10th Amendment: Might Does Not Make Right

Virginia And 34 Other States To Block HealthCare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUYY4RB3YA4

The three cases mentioned in the video from Wikipedia: Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

In United States v. Lopez 514 U.S. 549 (1995), a federal law mandating a “gun-free zone” on and around public school campuses was struck down because, the Supreme Court ruled, there was no clause in the Constitution authorizing it.
In New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) Obliged states to take title to any waste within their borders that was not disposed of prior to January 1, 1996, and made each state liable for all damages directly related to the waste. The Court, in a 6–3 decision, ruled that the imposition of that obligation on the states violated the Tenth Amendment. Justice O’Connor wrote that the federal government can encourage the states to adopt certain regulations through the spending power (i.e., by attaching conditions to the receipt of federal funds, see South Dakota v. Dole), or through the commerce power (by directly pre-empting state law). However, Congress cannot directly compel states to enforce federal regulations.
In Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997)). The act required state and local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on persons attempting to purchase handguns. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, applied New York v. United States to show that the law violated the Tenth Amendment. Since the act “forced participation of the State’s executive in the actual administration of a federal program,” it was unconstitutional.

What I’ve gathered from this is:

When the federal government passes a law, they can’t force states to enforce their laws.
The federal government can punish states that refuse to enforce federal laws by withholding federal funds.
The federal government can act directly and enforce the law themselves if the state refuses, as in Gonzales v. Raich.

Gonzales v. Raich(2005). In this case, a California woman sued the Drug Enforcement Administration after her medical marijuana crop was seized and destroyed by Federal agents. Medical marijuana was explicitly made legal under California state law by Proposition 215; however, marijuana is prohibited at the federal level by the Controlled Substances Act. Even though the woman grew the marijuana strictly for her own consumption and never sold any, the Supreme Court stated that growing one’s own marijuana affects the interstate market of marijuana. The theory was that the marijuana could enter the stream of interstate commerce, even if it clearly wasn’t grown for that purpose and it was unlikely ever to happen (the same reasoning as in the Wickard v. Filburn decision). It therefore ruled that this practice may be regulated by the federal government under the authority of the Commerce Clause.

In my public education, I was never taught about the tenth Amendment. The education I received left me with the impression that Federal law always supersedes state law. I guess they didn’t see the need to teach about something that has, for the most part, been ignored.

I do remember something about the Civil War starting out over some similar issues. The Civil War settled the issues of slavery and which was the most powerful–federal or state government. It left me with the false impression that because the federal government always wins, they must always be right.

In the video, Robert Marshall said “this is a forced contract.” In any other aspect of your life, were someone to force you to sign a contract or go to jail, it would be easy to distinguish that might does not make it right. The forced aspect of the healthcare bill has made it clear to me the federal government is not always in the right, and that’s why there is a tenth amendment.

10th Amendment: Might Does Not Make Right

Virginia And 34 Other States To Block HealthCare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUYY4RB3YA4

The three cases mentioned in the video from Wikipedia: Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

In United States v. Lopez 514 U.S. 549 (1995), a federal law mandating a “gun-free zone” on and around public school campuses was struck down because, the Supreme Court ruled, there was no clause in the Constitution authorizing it.
In New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992) Obliged states to take title to any waste within their borders that was not disposed of prior to January 1, 1996, and made each state liable for all damages directly related to the waste. The Court, in a 6–3 decision, ruled that the imposition of that obligation on the states violated the Tenth Amendment. Justice O’Connor wrote that the federal government can encourage the states to adopt certain regulations through the spending power (i.e., by attaching conditions to the receipt of federal funds, see South Dakota v. Dole), or through the commerce power (by directly pre-empting state law). However, Congress cannot directly compel states to enforce federal regulations.
In Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997)). The act required state and local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on persons attempting to purchase handguns. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, applied New York v. United States to show that the law violated the Tenth Amendment. Since the act “forced participation of the State’s executive in the actual administration of a federal program,” it was unconstitutional.

What I’ve gathered from this is:

When the federal government passes a law, they can’t force states to enforce their laws.
The federal government can punish states that refuse to enforce federal laws by withholding federal funds.
The federal government can act directly and enforce the law themselves if the state refuses, as in Gonzales v. Raich.

Gonzales v. Raich(2005). In this case, a California woman sued the Drug Enforcement Administration after her medical marijuana crop was seized and destroyed by Federal agents. Medical marijuana was explicitly made legal under California state law by Proposition 215; however, marijuana is prohibited at the federal level by the Controlled Substances Act. Even though the woman grew the marijuana strictly for her own consumption and never sold any, the Supreme Court stated that growing one’s own marijuana affects the interstate market of marijuana. The theory was that the marijuana could enter the stream of interstate commerce, even if it clearly wasn’t grown for that purpose and it was unlikely ever to happen (the same reasoning as in the Wickard v. Filburn decision). It therefore ruled that this practice may be regulated by the federal government under the authority of the Commerce Clause.

HealthCare Reform: Going into Details, People Would Support Slavery

Jake Tapper of This Week interview David Axelrod about the healthcare bill.

This bill is important to the American people, Jake, and when you get underneath the numbers and you ask people, do you support giving people more leverage against insurance companies so that they — if they have preexisting conditions, they can get coverage, so if they get sick, they don’t get thrown off, so they don’t have these huge premium increases of the sort we’ve just seen announced in states around the country, they say yes.

But again, when you go underneath, they support the elements of the plan. When you ask them, does the health care system need reform, three quarters of them say yes. When you ask them, do you want Congress to move forward and deal with this issue, three quarters of them say yes. So we’re not going to walk away from this issue.

David Axelrod’s arguement is most people are in favor of the details in the bill, therefore it is a good idea. One detail Axelrod left out–the majority of people are opposed to making health insurance mandatory. Leaving out the “mandatory” part is no small detail to be ignored, and here is why:

If polled most Americans would probably answer yes to all these question.

Would you like the cost of food and clothing to go down?
Would you like the cost of your housing to never go up?
Do you want to prevent people from ever going homeless?
Would you like not having to struggle to make ends meet?
Would you like to live in a country that was more organized?
Do you want congress to take action to make your life simpler?
Are you in favor of the federal government regulating work place rules?

Using the same rational as David Axelrod: If you leave out the detail of losing your freedom, we can conclude most people are really in favor of slavery.

Better HeathCare Analogies: Coal Miners and Salt

In the health care debate one of the most common analogies has been to compare mandatory health insurance with auto insurance. I want to throw in a couple more analogies to mandatory health care debate as food for thought. Coal miners forced to purchase from company stores and French citizens forced to buy salt.

Where the health insurance to auto insurance analogy matches up:

Its insurance.
Its mandatory.

Where mandatory auto and health insurance analogy do not match:

Not everyone is required to have auto insurance.
States mandate auto insurance, not the federal government.
Auto insurance is there to protect harm done to individuals.
Mandatory health insurance protects profits of the health care industry.

Another analogy to mandatory health insurance can be found in the early days of coal mining, where miners were forced to purchase from the company store.

Coal Miners analogy matches the health care proposal in:

Mandatory purchasing from selected stores and products.
Mandatory purchasing increases corporate profits.

Where Coal Miners analogy doesn’t match:

Everything miners needed to sustain themselves–food, medicine, clothing and shelter–was a mandatory purchase from the company, with the exception of health insurance.
The miners had the option of leaving the company town and seeking employment elsewhere.

A better analogy can be made between mandatory health insurance and Gabelle: the French Salt Tax. Prior to the French Revolution, the government mandated everyone above the age of eight years to purchase a weekly minimum amount of salt at a fixed price.

From The History News Network: Will a 2nd American Revolution be French?

There were a slew of other taxes as well, some of them quite creative. For example, there was a salt monopoly tax by which everyone over the age of 7 (as I remember) was required to purchase several lbs of highly-inferior government salt each and every year. The law also proscribed how the salt could be used and imposed heavy fines for misuse, such as in preservation of meat.

French Salt Tax matches mandatory healthcare:

Everyone required to purchase.
Mandatory amount to purchase.
Doesn’t matter if you can afford to buy either.
Protects profits of the industry.

Where the Salt Tax analogy doesn’t match mandatory healthcare insurance:

It’s salt!

Utopianism: There is no Panacea for all of Life’s Imperfections

Political debate today seems to be centered around discussions of utopianism.

The ideals or principles of a utopian; idealistic and impractical social theory.

Just about any issue of the day turns into a complete debate about political or economic systems. The debates usually run along the lines of “that is a theory straight from political system X, it won’t solve problem Y, but political system Z can fix this problem.” The rebuttal runs along the lines of “we all know political system Z has been a complete failure, and has been rejected by every thinking person.”

The part consistently left out in the utopia debate is all political systems have trade offs. Each person in the debate has done their own cost-benefit analysis of political systems and has chosen one. There are a host of factors that play into the deciding which political or economic system a person believes will work best.

It’s a delusion that there is a political or economic panacea for all of life’s imperfections. Unfortunately, the popular belief “if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything” is not true. You have to believe a goal is possible in order to achieve a goal; but the reverse is not true–believing something is possible doesn’t make it possible.

Pardon the sarcasm to further the point–if I put my mind to it, I will wipe out poverty this morning, end all all wars this afternoon and if I still have enough energy left, I’ll fix stupid before going to bed. If you put your mind to it you can accomplish solvable problems, but believing every problem can be solved in your lifetime is a bit grandiose.

Putting utopianism arguments aside, I’m in favor of limited government and as much freedom as possible, but I don’t believe it will solve all of life’s problems. It’s not reasonable to expect freedom will solve all problems. However, the cost-benefit analysis I’ve done is tells me the perils of living as free as possible scare me less than any alternative. Someone else put it much better:

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. – Thomas Jefferson

I know its not perfect, but I’d rather try my hand at my own flawed micro-utopia rather than trusting others to create a utopia for me.

Stock Photos: The “Ad Agencinem” Fallacy

In the Ad Agencinem fallacy – If an actor or model is used in a political ad, the political message itself is false by association. The underlying argument is if the everyday people in the photos aren’t people who’ve actually said they are against an issue, then there aren’t any everyday people opposed the issue.

If there was a disclosure requirement every time an actor or stock photo is used in advertising, then virtually every advertisement would require a disclaimer. As-seen-on-TV commercials would need an explanation that the anguished looks on the actors’ faces were put-on, just to make sure no one thought the people weren’t acting.

It is a given people in advertisements have been paid for the use of their likeness. Not pointing out that a person was paid to have their picture used in an ad is not a political deception.

For an example of the Ad Agencinem fallacy see ThinkProgress piece on American Petroleum Institute Uses Stock Photos Of ‘Americans’ To Defend Oil Subsidies

Big Oil is using fake “Americans” to defend billions in tax subsidies. The American Petroleum Institute is running full-page ads in Politico and Roll Call that attack Congress for “new energy taxes”:

The target of this ad is the Obama administration’s effort to remove $36 billion in loopholes and subsidies for the oil industry. As it turns out, the “Americans” presented in the ad are stock photos from Getty Images:

As one commenter on ThinkProgress put it:

pakaal says: API used an ad agency to make an ad for them. The ad agency used stock photos, as all ad agencies do. There is nothing newsworthy in that, and anyone who has worked in an ad agency would agree.

The use of stock images is not anything new. Here is an article about the same stock photos being used multiple times for different companies. Washington Street Journal – When Marketers See Double

The ad from Key Bank portrayed a heart-warming family moment: a dad pointing out something on his laptop to his smiling young daughter as she leans over his shoulder. In fact, the scene may have been a little too charming. The same image appears in a recent marketing brochure — from Bank of America.

Both banks say they bought the image from a photo agency that deals in stock pictures, not realizing the other was making the same selection. “We try not to use the same images as other competitors … if it happened, it happened,” says Joan Peloso, marketing services director for Cleveland-based KeyCorp, the bank-based financial services company

No one can tell from a photo if the people are Americans. You can tell they represent what Americans look like. If the ad agency had drawn pictures of typical Americans, there wouldn’t be an issue. There is no misrepresentation in the ad, because those photos are what Americans look like.

For a real example of misrepresentation in advertising, all you need to do is look at this ad right next to the article on ThinkProgress.

Clicking on the I lost my stomach in 4 weeks ad takes you to an Acai Berry Diet page. The ad has “Julia from News 6” volunteering to go on the diet.

To get started, I volunteered to be the guinea pig. I applied for a bottle of the Acai Optimum. While there are ton’s of Acai berry ads online, Acai Optimum is one of the most credible and trustworthy suppliers on the market. It included the free* trial of the product and it did not try to fool me into agreeing to additional hidden offers.

The person pictured as “Julia from News 6”–as everyone on Fark knows–is actually Mélissa Theuriau, French journalist and news anchor.

Peter Schiff: “Irresponsible not to be Irresponsible”

Peter Schiff on State Bailouts and the National Debt

Peter Schiff explains the dangers of the federal government bailing out individual states.

If the federal government starts bailing out states, a state would be irresponsible not to be irresponsible. After all, why would you? Just cut taxes and increase spending, because you’re going to get the money from congress, from upstate. And if you’re the one state thats being fiscally responsible, then you’re going be to footing the bill for all the states that aren’t.

The states probably will be bailed out by the federal government. I fear we are entering the decade of irresponsible not to be irresponsible. As we’ve seen in the banking and auto industry and Wall St. bailouts, being irresponsible pays fairly well.

Years ago there was a musical called How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. An updated remake could be titled “How to Succeed in Business by Royally Screwing Up.” The story of a window cleaner who purposely hurts himself on the job to get a desk job, and ends up becoming the president of the company. Once president, the former window cleaner could apply the same skills that got him to the top of the company by acquiring huge amounts of debt to eventually get a governmental bailout.

I’ll get started writing the new musical as soon as I can find a government grant for writers. The plan is to never finish writing the musical, because that would defeat the whole purpose by completing the work. It would be irresponsible not to be irresponsible.

SPLC: Where is the map of propaganda groups?

After seeing this Dylan Ratigan video from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which grouped ‘Patriot’ groups with hate groups, I decided to look into how these groups are defined.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhKjlItVhJY

From the Southern Poverty Law Center – definition of ‘Patriot’ groups:

Generally, Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the “New World Order,” engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme anti-government doctrines. Listing here does not imply that the groups themselves advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist. The list was compiled from field reports, Patriot publications, the Internet, law enforcement sources and news reports. Groups are identified by the city, county or region where they are located.

The list doesn’t imply theses groups advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist, but Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center does imply these groups advocate violence in this video.

The kinds of things we’ve seen in the last year are for instance the murder of six law enforcement officials by people, members of the radical right. We have seen plots to murder Obama, we have seen plots to murder black people, to murder jews and so on. I think these are all prompted by the rise of Obama to power. These real changes that are happening around us, people are really angry and hurting out there and many of them feel quite ready to take action.

The terms hate groups and radical right and patriot groups were used throughout this video from Southern Poverty Law Center. I can’t tell exactly which group Potok means in referring to violence, because all these organizations have become an amalgam of one group to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But what they (Oath Keepers) are really about is the idea that Americans are about to be herded into concentration camps that martial law is going to be imposed, that foreign troops are going to be on American soil, putting Americans done and so on. If what the Oath Keepers did was merely plead one more time to defend the Constitution there would be nothing remotely bad about it.

I can’t say if Americans are about to be herded into concentration camps, but Americans were herded into concentration camp during WWII, so it’s not delusional to believe it could happen.

What is really worrying about a group like the Oath Keepers is this is a group of people who are armed by the rest of society. And in the case of police officers these are people who sometimes have the power of life and death over you or me, and what that means if these men and women are animated by ideas that are completely false, completely paranoid and groundless, you’ve got to worry about who they are going to see as the real enemy and what kinds of decisions they make in stressful situation.

Not everyone knows about the Readiness Exercise of 1984, the plan by the US to test their ability to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest. Calling these fears completely false, completely paranoid and groundless is worrisome and inaccurate.

Whether the tea party movement becomes something more like the patriot group, more radical yet, or whether it becomes something else is something we don’t know yet.

So worrying over what the Tea Party movement might become isn’t paranoia, but worrying about what the government has done in the past being repeated is paranoia? The underlying argument is that Mark Potok’s paranoia about ‘Patriot’ groups is the good kind of paranoia and the concerns of ‘Patriot’ groups is the bad kind of paranoia.

Summing up the SPLC position on patriot groups: It’s OK to verbally defend the Constitution, but citizens possessing anything other than harsh words to defend the Constitution are dangerous.

The SPLC has a map of hate groups on their site.

Where is the map of propaganda groups?

Hey Rangel: Would You be for Simple Tax Laws Now?

Charlie Rangel faces several charges of ethics violations and dodging taxes.

A quick summary of the charges from The Washington Post article, “Rangel is alone in punishment but not wrongdoing”

The ethics committee scolded him for taking corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean, but has not yet ruled on claims about Rangel’s fundraising, his rent-controlled apartments, the taxes on his Dominican beach place, and even his storing of a vehicle without license plates in a House garage.

Here is another summary from NBC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSdvbKsaimM

Rangel claims to have done nothing wrong, that none of the acts were intentional and are simply matters of forgetfulness and sloppiness. I want to assume Rangel is telling the truth and that they were all unintentional, because it makes a really good argument for making tax rules simpler. When someone who oversees the writing of tax laws can innocently break them, it’s a strong indication the laws are too damn complicated.

From the Cato Institute article 10 Outrageous Facts About the Income Tax.

The U.S. “tax army” is bigger than the U.S. army in Iraq.
32 million IRS penalties assessed each year.
In 1913 there were only 400 pages in the federal tax rules, in 2003 the number of pages had risen to 54,846.

With fifty thousand plus pages of rules, anyone–even the person who writes the rules–could unknowingly violate the rules. I would not be surprised to find out all members in congress are in violation of at least one tax code. The tax code is to large to be comprehensible by a single person.

Expecting someone to not violate the massive amount of tax codes is comparable to a bad parent telling a child to behave, but not telling the child what constitutes good behavior. The bad parent only lets the child know the rules of good behavior once they have broken them.

The other reason I hope Rangel has done nothing wrong is that maybe Rangel will learn some compassion for others caught in the web he has helped weave. When an average citizen claims their were ignorant or forgetful or sloppy with the IRS, they have to prove their innocence. If those in congress feel the sting of being a mere mortal, then someday the tax codes might include an “innocent until proven guilty” clause.