Imagine Breaking Up The United States - WSJ.com

Imagine Breaking Up The United States - WSJ.com: "Picture an America that is run not, as now, by a top-heavy Washington autocracy but, in freewheeling style, by an assemblage of largely autonomous regional republics reflecting the eclectic economic and cultural character of the society."...

The anti-federalists lost their battle, but history, in certain respects, has redeemed their vision, for they anticipated how many Americans have come to feel about their nation’s seat of federal power. “This city, and the government of it, must indubitably take their tone from the character of the men, who from the nature of its situation and institution, must collect there,” the anti-federalist pamphleteer known only as the Federal Farmer wrote. “If we expect it will have any sincere attachments to simple and frugal republicanism, to that liberty and mild government, which is dear to the laborious part of a free people, we most assuredly deceive ourselves.”...

In a globalized economy transformed by technological innovations hatched by happily-unguided entrepreneurs, history seems to be driving one nail after another into the coffin of the big, which is why the Obama planners and their ilk, even if they now ride high, may be doomed to fail. No one anymore expects the best ideas to come from the biggest actors in the economy, so should anyone expect the best thinking to be done by the whales of the political world?...

So why not America as the global leader of a devolution? America’s return to its origins—to its type—could turn out to be an act of creative political destruction, with “we the people” the better for it...

I actually do not think it is necessary for the US to be broken up into multiple regional republics in reaction to the current frightening federal government power grab. We need only restore the rule of law and the rights of the states set forth quite clearly in our US Constitution. This could be achieved rather rapdily and peacefully if even a few states began to demand their Constitution rights and prerogatives be restored.

However, we are headed at breakneck speed down a road where the socialists and the big government accolytes in the Democrat party are expoiting their temporary ascendancy to try and emasculate the states and ensure a permanent federal leviathan. If they succeed in spreading the tentacles of federal power into states too deeply, a Consitutional option may elude us. In which case, a breakup is almost inevitable.

I cannot think of anything which will drive us there more rapidly than forcing fiscally responsible and productive states to fund the excesses and failed policies of failing states. The Democrats think they can do anything they want because they control the House the Senate and the White House. They should think twice before assuming that Americans are going to sit still for having their pockets picked by Washington to fund a transition to an America that our Framers would not recognize. In fact, to an America more like the sclerotic European Union than the United State of even fifteen years ago.

State Constitution, Legislative Will, Who Cares - California Must Bend to Obama's Will

Demoting California - WSJ.com:

"Guess what the Obama Administration is doing? It is telling Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that it will revoke nearly $7 billion in federal stimulus money unless the state restores legislated wage cuts for unionized health-care workers.

Obama Administration to federalism: Drop dead."

Another breathtaking example of the Obama administration abusing its power on behalf of its leading special interest - the unions. This comes just on the heels of the Chrysler deal, where through the strong-arming of the Obama crowd, the UAW gained lavishly at the expense of lenders who didn't bankroll the Democrat campaign war chests in 2008.

They are using our tax dollars to pay off their union cronies.

Best News I've Heard This Week!

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Does State think Texas is a foreign country?:

"In a list that intended to brag about how much Hillary Clinton had traveled as the new Secretary of State to foreign countries, Foggy Bottom included a trip to Texas:"

I hope this means that Obama will be coming to apologize to us soon!

Dereliction of Duty Pervades the Political Class

I fully expect the wrath of the Statists to descend upon Governor Rick Perry for his defense of Texas' sovereignty under the 10th Amendment. As I thought about how I would defend him from this onslaught, my first thought was, "he's upholding his oath of office." As the Governor of Texas, it falls more squarely upon Gov. Perry's shoulders than anywhere else to defend the constitutional perogatives and rights of the state of Texas. It is not within the constitutionally circumscribed powers of the federal government to dictate to the state of Texas how to spend its money.

Upholding one's oath of office has become a quaint idea of the past. I'm not sure whether that's because our politicians willfully reject their responsibilities or because they fail to comprehend them. This week's release of the "torture memos" is a great example. President Obama, in the name of mollifying his MoveOn base weakened the executive branch, weakened the concept of attorney/client privilege, and weakened our intelligence gathering capabilities all in one fell swoop. I suspect that one of the reasons that he can see his way clear to doing this is that he doesn't understand or respect the concept of checks and balances. The Left finds checks and balances inconvenient, and unnecessary as long as the right (I mean Left) people are in power.

Similarly, Congress abdicated is responsibility and perogative to control the purse strings when it handed the executive branch a $700B TARP slush fund to dole out as it sees fit (see post and link to George Will column).

State and local officials fail to do their duty when they allow the federal government coerce them into signing on to programs that will bankrupt their states and municipalities in the future.

Regardless of how much he or she may want to support a particular political agenda or outcome, every politician that takes an oath of office is obligated first and foremost to uphold that oath.

Tax and Spend Your Way to the Top

Tell your Obama-supporting friends to look at California for a crystal ball of where the Dems want to take America. California, under its decades-long union-beholden Dem rule has certainly reached some new chart-topping heights:

#1 - number of foreclosures
#1 - rate of foreclosures
#1 - largest population loss (144,000 in one year)
#1 - largest decrease in activity in its ports
#1 - highest income tax rate, by top bracket
#1 - largest budget deficits by % underfunded (44%)
#1 - state with worst bond rating
(source Fortune, March 30, 2009)

This is California - cradle of the aerospace industry, home to Silicon Valley and Hollywood. You can't say they don't have a lot going for them. Congratualtions, Califormia! You got what you voted for! Let's hope we can turn our federal government around before we join California in the poor house.

Another Poster Child For The Results of Democrat Rule

The Taxin' Illini - WSJ.com:

"Mr. Quinn ran as Mr. Blagojevich's Lieutenant Governor on a platform of no new taxes. But now he defends his huge tax increase by saying this will only hit those who have the 'ability to pay.' Of course, employers and the wealthy also have the ability to leave -- which they have been doing. In the last decade 736,000 more Americans have left Illinois than have entered, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Over the last six years, Illinois has ranked 45th out of 50 states in job creation, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council. In 2008, 175,000 jobs vanished -- a medium-sized city of lost jobs. Mr. Quinn's tax increase will mean 50% higher taxes for nearly every small business, subchapter S company and corporation in the state."

Another basket case Blue State that has only its own tax-and-spend, union-funded, one-party politics to blame. The beauty of our federal system is that citizens fed up with this kind of mindless big government agenda can pick up and move to another state - as Illinoisians have done to the tune of three quarter million people for the last decade. California has seen an outflux as well - if it weren't for the fact that their houses were underwater, Blue Staters would be pouring into Red States at even higher rates.

Now President Obama and the other Big Government Democrats in Washington are trying to turn every state into a California or Illinois, by doling out "stimulus" money to those states that put themselves on the hook for permanently and massively expanding their entitlement spending. Governors like Perry, Paley and Sanford are doing the only responsible thing they can do in turning away such poison pills from Dr Obama.

During his Presidential campaign, Rudy Giuliani joked, "if the US adopts a national health care program, where will Canadians go for their urgent health care needs?" Likewise, if we let the big spenders in Washington turn our Red States into spendocracies, where will fed up Californians and Illinoisans go to escape?

Overcoming OOFS - The Dread Crippler of Conservative Minds In the Obama Era

Yes, my posts slowed a bit this past week. The reason is that I have come down with OOFS - Obama Outrage Fatigue Syndrome. There is no cure for OOFS, but there is HOPE. Some days, I just want to give in to the urge to go 24 hours without feeling outraged at what is going on in Washington. So I avoid the paper and the cable news. Of course, I know it is wrong. At this, of all times, we must all soldier on, even those of us with OOFS.

We are in the most critical phase of Obama's presidency, and he and his allies in Congress certainly know it. They know they must shove all of the socialist, anti-free market, entitlement-oriented, soak-the-rich, squeeze the middle-class programs they can down the throat of the Democrat controlled federal government, as fast as they can. The President's polls are already sliding, moderate Democrats in Congress are getting frightened, people are beginning to ask inconvenient questions. It will be much harder, even six months from now, for the Democrats to impose this left-wing agenda on an American populace this is still essentially conservative in its world view.

So fight on friends. Make sure everyone you meet knows what is going on. Ask them if they think it is right and if it is going to make America a better place or a worse one. Use examples like California and Illinois to illustrate where we as a nation are headed under the Democrat agenda. Urge your representatives in Washington to do what they can to slow down the Obama juggernaut. Time is not on the President's side. If he is ever forced to slow down and defend his policies, he will have a much harder time enacting them.

Is It Ignorance Of Or Antagonism To The Founding Principles?

George Will : A Lesson from the Framers - Townhall.com:

"Some governors have recently behaved badly in appointing people to fill U.S. Senate vacancies. Feingold's solution, of which John McCain is a co-sponsor, is to amend the 17th Amendment. It would be better to repeal it."

So many of the proposals from the left run counter to the intentions of our Framers. You wonder whether they are just ignorant, or if they consider themselves more evolved than those slave owning neanderthals that founded our nation. Unfortunately, I suspect 10% or less of graduating high school seniors today could explain the difference between a democratic and a republican form of government. The vast majority of Americans reading about Feingold's proposal will react, "yeah, more democracy, that has to be better, dude." Step one in pulling this nation back from the brink of European socialism is to start teaching our citizenry the principles upon which our nation was founded.