Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'

The above article (click on the title) is a few weeks old, but it illustrates an interesting point about how the current administration feels about our Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.

Here is just one blurb from the article...

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

To me, the Constitution is NOT just a piece of paper. It represents a set of rules that our Government and its officials must abide regardless of how they feel about the issues at hand. If an issue isn't specifically mentioned in the Constitution or its amendments, the Federal Government has no right to get involved.

Let's hope for a new year full of liberty and happiness.

Earl

Recent Abuses of the Bill of Rights (Part 1)

The Bill of Rights is somewhat of an anomaly in the United States Constitution, as it is more of a list of government restrictions than a list of powers. In fact, the Bill of Rights was not included in the original version of the Constitution because many felt that the document should only include those responsibilities and power that the new Federal government should be involved in. But some of the southern states, Virginia in particular, refused to ratify the Constitution until some protection was allowed for individuals and the member states of the union (the limiting of the federal powers would be a key reason for the succession of the southern states, precipitating the Civil War). Thus the first ten amendments to the Constitution were created even before the ink was dry on the original document.
As I mentioned before, the Bill of Rights, or BOR, is really a list of personal rights that the federal government must not intrude upon. The list was intended to protect its citizenry from a potentially overbearing federal government. The BOR has its roots in the many grievances the American citizens had with the British government’s rule of colonies. In other words, every one of the individual rights mentioned in the Bill of Right had, at one time or another, had been violated by the British Government or Military Forces.
Many in the new Federal Government took the BOR to heart, and made sure that these rights were untouched by public laws. Unfortunately, it only took a few years before those men who fought for and got the BOR into the Constitution were retired from public service. The new members of Federal Government did not have the stake in the BOR that the founding fathers had. Perhaps their interpretation of the Constitution was just different from the original framers. Eventually, a Congress here passed a law to "protect" one of the individual rights in the Constitution. A President there issued an Executive Order to "suspend" one of the individual rights in the Constitution.
It is not just in the distant past that the BOR have been violated by our Federal Government. The following is the first of several more recent examples of these violations:

AMENDMENT VI.
"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense."
Like many of the amendments in the BOR, the Sixth Amendment grew out the new nation's hatred of a former British practice, this one of secret trials (e.g. Star Chamber) and almost indefinite detentions. The idea that the accused was innocence until proven guilty and that he or she was entitled to some level of protection from the government was important enough to early leaders to be included in the BOR. There has several instances where the President has "suspended" aspects of the Sixth Amendment, including Abraham Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War, but the recent violations of detainees held at the military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is by far the worst of all. All of the detainees were captured in foreign countries (mostly Afghanistan) and were tranferred to Cuba in order to keep them outside the sphere of the U.S. court system. They have been denied the right to a speedy trial (some have been detained there for three years or more), let alone a public trial (the Pentagon recently set up "classified" military tribunals as a concession to Congressional inquests). All were denied access to legal council for most of their detention, and most were not even informed of what crimes they were being accused of committing. The rationale from the Pentagon, Justice Department and White House is that these were foreign combatants captured by military forces outside the U.S., and thus were not entitled to the protection of the Sixth Amendment. But nowhere in the amendment does it refer to U.S. citizens, residents, aliens (legal or illegal) or other foreigners. It simply states "the accused". The Constitution and its amendment apply the Federal Government, its officer, elected or appointed, its actions and inactions. By detaining those accused of planning or conducting terrorist activities, the DoD and other agencies of the Federal Government should be required to accord the accused protection under the Sixth Amendment.

AMENDMENT X.
"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."
Two of the most prominent example of the Federal Government's disregard for the states right to govern themselves are the "No Child Left Behind" initiative and the countless other unfunded mandates passed down by the current administration. No Child Left Behind, or NCLB, was created by the Bush Administration early in their first term as a means to improve thc basic level of education in our public and private school systems. But public education is clearly a power of the individual states (or even lower governments), for nowhere is education mentioned in the Constitution as a federal power. NCLB has noble goals and would clearly make improvements to some public school districts, however many of the initiatives of NCLB, including standardized testing of students and teachers, are too restrictive for many districts. Plus, though NCLB has no federal funding, the Federal Government has repeatedly threatened to pull other education funds from states that do not implement NCLB initiatives. This is a form of coersion on the part of the Federal Government. More important is the fact that the education of our youth is clearly the responsibility of the individual states (some may argue that even the states shouldn't be involved in education, but that goes deeper than this discussion).

Sources used during the writing of this article:

1. "Are Current Bill of Rights Erosions Unprecedented?" by Anthony Gregory
2. "Bush’s War on the Bill of Rights" by Anthony Gregory

Stay tuned for Part 2...

This isn't the real America

This article says it quite eloquently, perhaps even presidentially, much of what many of us feel in America. It is time that we put a stop to this madness, and bring our nation back to its roots.

Enjoy,

Earl.

The Federal Debt

We all carry debt, right? A mortgage, a car loan, student loans, credit card debts – It is the American way. Why should the fact that you don’t make enough money stop you from living the way you want? Heck, even our government carries debt. Maybe your county has sold bonds to pay for a new courthouse or prison. Maybe your city has borrowed money from the state to upgrade a main thoroughfare into the downtown shopping district. Maybe the federal government has issued treasury notes to help pay for the war in Iraq. Well, that’s what happens when the government incurs expenses that are greater than normal revenues allow. But what happens when you don’t pay back your debt? Besides accruing interest, you get penalties. It you continue to not pay off your debt, you get threats, first from the creditor, then from a collection agency. What happens when the federal government fails to pay off its debt? It prints more money or issues more bonds to cover the interest on the debt, incurring more debt. This is exactly how we have ended up with over $7.9 trillion in federal debt (well as of August 29th, 2005, $7,930,506,290,857.97 to be exact). Since the federal government is "owned" by the citizens of the United States, this means each one of us owns $27,000 of the federal debt. And it continues to go up by $1.5 billion every day. Where does all that money go? That is a discussion for another blog, but today I want to explain how the Federal Debt has grown since the Unites States was created.

Click on this link, The_Federal_Debt.pdf to see the charts referenced below.

When the United States Constitution was ratified by the individual states, the Federal Government was already in debt. As part of the treaty negotiations with Britain at the end of the Revolutionary War, the "national" government (under the Articles of Confederation), assumed all of the debt incurred by the individual states during the war. This put the Federal Debt at just over $75 million in 1790. In the early years of the nation, the Federal Government remained quite small (and frugal), thus they were able to pay down about half the debt before the War of 1812 broke out and debt began to accumulate again. After the War of 1812, the government started paying down the debt again. This was a continuous cycle – War/Increase debt, then Peace /Decrease debt – and thus was until World War II. At the end of WWII, the US was a prosperous place, everyone was making money, quality of life was being raised across most of the country. And the Federal Government was spending money too - building roads, loans and grants for veterans, helping people across the country. But they weren't paying down their debt. Then the Cold War took hold and the fight against communism caused the Federal Government to increase the Federal Debt tenfold, from $260 billion in 1945 to $2.60 trillion in 1988. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, you would think that the Federal Government would scale back and start paying off the debt, right? Alas, no. As the victorious superpower, the US had to maintain its vigilance, policing the world and protecting democracy from dictators and tyrants. Kuwait, Somalia, Panama, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, just to name a few. And spending was up domestically, on corporate welfare (tax credits, bailouts and subsidies), individual welfare programs, stateside defense infrastructures and education. In the last 17 years the Federal Debt more than tripled to its current level of $7.9 trillion.

Who is responsible for this debt? We all are. We elect a Congress and President, Congress fights to get more Federal funds back into their home districts, the President spends Federal funds to keep a strong American presence in the world, while trying to keep taxes lower to help whatever special interest group happy. We all re-elect them because we get something for "free" and we like that the world is becoming "Americanized." It is about time we break the cycle that has perpetuated for the last several generations.

But how can the Federal Government ever pay this down? Just like we do any other debt. First, they have to stop spending more than they take in. It sounds simple, but it can be difficult, as many of us know. Second, they need to establish a repayment schedule that pays towards the interest and the principle balance. Based on the current estimates from the President's Fiscal Year 2006 Budget, the interest on the Federal Debt is approximately $211 billion or 2.42% (I wish my mortgage was that low). I would set up a payment schedule of $400 billion annually (about 4.5% of the FY06 debt), the Federal Debt could be paid off in 31 years (by 2037). This is the equivalent of putting an amount equal to the Defense budget towards the Federal Debt each year (not including the interest payment, which is already in the budget). Alternatively, if this is more than the taxpayers feel comfortable with, set up a payment schedule of $300 billion annually (about 3.5% of the FY06 debt), in which case the Federal Debt could be paid off in 50 years (by 2056). This is less of a burden, but it still pays off the debt within the next generation.
Keeping a balanced budget is key to this. I propose a Constitutional Amendment to stop overspending unless absolutely necessary. Yes, there may be times when the Federal Government will need to borrow money, but it must be limited and there must be a finite plan to pay it back. It is the only way we can ensure that our future generations will have a future unburdened by our spendthrift ways.

What's New?

Yes, it has been a few weeks since I last posted anything. I have been working on a few thing to post, but as usual they have been taking longer than I thought they would. I have been researching several things that are hot buttons for our Federal Government's abuse of citizens' rights, including the Fed's control of the oil industry (or is it the other way around?), illegal taxation (income tax - see the link to Arthur Farnsworth trial site at right) and recent violations of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights. There is sooo much stuff out there to pick from on all these topics, it is difficult to choose the right ones. I will do what I can to finish them and post them as quickly as I can.

Until then, all I ask from you is to question everything that the Federal Government does. Read your Constitution, and compare what the President, Congress and the Supreme Court does against this document. Search the internet for both sides of every story, and make your own judgement on the issues at hand. I know I will do nothing less, and as citizens of the United States, I implore you to do the same!

I leave you with this quote from a former President, Theodore Roosevelt:
"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmen of today."