We're Slipping Away From The Constitution
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
Anybody know what this is?
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
That would be the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[[In-content Ad]]Now, my view is that the founders had some pretty good reasons for sticking that one in there.
They believed that the Constitution eventually could lead to centralized power that would have the potential to destroy the individual liberty of the people.
The amendment was added as a limitation on the powers given to the federal government. Delegating specific powers to the federal government left the states and the people free to exercise their powers.
That's what sovereignty is really all about. Today you hear politicians talk about sovereignty with respect to the nation.
But the founders saw the value of sovereignty with regard to individuals.
Besides, when state and local communities are in control of their own policies, the people most affected are close to the policymakers.
It's pretty tough for a Warsaw resident to have a chat with W. But Warsaw Mayor Ernie Wiggins will generally answer the phone.
What tripped my trigger regarding the issue of the Tenth Amendment was an editorial we ran in this newspaper on Thursday.
It was talking about how the federal No Child Left Behind Act has affected local schools.
Here's an excerpt:
Now comes evidence that over the five years of the act it has reshaped, often in major fashion, the school day, particularly in the elementary schools.
According to a sample of the nation's school districts by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy, 62 percent of the districts reported their grade schools spending substantially more time on reading and math, the two subjects on which the law requires annual testing between the third and eighth grades. The increases in instruction time were substantial, 46 percent for English and 37 percent for math.
In 44 percent of school districts, the stepped-up instruction came at the expense of other subjects -- a 36 percent drop in time spent on social studies, 28 percent on science, 16 percent in art and music, and even cuts in lunch, recess and gym.
I suppose one could argue that math and English are so important and indispensable that they can't be overemphasized.
Or one could argue that spending that much time on math and English makes for a pretty narrow educational experience.
But those arguments miss the point.
The point is the federal government has no business telling local schools how to operate.
How far flung are we from the founders' intent when it comes to the Tenth Amendment?
We've got the federal government intruding into local policy all over the place. We have hundreds - literally hundreds - of enormous U.S. government departments and agencies writing thousands and thousands of pages of regulations.
There's the Administration on Children and Families, Administration on Native Americans, Administration on Aging, Administration on Developmental Disabilities, Administrative Committee of the Federal Register, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, African Development Foundation, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Agency for International Development, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Agricultural Marketing Service, Agricultural Research Service and the Agriculture Department.
Those are just a few of the A's.
Have any idea how many "Bureaus" there are? A ton.
Here are a few departments:
Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, Interior, Treasury.
How about OHSA, EPA?
Do this for fun. Fire up your Internet browser. Go to usa.gov On the lower right of the home page there is a "Government Agencies" tab. Under that is an "A-Z agencies list." Click on that. You will freak out.
And these large and growing Tenth Amendment issues may be least egregious usurpations of the Constitution.
We've got signing statements where Presidents start interpreting legislation as they sign it into law.
They basically declare certain provisions of the laws they're signing unconstitutional and refuse to enforce those provisions, thereby usurping the judicial and legislative branches in one fell swoop.
This, of course, overtly upsets the checks and balances and balance of power the founders' envisioned.
It's exactly the type of thing the Constitution was expressly written to avoid.
Signing statements have been around for decades, but W's administration is setting records.
W's signing statements have accompanied some 750 statutes passed by Congress, including a ban on the torture of detainees and the renewal of the Patriot Act, according to a Boston Globe report. Other laws W says he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, "whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
By comparison, President Bill Clinton used signing statements 105 times. President Ronald Reagan used them 71 times.
At the same time we've got "national security letters."
The Washington Post reports: "The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters - one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people - are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
"Issued by FBI field supervisors, the national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports."
And how about those warrantless wiretaps?
It's getting a little crazy.
It's getting to the point where I'm wondering what kind of political and economic systems I'm living under.
It's never really been a democracy. But over the past 20 or so years, it's not feeling much like the constitutional republic it is supposed to be, either.
Socialism isn't a good fit. Socialists try to make things better by overseeing a redistribution of wealth. I don't see a whole lot of that going on.
Seems more like some twisted form of creeping capitalist fascism.
See, in communism, the government controls everything by owning it.
But fascists figure they don't really have to own everything. They can just legislate, regulate and tax everything to the point where they might as well own it.
It's all about control. Controlling individuals, controlling production, controlling property.
Sometimes it seems our own government is a pretty big threat to our liberty.
Oh well, at least I'm still free enough to write this stuff.
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Anybody know what this is?
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
That would be the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[[In-content Ad]]Now, my view is that the founders had some pretty good reasons for sticking that one in there.
They believed that the Constitution eventually could lead to centralized power that would have the potential to destroy the individual liberty of the people.
The amendment was added as a limitation on the powers given to the federal government. Delegating specific powers to the federal government left the states and the people free to exercise their powers.
That's what sovereignty is really all about. Today you hear politicians talk about sovereignty with respect to the nation.
But the founders saw the value of sovereignty with regard to individuals.
Besides, when state and local communities are in control of their own policies, the people most affected are close to the policymakers.
It's pretty tough for a Warsaw resident to have a chat with W. But Warsaw Mayor Ernie Wiggins will generally answer the phone.
What tripped my trigger regarding the issue of the Tenth Amendment was an editorial we ran in this newspaper on Thursday.
It was talking about how the federal No Child Left Behind Act has affected local schools.
Here's an excerpt:
Now comes evidence that over the five years of the act it has reshaped, often in major fashion, the school day, particularly in the elementary schools.
According to a sample of the nation's school districts by the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy, 62 percent of the districts reported their grade schools spending substantially more time on reading and math, the two subjects on which the law requires annual testing between the third and eighth grades. The increases in instruction time were substantial, 46 percent for English and 37 percent for math.
In 44 percent of school districts, the stepped-up instruction came at the expense of other subjects -- a 36 percent drop in time spent on social studies, 28 percent on science, 16 percent in art and music, and even cuts in lunch, recess and gym.
I suppose one could argue that math and English are so important and indispensable that they can't be overemphasized.
Or one could argue that spending that much time on math and English makes for a pretty narrow educational experience.
But those arguments miss the point.
The point is the federal government has no business telling local schools how to operate.
How far flung are we from the founders' intent when it comes to the Tenth Amendment?
We've got the federal government intruding into local policy all over the place. We have hundreds - literally hundreds - of enormous U.S. government departments and agencies writing thousands and thousands of pages of regulations.
There's the Administration on Children and Families, Administration on Native Americans, Administration on Aging, Administration on Developmental Disabilities, Administrative Committee of the Federal Register, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, African Development Foundation, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Agency for International Development, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Agricultural Marketing Service, Agricultural Research Service and the Agriculture Department.
Those are just a few of the A's.
Have any idea how many "Bureaus" there are? A ton.
Here are a few departments:
Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, Interior, Treasury.
How about OHSA, EPA?
Do this for fun. Fire up your Internet browser. Go to usa.gov On the lower right of the home page there is a "Government Agencies" tab. Under that is an "A-Z agencies list." Click on that. You will freak out.
And these large and growing Tenth Amendment issues may be least egregious usurpations of the Constitution.
We've got signing statements where Presidents start interpreting legislation as they sign it into law.
They basically declare certain provisions of the laws they're signing unconstitutional and refuse to enforce those provisions, thereby usurping the judicial and legislative branches in one fell swoop.
This, of course, overtly upsets the checks and balances and balance of power the founders' envisioned.
It's exactly the type of thing the Constitution was expressly written to avoid.
Signing statements have been around for decades, but W's administration is setting records.
W's signing statements have accompanied some 750 statutes passed by Congress, including a ban on the torture of detainees and the renewal of the Patriot Act, according to a Boston Globe report. Other laws W says he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, "whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
By comparison, President Bill Clinton used signing statements 105 times. President Ronald Reagan used them 71 times.
At the same time we've got "national security letters."
The Washington Post reports: "The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters - one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people - are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
"Issued by FBI field supervisors, the national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports."
And how about those warrantless wiretaps?
It's getting a little crazy.
It's getting to the point where I'm wondering what kind of political and economic systems I'm living under.
It's never really been a democracy. But over the past 20 or so years, it's not feeling much like the constitutional republic it is supposed to be, either.
Socialism isn't a good fit. Socialists try to make things better by overseeing a redistribution of wealth. I don't see a whole lot of that going on.
Seems more like some twisted form of creeping capitalist fascism.
See, in communism, the government controls everything by owning it.
But fascists figure they don't really have to own everything. They can just legislate, regulate and tax everything to the point where they might as well own it.
It's all about control. Controlling individuals, controlling production, controlling property.
Sometimes it seems our own government is a pretty big threat to our liberty.
Oh well, at least I'm still free enough to write this stuff.
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