wanted all the cotton, which is why the Morrill Tariff was proposed. They did not want the South exporting cotton, even excess cotton. The North had more representation and told the South to sit down and shut up.
retire05
no wander the SOUTH did not like the NORTHERN YANKEES,
they still remember this one
Just a couple of thoughts for your consideration. As the Texas v White opinion noted, Confederate states (specifically Texas in the ruling) still maintained their independence as a state and were self ruled. That right to self governance was not removed, and hasn’t to this day.
However, as a member of the Union, you were also subject to federal laws. They were already independent as a state, they just wanted independence from the central government.
Now, is it a Constitutional right to withdraw from the United States? There is nothing in the document addressing withdrawing, only becoming a member. So in one way, it’s odd to think about citing a Constitutional right – the law of that country – as a right to disassociate yourself from that country. After all, if you don’t want to recognize the club’s membership rules, why use their own Constitution/rule for justification of withdrawal from that club?
So the bizarre question is, is it a State’s right to no longer be a State? And why would anyone be looking for that in the rules of the country you are trying to leave? So in all honesty, I don’t see it as a 10th Amendment issue. Slavery would have been the only 10th Amendment issue, and there was no federal intent at the start of the secession or war for a Constitutional Amendment regarding slavery. However both north and south states were already placing their on prohibition on slavery over time.
INRE whether several federations would have worked, I can’t disagree that it’s entirely possible. However the union and interstate trade made the north fiscally vulnerable to the more profitable southern states leaving. Remember that 2/3rds of the central government’s coffers came from the south’s imports via tariffs. So the more interesting parallel universe question would be, could the north have survived without the south? It’s my contention that it wasn’t as likely they could, and that’s why they went to war to hold the Union together.
@MataHarley:
Because all the States agreed to become a Union based on those rules, the Constitution. If one party (the federal government) decides it no longer wishes to play by those rules, why should the other party remain? But that isn’t what happened with the CW. The more populated section of the Union decided to impose rules on the lesser populated section of the country in regards to tariffs. And you are correct in your earlier post that congress does indeed have that power. But to subject on portion of the country to rules intended to make another portion of the country prosperous, at the expense of the other party is blatantly wrong. In this case, the South had no redress. Who were they to turn too? South Carolina didn’t seek the rules to secede, they just did it. The Constitution is a social contract. The States entered into this contract for the primary purpose being security. All States were to be on equal footing. South Carolina and the other six States had a legal right to secede….peacefully. Their interests were no longer being served by the federal government. In the minds of many in the South, they were being punished for production to the benefit of the North.
So my question is, why should they not have seceded? What powers under the Constitution did Lincoln have to force the South to remain in the Union. Lincoln was still bound by the Constitution at the time of the Civil War. What power does the federal government have now to keep a State from leaving the Union? And if they have such power, how can a State be sovereign and independent?
I don’t know that the south had any options for the onerous taxation, Aqua. Definite over reach by federal government… nothing new, right? I’m not one to second guess their decisions for secession, and it seems to me they had plenty of cause. The Union took what actions they did to hold the states together, and it’s all history now. Not much any of us can do with it. I can see why both sides reacted the way they did on an economic level.
INRE what power the central government has over states attempting to secede… well, as has been mentioned often, there is nothing in the Constitution about withdrawing, just becoming a member. Likely why the SCOTUS said leaving likely involves either revolution, or consent of the States (which I would guess he was referring to a reverse Statehood type process). Dunno.
I didn’t set the legal precedents for the SCOTUS rulings on secession as unconstitutional. But, unlike many who think their personal views usurp the High Court, I respect the way our system is structured. So I accept their ruling as interpretation. The only way to change that is for Congress to set up a withdrawal method with a Constitutional Amendment. Don’t see that happening any time soon, do you?
@MataHarley:
That’s an interesting point.
@Aqua:
While some may claim that the states had no right to withdraw from the Union once the Constitution was accepted, and ratified by the states, based on the fact that there is nothing addressing that in the Constitution itself, I disagree.
It was known that the “United” States was an experiment in government not tried before. And that there was a possibility that “experiment” could fail. Consequently, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia stated their right to withdraw from that “union” should it not be constructive to the people of those states.
“WE the Delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly, and now met in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us, to decide thereon, DO in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, ”
If a “united” government ceased to benefit the citizens of those states, those states reserved the right to withdraw from the union in the name of the interest of their citizens.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge wrote in his book, Life of Webster, “It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton to Clinton and Mason, who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every State had a right to peaceably withdraw.” In the pre-war text book used by West Point, A View of the Constitution, written by Judge William Rawle, Rawle writes “The seccession of a State depends on the will of the people of such a State.” This text book was more than likely used by both Lee and Grant.
If it was illegal for the states to withdraw from the Union, one has to ask themselves why no Southerner was ever prosecuted for treason. The truth of the issue is that the North did not want that judicial fight because they felt it had been settled on the battlefield and did not want to open that can of worms.
@retire05: There is no doubt the teaching of CW history in the schools is skewed to one side. I did know someone who went to school in Tennessee and CW history was skewed in that particular school but in the opposite direction which is why I think it’s best to lay all the historical facts out there instead of concealing some which leads to a limited sense of history. As for slavery, yes no one talks about how it existed in the North and it should be but in the proper context. It shouldn’t be used to justify it in the South. What the prevailing reason was for ending it in the North- moral grounds or the no longer need for it- is probably yet another debatable issue. When looking at the slavery issue and the race issue for that matter, we also need to remember that we are looking at this from a 20th and 21st century perspective as opposed the perspective of 18th and 19th century Americans. And you are correct about how the plight of the Irish immigrants in the North is downplayed.
As for the war, I think both sides knew it was inevitable and both were to blame. Sectional differences were too strong and had existed for too long and were due to come to a head. Each side was just waiting for the other side to fire the first shot. The South got blamed just as they had been for the Mexican War with the reason being they wanted to extend slavery which was true. However, what is seldom mentioned is that the Northern industrialists also wanted war in order to expand the railroad. They actually had Polk’s ear more than the South did.
Given how history is taught with such slants, I can only imagine what garbage they are going to teach in the schools about the Iraq War. I’m guessing it’ll be Bush lied and people died.
@another vet:
I hope you don’t think that was what I was trying to do. I have already stated that slavery [was] is an abomination, no matter where it exists, either in 19th century U.S. or currently in the Middle East.
What is not discussed is that the North could climb on their high horse when it came to slavery because they had access to even cheaper labor; children, and the Irish. When the Irish were fleeing the starvation in their own country (aided by the British) it was the often the young men that boarded the ship for the New World. They were young, strong and could work to earn money to send back to Ireland, paying for the passage of their parents and younger siblings. The Irish were willing to take the jobs no one else wanted (firefighter, cop, railroad laborer) due to the danger. Slaves were no longer being imported and the Irish were cheaper than buying a slave at that point. Beside, if an Irishman was killed, no big deal, there were more to follow. We know that immigrants tended to stay in the area where they landed (Northeastern harbors) and so the North was supplied with what seemed to be, at the time, a never ending supply of physically strong laborers.
Also in the North children were used for mill workers. They were small, a good portion of them children of uneducated immigrants, and worked for cheap. And if they were injured, or even killed, again, there was a constant supply. Average pay? 12 cents for 12 hours. Think of that; a penny an hour.
Just one more reason to home school your children if you can’t afford to put them in a private/parochial school.
do we now take the GOVERMENT INCLUDED ALL THE PEOPLE WORKING THERE,
INCLUDED ALL THE MILITARY, THE PENTAGON AND THOSE WHO SUPPLY THEM,
DO WE CONSIDER THAT HUMONGOUS LANDMARK A STATE?
OR WILL IT COME TO THAT EVENTUALLY?
because they seem to behave as if they are an independent STATE,
where you find so much arrogance and also self center.
it seem that they don’t want THE PEOPLE TO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING, BECAUSE THEY ARE DOING MANY DECISION HIDDEN FROM THE PEOPLE,AND THEY MULTIPLY EVERY YEAR AND COST THE PEOPLE TOO MUCH NOW AS WE SPEAK,
DID THEY FORGOT THAT THE PEOPLE IS PAYING FOR THEIR LIVING AND LIVING RICHLY COMPARE TO THE PEOPLE,
YES THEY FORGOT, AND THINK THEY ARE ANOTHER STATE,WITH A LEADER OF THEIR STATES, BUT SHUT FROM THE REST OF THE STATES,
BUT THEY LIVE ON THE DOLE OF THE PEOPLE
LIKE THE WELFARE RECIPIENT,
retire05
the IRISH where separated because at their entry in ENGLAND
they where checked for the disease which they had a black spot on their tongue then rejected
and separated from the line which was to go to the new WORLD,THE AMERICA,
and if you don’t call that slavery there is no other words,
the woman work with again a contract and only the owner could break that contract,
and many where abuse in many ways, force in labor long days of work and always had to be available, that was slavery at his best,
For the historically curious, it might be prudent to place the timing of events in context – i.e. that the debate over trials for Confederacy leaders took place long before the 1869 Texas v White SCOTUS ruling. After all the war ended four years earlier, and Davis was captured, imprisoned and released in after two years after the end of the war – again, well before Texas v White in 1869. How on earth could they possibly be related?
The idea that no prosecutions for confederacy leaders was done specifically for not wanting to “open a can of worms” INRE a SCOTUS opinion that did not yet exist instead may want to consider public and political era – and even Justice Chase’s own opinions of that day. I don’t know who this blogger is, but this guy did the yeoman’s work of rounding up the opines of the time with citations.
I have read much of the same for the north’s tenancy for lenience towards the south in that era. I suspect that the idea of continued bad blood and a bitter taste in the mouth for prosecutions, in a political sense, would have done little for reuniting what was once severed. And reuniting the Union was the most important political objective.
However I think that Justice Chase’s own observance that conditions of surrender… including not being able to hold office without 2/3rds vote of Congress… was negotiated, plea bargaining punishment/sentencing. Any ensuing attempt at trials would be, in Chase’s opinion, a Constitutional double jeopardy.. i.e. a treason trial of Davis would violate the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition.
Davis and his lawyer both seriously wanted a trial to discredit any idea that secession was not legal, hoping “to use the proceedings as a platform to vindicate the rightness of the path he had chosen in 1861”. Oddly enough, Davis’ lawyers never evoke the secession issue as a reason of defense in discussions during his imprisonment or potential trial.
Meanwhile many in the north wanted a trial. Chase did have another presiding Justice who disagreed with his double jeopardy theory. However it all became a moot point when President Johnson issued a blanket pardon for confederates in Dec of 1968 .. and before the Texas v White opinion.
@retire05:
I realize that but there are some who use(d) it justify slavery in the South.
ROTFLMAO
@MataHarley:
Nope. But I don’t think it matters. I like being a citizen of the USA. I like going to different States, although I’m not a big fan of the northern states. No offense to the Yankees, just don’t like it up there. I do like Chicago though. The people there are great, and I’m a big Cubs fan.
And I know our history is full of heated arguments and debates, no different than we have now. The one difference between then and now is the size of our federal government. It is just no sustainable. In a business, strategic decisions may reside with a CEO and a board of directors, but the power is distributed through directors and managers. That is the only way for a company to function properly. When every decision must be made at the executive level, the company will die.
If we as a country do not decentralize power and give it back to the States, the same thing will happen. We need to let our fellow citizens make their own decisions. What the people of New York do should not matter to the people of Alabama. It’s their State, they should make their own decisions. I rarely come across anyone that disagrees with this, yet we continuously vote for people that do not agree with this. The democrats and republicans on the Hill do not want to give up any power whatsoever.
Earlier, Tom mention the Colonies had a right to fight for independence because of taxation without representation. All of us have taxation without representation. Changing our individual representatives does absolutely nothing to fix that.
@Aqua: I see it differently. The UNITED STATES,” the shining light on the hill” is bigger than the sum of it’s parts. It’s strength comes from it’s “solid diversity.” We are like a family or a great football TEAM. Arguments sure. I saw it in the Marines. Southerners, Northerners,Westerners. Whites,Blacks,Latinos. City kids and farm kids. Together,united in purpose.
Benjamin Franklin “We must hang together or surely we shall hang separately.”
Thanks for the great discussion.
Semper Fi
@Richard Wheeler:
Don’t know how that is different Rich. I agree, we are like a family. I grew up and moved out on my own. I love my family, but I run my house one way and they run their house another. Not saying anything is wrong with that; hell if they do something that works better than what I’m doing, I adopt it.
And that my friend is the way the States in the United States should work.
@Aqua:
Sorry i didn’t have a chance to respond to your post sooner.
I’ve been turning over this point in my mind. I can”t argue with the integrity behind the philosophical point you are making about self-determination and freedom. I do take issue with the comparison of the Southern states with the colonies, or any other conquered or oppressed nation or peoples. You raise some good points about the political realities of the time, but the Southern states cannot be compared to an oppressed people. They may have been, based on the US Constitution, political losers at the time, due to demographics, but that is no different for many states today, at any time. Do you think Rhode Island or Connecticut has ever been in a position to throw their weight around? From a practical sense, the South was leaving because their tiny elite, whose grandfathers needed the Union to, for example, free themselves from Britain, no longer saw a financial or cultural benefit with staying the course. They saw the end of their slave empire coming down the road if they remind in the Union. More free states entering the Union, exposing them to a legal threat. More abolitionist propaganda floating down, exposing them to a moral threat.
To piggy back on Rich’s post, I think the word would be a much worse place. Think of the 20th century without the US as we know it. Are the Nazi’s defeated? Who develops the first nuclear weapon, for that matter. Considering the Germans had the most advanced nuclear program outside of the US, I think we know the answer.
@Tom:
Awesome, I’m glad my post had that kind of impact.
Not really the same thing. All States have equal representation in congress by means of the Senate. But what we had prior to the CW is a clique of States against another clique (for lack of a better term).
Basically what it boiled down to was the destruction of the economic backbone of the South being perpetrated by the North. Not allowing the South to export even excess agriculture without a punitive tariff, and yes, abolishing slavery with no other immediate means of equal labor.
I want to put this on a purely economical level. I’m going to do some serious role reversal here.
The year is 2020 and the South has perfected hydrogen production and hydrogen fuel cells. The South is completely off fossil fuels. But in 2015, the North put their lot in with oil shale and new oil production. They have way too much invested to move to hydrogen. The North is so productive, they are exporting a lot of oil and making some serious bank in the process. But the South wants the North to move to hydrogen and away from fossil fuels. They want the North to buy their hydrogen. So much so that with their alliance in congress, they are able to push through a punitive tariff on all oil exports. Now, the North has nothing to fall back on. Their entire economy is booming off oil. The tariff will cripple their economy and many will become desolate. There is no recourse for the North; federal judges will not step in on congress’ right to tax. The precedent is steep in history.
What is the North to do? If you knew your family was about to face financial devastation would you just look to the flag and start citing the Pledge of Allegiance? I think not; I think you would fight. And to do so, you would ally yourself with like minded States. I think you would secede.
I don’t know that this is true. There is nothing to say the different federations wouldn’t be huge allies. And I’m happy we’re still the United States, although I believe the CW was unjust and wrongly prosecuted. And the war itself isn’t the worst atrocity. What the North did to the South and Southerners after the war was much worse.
But the point is we are moving to point where many States are starting to feel that their interests are not being served by a giant centralized government. A government that is exercising powers that are not enumerated and are supposed to be left to the States and the people. Over 30 States have introduced 10th Amendment resolutions since 2009. As far as I know, 10 of those resolutions have been signed into law by the respective States. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.