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.”
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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