Sunday, April 12, 2015

The 51st … 58th States - Extralegal Legislative Bodies

Congressional Penmanship
The 51st … 58th States
Extralegal Legislative Bodies
By Stephen L. Wilmeth


            It is a shame the enduring feature of Patrick Henry’s contribution to the American experiment is a single quotation.
            Arguably, a more profound contribution from the Virginian came in the courtroom at age 27. The setting was in Hanover County and the case was action the “EstablishedChurch” brought against the Virginialegislature. The Anglican parsons were tired of being compensated for their services with rations of home grown, but world class tobacco. They were so worked up they wanted back pay made up by remunerative means. In today’s parlance, that means real money.
            They paved the way for their suit by first taking their case to the notorious Privy Council in London. That Star Chamber agreed with the influential churchmen and backed a class action against colonial leadership. When he heard the news, the highly regarded attorney representing the legislature withdrew his services.
            The replacement was the gangly Henry.
            The preachers’ enthusiasm grew as the young lawyer began his plea. It waned, however, when Henry’s opening remarks took flight and began to transform mere words into verbal artistry. The rough hands crowd, those in attendance who wore course cloth and leather, came alive.
            The pitch grew to crescendo when the young defender suggested, “Such is the avarice, such the insatiate thirst for gold of these ecclesiastical harpies, that they would snatch the last hoe cake from the widow and the orphan.”
            Under the extra-legal Star Chamber edict, the jury had to award damages to the church hierarchy, but the Americans stood their ground. They limited the damages to the petitioners by giving them … one penny!
            Leaderless Congress
            I think poorly of elected officials who hock books while in the employ of the United States citizenry. It was with a grimace, therefore, when Utah Senator Mike Lee, was observed making the rounds this week pushing his new book, Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America’s FoundingDocument.
            I will try, though, to rationalize his behavior on the basis the senator is trying to blaze a path around the dismal dysfunctionality of our leaderless Congress. On that merit, he gets a conditional pass.
            His book can be paraphrased through the reaction of Benjamin Franklin at the end of the Constitutional Convention when Franklin was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got … republic or a monarchy?”
            His response was the same uncertainty many of us fear.
            “A republic,” Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.”
            Senator Lee believes our Constitution has been woefully disregarded and mistreated. In short, his book highlights many egregious leadership departures from the dictates of the Constitution.
            For a place to start, the Commerce Clause has been inflated beyond anything ever envisioned. The Supreme Court allowed a pin hole to become an aqueduct.
            Next, the bastardization of the authority to raise revenues and spend money has dug us into an $18 trillion going on $70 trillion unfunded liability. National bankruptcy is not only likely it is probably unavoidable. The House was given the authority to tax and introduce spending measures. The Senate’s commandeering of the Affordable Care Act alone further removed all pretenses of constitutional discipline and authority.
            It was GeorgeMason who should be singled out for his insistence of a constitutional Bill of Rights. He was adamantly opposed to signing the document he was so influential in crafting when it was passed without such an inclusion. As a result, he led his State of Virginia in an attempt to derail its adoption. He almost succeeded, but it was his continuing influence that the first Congress acted to submit to the states in 1789 the proposed amendments that would become known as that Bill of Rights. The tenth Amendment was a hallmark of Mason’s logic. The powers not delegated are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.
            Lee’s point suggests trying to defend the delineation of such rights today. They either don’t exist or they must be constantly defended and renewed in courts of law.
            The 4th Amendment is also in tatters. The right of the people to defend their person has long been given lip service.
            Congress was never given any power to make law respecting the establishment of a religion. Senator Lee maintains that the stepwise condescension by federal actions not protecting the sanctity of religion has altered the landscape to the point that traditional religion is being brutalized by secular power and artificial authorities.
            That leads his discussion into the matter of legislative power and authority. The Constitution gives all legislative power to the Senate and the House. There is no suggestion that agencies are extended the power to make laws, but they do. Executive agencies are writing laws by exercising unchecked rule making authority.
Senator Lee warns they are doing it in a rate of acceleration … that cannot be fathomed.
            The 51st … 58th States
            Do you remember when your president visited 57 states? Perhaps, he actually did.
            Let’s start by suggesting it is troubling to support federal entities with greater influences than individual states. My home state of New Mexico provides the model for this point.
Recently, Governor Susana Martinez recommended an annual budget of $6.29 billion. That is a lot of money even though it pales in comparison to other states, but it serves as a marker. It represents the operating budget for a state which ostensibly enjoys the full measure of Amendment X adopted in 1791.
            Long ago we should have recognized no single federal entity, certainly no federal agency, should exceed the power and the economic footprint of a sovereign state. The problem is many do. As such, they must be considered administrative states within the union. Like it or not, they enjoy powers that exceed those of the lawful states. Further, they don’t have to balance a budget. They exist by extraction of treasury and permanent wealth from the citizenry.
            Is the Environmental Protection Agency the 51st State? Try to find where Congress admitted it into the Union. Its annual budget exceeds that of my home state by nearly $1.5 billion annually. As we read this, it is adamant about rewriting the Clean Water Act. It is altering law to reflect its internal agenda.
            With such logic, NASA must be considered the 52nd State. Its annual budget is a whopping $18 billion. Since we have dispensed with the space program, we must question what the agency’s role is. It has taken a lead in fabricating global warming science. It has also led the cause for altering the warming aspect to include all climate change … current, past, and future.
            The emergence of modern Privy Councils is becoming clearly apparent in the existence of the agencies, isn’t it? The deacons of the Established Church of the 18th Century had no avenue of imposed influence like their privileged contemporaries.
The 53rd State must be FEMA. Its annual budget is $10.4 billion. It is engaging in tag team performances with its sister agency, the 52nd State, by threatening states to withhold monies if the states fail to adopt climate change policy.
The Department of Homeland Security is the 54th State. DHS sports a $38.2 billion budget. It gives mandatory environmental sensitivity training to its Border agents. It also instructs agents to turn back illegals rather than handcuffing and hauling them to the authorities.
The United States Forest Service emerges from the USDA to fill the role of the 55th State. The last agency to actually fund itself now goes to the taxpayer well to extract $6.3 billion annually. Its narrative no longer suggests its original mandate to offer a ready supply of lumber to the nation and maintain downstream flows of water. It just burns forests, sucks rivers dry, and hires attorneys.
As the 56th state, Health & Human Services is the real jeffe among the agencies. Its annual budget of full blown socialism is … $1.02 trillion!
The Department of Interior emerges as the 57th State and the umbrella for the remaining administrative states. Its annual budget is $11.9 billion.
The spawn of numero 57 are more accurately compared to a gaggle of city states. They combine to form a unibody of land management agencies. The Park Service, the BLM, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service extract $7.5 billion annually. They come no where near with matching revenues, but they regulate, police, plan, and write law as if they were part and parcel to the Constitution.
Collectively, they elicit the same pre-revolutionarycomplaints assigned to King George III who was despised for erecting “multitudes of New Offices”, and sending “hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance”.
Perhaps your president knew exactly what he was saying when he referenced the states he visited. Perhaps he was also rewriting the Franklin statement of fear …

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “I’ll offer Mike Lee a pass … and support his candidacy for eventual higher office.”

It is hard for many to fathom the size and power of the federal government, but this quote from Wilmeth really puts it in perspective:

Long ago we should have recognized no single federal entity, certainly no federal agency, should exceed the power and the economic footprint of a sovereign state. The problem is many do. As such, they must be considered administrative states within the union. Like it or not, they enjoy powers that exceed those of the lawful states.

And I got a big chuckle out of his description of the Forest Service:

It just burns forests, sucks rivers dry, and hires attorneys. 

Smokey The Attorney...we need a picture of that.

UPDATE

A reader on Facebook reminds us of this quote from James Madison:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”  James Madison, Federalist Papers

 

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