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Democracy, Tyranny, and the NPV Compact

“The Constitution is nicely balanced, with the federative and popular principles; the Senate are the guardians of the former, and the House of Representatives of the latter; and any attempts to destroy this balance, under whatever specious names or pretenses they may be presented, should be watched with a jealous eye.” — Senator Uriah Tracy, in the U.S. Senate debates over the proposed 12th Amendment (adopted 1804)

“The mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. The most plausible of these, who has appeared in print, has even deigned to admit that the election of the president is pretty well guarded. I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm, that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. It unites in an eminent degree all the advantages, the union of which was to be wished for.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 68

“No matter what happens in America these days — whether by fate or by plan — there is almost always another agenda or some underlying hitch ancillary to the main theme. The Bush-Gore election crisis of 2000 was nothing but a comic opera compared to the events subsequently stemming from it. Among the far more serious evils attributable to the contested election result in Florida is a loud and clear trumpet call for America to DUMP THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE and replace it with direct national elections.” — Don Fotheringham, January, 2001

Overview: The National Popular Vote (NPV) interstate compact seeks to overturn an important part of the plan America’s founders gave us for selecting a president. The drive for the compact is well on its way to becoming reality.  Working below the public radar, the drive has already convinced many state legislatures to join the compact.  This scheme has flourished because it promises to further enthrone the false idol “democracy,” which our founders recognized as a tool of tyrants (we are a Republic, a rule of law, not a democracy).  In this article, we will examine the beguiling NPV pretenses, the original plan of those who wrote our Constitution, how their plan has already been perverted, and why the NPV Compact is a dangerous step in the wrong direction.  And most importantly we will provide readers with the information and perspective they will need to influence legislators in their state to resist the drive.

Anyone researching the drive for an NPV (National Popular Vote) compact between states confronts a bewildering paradox:

  • As the NPV website says openly: “The shortcomings of the current system of electing the President stem [not from the Electoral College, but rather] from ‘winner-take-all’ laws that have been enacted by state legislatures in 48 states.”
  • Yet, what the NPV compact does, in essence, is not to repeal or neutralize these state laws, but instead to translate this “winner-take-all” electoral system from the state-vote level to the national-vote level!

Clearly, there’s more going on here than meets the eye: A national drive which would nullify the Electoral College — without actually abolishing it — justifies its agenda by a critique that points rather to a very different, almost diametrically opposite solution. If we’re to understand the NPV-compact drive, this paradox needs an explanation.

What are the drive’s complaints, then? Why is the Electoral College immune to the critique? Why, and when, did the states’ “winner-take-all” laws arise? And, why does the NPV seek to rectify them with such a strange, unseemly antidote? In answering these questions, we shall draw heavily on the NPV’s own website — mainly to deflect suspicion that we are misrepresenting their position.

The NPV Website’s Complaints
To its credit, the NPV website’s helpful “explanation” page attributes only to state “winner-take-all” laws — rather than to the Electoral College — the situations which it decries. It is quite correct in blaming these situations on these state laws — which have strongly interfered with the functioning and fundamental intent of the (so-called) Electoral College which the Constitution outlines — and, in saying that these state laws have no basis in the Constitution.

The complaints which one finds on this webpage are curious, though, in that clearly they are based on policy-values having little to do with the foundational American system and philosophy of government. Consequently, for those of us not starting from alien, non-American values, the three “issues” the group raises are without force — even if their connections of cause and effect are valid.

The two complaints which the webpage lists first will unlikely tug on the heartstrings of many: One is that “Because of these state winner-take-all statutes, presidential candidates have no reason to pay attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion.”

This complaint assumes — quite contrary to America’s founding fathers — that campaigning and getting voter-input are both vital parts of a presidential election. Moreover, it makes the outlandish assumption that an electoral candidate who does campaign should be careful to do so just as much in districts where support is overwhelmingly for or against that candidate. (What political campaign-advisor ever urged such a thing?)

The second complaint is scarcely more captivating: “State winner-take-all statutes adversely affect governance. ‘Battleground’ states receive 7% more federal grants than ‘spectator’ states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.” But given that all these examples of skewed “governance” are unconstitutional, gratuitous, and illegitimate to begin with, blaming them on the electoral laws seems off-target.

The complaint which people will most likely have heard, the website expresses thus:

“[B]ecause of state winner-take-all statutes, five of our 45 Presidents have come into office without having won the most popular votes nationwide. The 2000 and 2016 elections are the most recent examples of elections in which a second-place candidate won the White House. Near-misses are also common under the current state-by-state winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes. A shift of 59,393 votes in Ohio in 2004 would have elected John Kerry despite President Bush’s nationwide lead of over 3,000,000 votes.”

Interestingly, this complaint is non-partisan: The data the webpage cites show clearly that Republican candidates may be affected by this phenomenon as well as may Democrats.

However, the complaint is also non-American, in the sense that it is based wholly on a non-American political-philosophical assumption — the bare, unargued assumption that presidents should not “come into office without having won the most popular votes nationwide.” The website neglects to elucidate why such an occurrence would be reprehensible.

More fundamentally, it fails to explain why there should be, in any U.S. presidential election, such a number as the “popular votes nationwide.” Nowhere does the Constitution suggest this — not even in the 12th Amendment (which modified the workings of the Electoral College). However, understanding this requires at least a basic overview of the Electoral College, as the Constitution establishes it — a detour which we shall now briefly take.

The “Electoral College”
Regrettably, that NPV webpage seems to buy into the primary misconception Americans hold about the Electoral College: for it states [emphasis ours]:

“The U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 1) gives the states exclusive control over awarding their electoral votes: ‘Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….’ The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is state law. It is not in the U.S. Constitution.”

On the contrary — not only is the “winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes … not in the U.S. Constitution,” neither is this whole, bizarre notion of state legislatures’ “awarding their electoral votes.”

The “electors” which the Constitution directs each state to appoint were not “messenger-boys” obligated to cast votes as directed; rather, they were the persons appointed in each state (in whatever way the state legislature chose), to cast their free, uncoerced votes to nominate other persons they deemed suitable for the offices of president and vice-president.[1] Except when a majority of the electors voted for the same person, the election of the president — from among the candidates with the most electoral votes — was then to be made by the House of Representatives — with each state’s delegation casting one vote.[2]

It is crucial to understand that neither in the original Constitution, nor under the 12th Amendment, were electors to be obligated, or even influenced, by either their state legislatures, or other Electors (from their own or other states):

“It is significant to note that there was to be no connection with the Electors of other states, no campaigning, no trading of votes for future influence, or “supporting your program if you support mine.” They were to give it their best shot first — because that was the only shot they had.

“In fact, the Electors met in their separate states on the same day to avoid the chance of collaborating with the Electors from other states during this process. The Electors in each state were able to freely discuss among themselves which individuals were most qualified to be president. They were not, however, forced to conform to the nominations of other Electors from their state. Each Elector’s independent decision of which two individuals to nominate was preserved and respected.” — Gary and Carolyn Alder, The Evolution and Destruction of the Original Electoral College, pp. 23, 24

In order to help ensure this independence, no elector could be a “Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States.”

Each state was allotted as many electoral votes as it has legislators in Congress — i.e., one vote for each of its representatives in the House, plus two votes for the state’s senators. Perhaps the most natural selection method(s), then, would construe two of the state’s electors as being delegates of the state (or the legislature) as a whole, and each remaining elector as a delegate from one of the state’s electoral districts for U.S. House of Representatives.

The latter is still the basic idea in those states which are currently eschewing “winner-take-all” laws: Maine and Nebraska. But each state legislature could adopt any method it wished for selection of its electors; and different states adopted widely varying methods. The NPV “explanation” webpage reports:

“In 1789, electors were chosen from congressional districts in Massachusetts, from special presidential-elector districts in Virginia, and by counties in Delaware. The Governor and his Council appointed the state’s presidential electors in New Jersey. State legislatures appointed presidential electors in the other states.”

The States’ “Winner-Take-All” Laws
We’ve noted that the NPV website’s arguments against states’ “winner-take-all” laws are, rather curiously, without force for those of us not buying into their policy-value assumptions — so alien to the American system. However, this does not mean that we have no complaint(s) of our own, against such laws.

In light of what we’ve just seen about the Constitution’s presidential-electoral system (commonly called the “Electoral College”), the most important thing to understand about “winner-take-all” laws is that any law (state or federal) which compels a presidential elector to vote any particular way is blatantly unconstitutional! That includes, of course, the NPV Compact.

Secondly, it’s helpful to note that such laws, at the state level, are the basis of the unconstitutional party-based-presidential-nomination systems in the 48 states with current “winner-take-all” laws. In these states, the electoral procedure these days is basically this: Each of the major parties selects a whole roster of provisional “electors” who are ready and sworn to serve as electors — and to vote for that party’s candidate — should that candidate happen to win the state’s popular vote. In the latter eventuality, the state legislature then anoints (so to speak) that party’s roster, as the state’s official electors for the election.

The nomination-function was originally the role of the electors. It was usurped first at the national level — by what were called “congressional caucuses.” By 1828, though, the usurpation had moved to the state level: The first election year in which the political parties and their “caucus” meetings at the state level assumed control of the nominating process, was 1832.[3]

Surprisingly, it took less time than that for most states to try out a “winner-take-all” type of statute. The first heavily competitive election, that of 1796, raised strongly the question of whether states’ electors should be chosen “by a general ticket [winner-take-all], or by districts”:  This was how Democratic-Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson framed the issue in a subsequent letter (Jan. 12, 1800) to James Monroe, then governor of Virginia — and likewise a Democratic-Republican.

Jefferson was still smarting from having lost the presidency by only three electoral votes “because presidential electors were chosen by district in the heavily Jeffersonian states of Virginia and North Carolina, and Jefferson lost one district in each state.”[4] In addition, both major parties (Democratic-Republican and Federalist) were disgruntled by the fact that the Electoral College system had engendered a bipartisan team of President (Federalist John Adams) and Vice-President (Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson).[5]

In his letter, Jefferson mentioned to Governor Monroe:

“On the subject of an election by a general ticket [winner-take-all], or by districts, … all agree that an election by districts would be best, if it could be general [to all states]; but while 10 states choose either by their legislatures or by a general ticket [winner-take-all], it is folly and worse than folly for the other 6 not to do it.”

Gov. Monroe took the hint, and the Virginia legislature swung into action:

“As a result, Virginia quickly passed a winner-take-all law in time for the 1800 election —​ thereby assuring Jefferson of all the state’s electoral votes.

“Meanwhile, the Federalist majority in the legislature of John Adam’s home state of Massachusetts —​ alarmed by rising support for Jefferson in the state —​ repealed the state’s district system —​ thereby assuring John Adams of all the state’s electoral votes in 1800.

“This triggered a domino effect in which each state’s dominant political party adopted winner-take-all so that it could deliver the maximum number of electoral votes to its party’s nominee. Ten states enacted winner-take-all by 1824….

“By 1836, all but one state had enacted laws specifying that their state’s voters would vote for presidential electors on a winner-take-all basis. By 1880, all states were using this system.”[6] — NPV “explanation” webpage

And, as they say, “the rest is history.”

The Strange “NPV” Antidote
Summing up: We’ve found that we who are Constitutionalists are in strong agreement with the NPV group, that the state “winner-take-all” laws are egregious — but we are in fundamental disagreement with them, as to why those laws are (in our respective views) egregious. What is less simple to elucidate, though, is why the NPV group’s action-proposal — the interstate-compact which they are pushing — displays no intent to do away with those state laws, even though it lodged all its complaints directly against them — and why it is even, in an important sense, a higher-level establishment of the same corrupt, “winner-take-all” system which those laws undergird.

What do we mean, by its “displaying no intent” to do away with the laws it is critiquing? Let’s look at exactly what the NPV group is proposing.

They are seeking for states to enter into a compact to force their electors to vote for whomever is the winner of the “National Popular Vote.” The compact would not be binding on any state signing it, until the total number of electoral votes of the states signing it is a majority of all the electoral votes.

Since Congress has 535 members, but the District of Columbia has also been given three electors, the total number of electors is 538; so, the required majority of electors is 270. When the compact enrolls states controlling at least that number of electors and those states’ electors are therefore required to vote for the national popular-vote winner, that candidate is (ostensibly) guaranteed election.

As we’ve mentioned already, this proposal is establishing something that’s clearly unconstitutional — the violation of electors’ constitutional right and duty to nominate the qualified persons whom their conscience tells them are the best nominees. That this is so clearly and incontrovertibly the case, while the NPV site argues nevertheless to the contrary, raises serious questions about the veracity and reliability of the NPV-site’s authors (and editors).

Even the NPV website admits (see its alleged “rebuttals” 9.16.2 and 9.16.7):

“[T]he Compacts Clause does not expand state powers. All compacts must be consistent with the U.S. Constitution. In particular, a compact’s subject matter must be among the powers that the states are permitted to exercise….”

As we’ve seen as well, though, they make a grave, even bizarre error, in conflating states’ (constitutional) power to “appoint electors” in any manner they wish, with their (unconstitutional, illegal) power to “award electoral votes” in (allegedly) any way they wish (e.g., “winner-take-all”). And this bizarre confusion appears, not just once, but repeatedly on the website’s pages — particularly on the pages where it is ostensibly “answering myths.”

On the basis of that (false) conflation of two very different notions, it argues that this compact does not violate the Constitution, nor change the electoral procedure stipulated in the Constitution. Much of the verbiage on its “Myths about Interstate Compacts and Congressional Consent” page boils down to this simple, but obviously unsound argument:

  1. “[T]he National Popular Vote compact does not change anything in the U.S. Constitution, and therefore no federal constitutional amendment is necessary …. Instead, the National Popular Vote compact changes state winner-take-all statutes that came into widespread use more than four decades after the Constitution was ratified. None of these state winner-take-all statutes was originally adopted by means of a federal constitutional amendment.” (Under “Myth 9.16.7”)
    1.  The state laws say (in effect): “Following the election, the state will appoint electors who are to cast all their votes for the STATE popular vote winner.”
    2.  The compact changes these state laws, to say (in effect): “Following the election, electors will be appointed in each Member State who are to cast all their votes for the NATIONAL popular vote winner.
  2. (And this is the faulty premise:) Nothing about state “winner-take-all” laws violates the actual procedural requirements laid down in the Constitution; for each state has the Constitutional authority to “award electoral votes” in any way it wishes (e.g., “winner-take-all”).
  3. So, no Constitutional amendment is necessary to effect this change: for not only does this compact leave unchanged the wording of the Constitution; also,it leaves unchanged — i.e., unviolated — the actual procedure required by the Constitution.

Thus, not only are the NPV group’s arguments for the desirability of its changes  based on highly disputable premises; but also, its argument for the legality of its changes, is based on an indisputably false one. So, the question is: Why would a group of presumably intelligent people be presenting — so zealously — such unsound arguments?

There are not very many plausible answers to this. Indeed, we have seen that both the current system’s and the NPV-engineered system’s proponents are quite comfortable with running roughshod over the Constitutional prerogatives of the electors, for the sake of a direct, popular-vote-based presidential election. The difference between the two is thus a surface difference, of implementation and tactics, only.

Let’s take an analogy: It is much like the difference between banks independently allowed to issue their own fiat paper money as “legal tender,” and a centralized banking system, in which only the head office is allowed that piratic privilege. Whether centralized and thus more-coordinated or not, the system is based on a breach of rights. And in either of the more-centralized systems we have in view, though the bumpiness of the road might be rather smoothed out, the danger that the road is heading to disaster — and the potential size of that disaster — are,if anything, actually greater.

The only plausible motive for the compact, it seems, is the same one that belonged, reportedly, to the men who set up the perverted system we have now — the lure of power:

“Ten states enacted winner-take-all by 1824 when Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton said: ‘The general ticket system [winner-take-all], now existing in 10 States was … not [the offspring] of any disposition to give fair play to the will of the people. It was adopted by the leading men of those states, to enable them to consolidate the vote of the State.’”— NPV “explanation” webpage

This lure exists because granting the populace the conceit that it is in their own values and desires, and the vicissitudes of party temper, that the compass of sound government lies, promises demagogues a road to the heights of tyrannical power. Even before our Constitution was submitted for ratification, one founding father spoke of this conceit as the “excess of democracy”, and described its typical abuse by power-seekers:

“The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want [lack] virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Mass[achusetts] it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute.” — Elbridge Gerry, delegate from Massachusetts, speaking at the Constitutional Convention, 1787

And James Madison warned us of this same conceit, in a classic statement of the dangers of this “excess”:

“[Pure] democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”— James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10

The Way Forward
What should be done, instead, about our current electoral system? Given a desideratum of nullifying state’s “winner-take-all” laws — and any laws that coerce or obligate presidential electors — and given that it was fear of other states’ such laws that drove the domino effect of passing them — the idea of a state compact seems apt: Why not an NEV (National Electoral Vote) compact? When enough states have joined (having 270 electoral votes?), they would each be obliged to rescind immediately their laws that coerce or obligate their presidential electors in any way.

That’s something to be thought about, and worked through. In the meantime, though, we should certainly reject the NPV-group’s agenda. That whole program is an attempt to “remedy” — for the wrong reasons, and with the wrong motive — one grotesque perversion of the Constitution, simply by translating its basic state-vote infringement, to a national-vote scope. This is not the way to get our republic back.

Rather, we need to educate our fellow citizens, and especially our state legislators, about both the fraudulence and the ill-intention of the NPV. (To see whether or not your state has adopted the compact, please check the NPV website’s home-page.) If you have found this article a useful tool for education about those things, please share it with all who need to learn of them.

Notes

1. Their votes were, of course, restricted by the Constitution’s rules about who is eligible to be President or Vice-President; and, in both Article II and Amendment 12, at least one of each elector’s two votes had to be for someone not “an inhabitant of the same State with themselves.”
2. The main change the 12th Amendment introduced is that the two nominations each elector made were now specific to a particular office: one nomination was for the office of president, and the other for the office of vice-president. Also, the Amendment made some minor adjustments to the process of final selection by the House, for each of these offices.
3. Alder & Alder, Ibid., pp. 54, 55. This is a useful book for studying the history of the Electoral College.
4. NPV “explanation” webpage, under “History of State Winner-Take-All Laws.”
5. Alder & Alder, Ibid., pp. 60, 61.
6. Maine adopted district elections for its electors in 1969, and Nebraska did so in 1992.

The Wacky World of “Delegate Bills”

Opponents of state legislatures’ applications to Congress to call an “Article V Convention” are often also battling “delegate bills” — also known as “unfaithful delegate laws.” Such state-legislative bills are ostensibly intended to prevent delegates to an Art. V convention from going beyond the purpose of the state’s request to Congress — which is usually a convention that will propose only one amendment, and only on some specific topic (e.g., term limits).

On first blush, it might seem that by opposing delegate bills, opponents of an Art. V Convention (“Con-con”) are fighting contrary to their own interest: After all, such activists warn against a possible “runaway convention” and preventing that outcome is (supposedly) what delegate bills are for!

In fact, though, a delegate bill is only somewhat less dangerous than an actual Con-con-application by a state. This post will unravel the real nature, and danger, of these bills.

Delegate Bills’ Implicit Assumption Is What Con-con Opponents Reject

Usually, when someone opposes a measure, it’s because they want to avoid the effects mentioned in the measure itself. But in the case of “delegate bills,” we oppose the measure because we want to avoid anyone accepting the false suggestion implicit within the measure.[1]

In delegate bills, the false, dangerous unstated presupposition is the idea that state legislatures can control the proceedings of an Article V convention, once Congress has called it! For a state-legislative committee or chamber even to vote on such a bill is for it to accept implicitly this wildly specious assumption — which assumption, if the bill passes, can only give the state’s legislators false confidence that they can apply for an Article V Con-con with perfect safety.

Therefore, we must oppose any move to bring a delegate bill to a vote. But if it does come to a vote, we must push strongly for the rejection of the bill — which rejection will obstruct the inducement of this false confidence, and thereby make less likely the passage of an Art. V application (and make more likely the rescission of any application already passed).

Are delegate bills really as disconnected from reality, though, as Con-con opponents believe? Oh, yes! The rest of this post will review why the delegate bills’ unstated assumption is truly outlandish.

The Basic American Principle Which That Assumption Ignores

In the first place, the delegate bills’ unstated assumption is strikingly out of touch with a fundamental principle of government our Founding Fathers believed, and which is implicit in the first three words of our Constitution: “We the People….” Our Declaration of Independence stated the principle explicitly (see our emphasis, below, in bold):

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. — The United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776; Paragraph 2

OK, you say; but did the Founding Fathers, and the People, really believe this principle (which was later called “Popular Sovereignty”) from 1776 to 1787 (the year a convention produced our current Constitution, including Article V)? Yes, definitely — the principle had become very dear to their hearts: In fact, they used it in the creation of, and then re-stated the principle in, the constitutions for most of their newly-freed states.

Therefore, the burden of proof is certainly on those, such as Prof. Rob Natelson, who claim that the drafters of our current Constitution had a quite different notion of constitutions, conventions, and sovereignty in mind while drafting Article V! But there is little need to quibble about who has the burden of proof, for even the founders they most like to quote disagree: we can cite telling statements from both Roger Sherman and George Mason regarding Article V — both of whom were in the group that did the major work on its drafting.

Moreover, we have the full, clear statement of another major participant in its drafting, James Madison, who later, in Federalist Paper 40 (the last 4 paragraphs), cited the Declaration of Independence on this very principle to justify the “runaway convention” of 1787. For Madison, that convention exemplified:

the transcendent and precious right of the people to “abolish or alter their governments as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness,”….

At that 1787 convention, in arguing for giving the People, rather than state legislatures, power to ratify the new Constitution, George Mason expressed the principle well:

[State legislatures] are the mere creatures of the State Constitutions, and cannot be greater than their creators.… Whither then must we resort? To the people with whom all power remains that has not been given up in the Constitution derived from them. It was of great moment [Mason] observed that this doctrine should be cherished as the basis of free Government. — Max Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. II, p. 88

Therefore, since clearly the kind of drafting-convention Article V has in view is a convention of The People’s (not the legislatures’) delegates, we can affirm that within the American philosophy of government, state legislatures have no authority at all to command Article V convention delegates as to what they may or may not propose. So much, then, for the viewpoint of American jurisprudence.

But, someone might say — granted, Article V conventions are true constitutional conventions, exercising the People’s sovereign, “self-evident” right to “alter or abolish” forms of government. Even so, couldn’t state legislatures still figure out some way, possibly, to control the delegates to an Article V convention? Aren’t some of these delegate bills quite inventive, after all, in the mechanisms they contrive for making the convention-delegates toe the line? Isn’t it remotely possible, that some of those mechanisms might work?

The Insurmountable Legal Hurdles over Which the Assumption Stumbles

As we shall see, blogger and former litigation-attorney Publius Huldah is right on target in the way she has answered that question: “[A]ttempts to control Delegates with ‘unfaithful delegate’ laws are laughably ineffective.” Let’s consider a few simple reasons why that’s true — even leaving aside, for the moment, the above basic principle of American jurisprudence.

Many or most delegate bills speak as if it were completely up to state legislatures to sort out who the delegates will be (representing the legislature, after all — as these bills wrongly presuppose!), as well as, all the rules and procedures of the convention itself. In short, the people drafting delegate bills tend to do it as if Article V adds, “After Congress calls the (drafting) convention, the State Legislatures shall all go off and figure out everything about how the convention will run: who will be sent to it, what motions shall be in order when, etc., etc.”

Does it say that, though? No, Article V does not say that. It says simply, “The Congress … on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments.…” After applying to Congress to call such a convention, the state legislatures have no further role in the process.

Admittedly, neither does Article V delegate to Congress (explicitly) such tasks as providing a selection-method for delegates. However, Article I, Sec. 8 concludes with the “Necessary and Proper Clause,” which delegates to Congress the right to make any laws “necessary and proper for carrying into execution” all powers given to Congress explicitly in the Constitution — e.g., the Art. V power to “call a convention for proposing amendments” when two-thirds of the states apply for it.

The Congressional Research Service, an agency within the Library of Congress, suggests that Congress alone has the power to organize the convention.  In its 2014 report entitled “The Article V Convention to Propose Constitutional Amendments: Contemporary Issues for Congress,” the Research Service states on page 4:

[W]hile the Constitution is silent on the mechanics of an Article V convention, Congress has traditionally laid claim to broad responsibilities in connection with a convention, including (1) receiving, judging, and recording state applications; (2) establishing procedures to summon a convention; (3) setting the amount of time allotted to its deliberations; (4) determining the number and selection process for its delegates; (5) setting internal convention procedures, including formulae for allocation of votes among the states; and (6) arranging for the formal transmission of any proposed amendments to the states.

Another mechanism one finds in some delegate laws is reminiscent of children playing in a schoolyard, where one of the children, not liking the way the game is going, announces huffily he is through, picks up his toys, and heads for home. Apparently, some state legislators believe that a similar behavior on the part of their delegates, in case the Art. V convention doesn’t go the way they like, will not merely show their displeasure, but also somehow pull the plug on the convention, ending its work.

One way to look at this remarkable assumption is to ask whether Article V says (or implies somehow) that the convention’s work will not be considered to have completed legitimately unless no state legislature withdraws its application, before the work’s completion. But of course, it does not say (or imply) that; nor is there the slightest reason, in the Article itself or in American jurisprudence or legal history, to imagine that a state’s application has any further effect once Congress has accepted and tallied it.

One final delegate-control mechanism we shall consider is the legislature’s threat of punishment — or at least, withdrawal from the convention — of any delegate who votes contrary to the intent of the state’s application for a convention. Indeed, some delegate bills have classified all such “unfaithful” voting punishable as a felony!

Such a mechanism assumes, however, that the state legislature will be kept strictly apprised of what’s going on within the convention — including, who voted how on what. But this is a spurious assumption.  Since state legislatures do not control its procedures, the convention could have voice votes — in which case no one knows who voted how — or, even if the votes be by rollcall, they could be by secret ballot. Or, the secrecy could be made complete: As happened early in our own, 1787 constitutional convention, the assembly could simply vote to keep the entire proceedings secret!

Thus — as we said above — state legislators are quite divorced from reality when they suggest that they can control an Article V convention’s deliberations. Often, it is difficult not to laugh at the ingenious but impotent devices whereby they expect to control such a convention.

However, it is not mere courtesy that prevents us from laughing at these failed attempts. For the danger that these incapable delegate bills present is not a laughing matter: Our brilliant Constitution, a true wonder of the ages, is in danger! We must make clear to all state legislators enticed by these siren songs, that “delegate bills” cannot control an Article V convention!

 * * *

[1] That is to say, whether the measure should be passed or rejected is, in the case of delegate bills, not a simple, but a “complex” (a.k.a. “loaded”) question! And as logicians and rhetoricians warn,

A “loaded question”, like a loaded gun, is a dangerous thing. A loaded question is a question with a false or questionable presupposition, and it is “loaded” with that presumption. The question “Have you stopped beating your wife?” presupposes that you have beaten your wife prior to its asking, as well as that you have a wife. If you are unmarried, or have never beaten your wife, then the question is loaded.…

So, a loaded question is one which you cannot answer directly without implying a falsehood or a statement that you deny. For this reason, the proper response to such a question is not to answer it directly, but to either refuse to answer or to reject the question. — http://www.fallacyfiles.org/loadques.html

 

GOP Fails to Protect the Unborn — Mike Lee

Under this bill, neither the unborn nor taxpayers are any more protected from the abortion industry than they were under President Obama and a unified Democratic Congress….

This bill represents a significant opportunity missed — and missed at a time when we can’t be sure how many more we will be given going forward, how many more opportunities like this one we might have. — Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), 9-18-18

On September 18th, the Senate “debated” the House-Senate “compromise” on the FY2019 Defense Appropriations bill (Senate Vote 212).  Earlier the Senate leadership had attached the unrelated Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill to the Defense bill in order to bring the big-government Democrats on board.  Only 7 senators voted against the “compromise,” which was very much like their earlier minibus.

During the ostensible debate, Senator Mike Lee took the podium to put on record why he was voting against the bipartisan measure:

For the second straight year of unified Republican governance — unified pro-life governance — Congress’s annual spending bills will include no new reforms protecting unborn children or getting Federal taxpayers out of the abortion business.

The House version of this Health and Human Services spending bill included multiple reforms. It denied taxpayer funds to the largest abortion provider in the country, Planned Parenthood. It eliminated title X family planning grants, which cross-subsidize abortion providers. It prohibited Federal funding of research on aborted fetal tissue. It included the Conscience Protection Act protecting pro-life people and groups from funding discrimination.

None of these modest, commonsense spending reforms survived the House-Senate negotiations — none of them. None was made a priority by the people empowered to set the priorities….

But before this bill passes with an overwhelming bipartisan supermajority as its base of support — despite it being mostly unread by its supporters — someone ought to speak up for the Americans whom this legislation conspicuously leaves behind….

Some causes are worth fighting for, even in defeat — the God-given equal rights and the dignity of all human beings paramount among them. — [Emphasis added.]

Instead of following Senator Lee’s example, Senate appropriators touted bipartisan compromise and insisted, hypocritically, that in the interest of such compromise and getting things done on time, they had eliminated so-called controversial “poison pills” from the legislation.   But attaching the largely unconstitutional and unrelated Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill to the Defense bill was itself such an act.   In fact, in the House, 56 Republicans rejected this compromise to the Left, but only 5 Democrats (see House Roll Call 405).

Here are some examples (excerpts from the debates) [Emphasis added]:

Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), member Appropriations Committee:  “This is a bipartisan agreement…. Today’s bill, I think, reflects the priorities of both sides of the Capitol and both sides of the aisle. We fulfilled the commitments the leaders made in the February budget agreement to keep the extraneous issues off these bills that fund the government.”

Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee:  “Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues,  particularly Leaders McConnell and Schumer and Vice Chairman Leahy for  their help in moving this package. The conference report before the Senate accelerates the rebuilding of America’s military and provides our men and women in uniform with the largest pay increase in nearly a decade.

“It also increases NIH’s budget by $2 billion and provides  critical resources to combat the opioid epidemic. And, it contains no poison pill riders.   On the whole, the conference report tracks very closely with the Senate version of this package, which passed by a vote of 85 to 7. I hope it will receive the same level of support today and urge my colleagues to vote yes.”  

Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), member Appropriations Committee:  “In conclusion, the outcome of much of this bill shows what we can  accomplish when Democrats and Republicans work together.”

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), ranking Democrat on Appropriations Committee:  “The two bills in the package before us — the Defense bill and the Labor-HHS-Education bill — are a product of hard work and bipartisan cooperation….

“We are still in conference on a four-bill minibus…. Most of the funding issues have been resolved. We do have some controversial poison pill riders.  We shouldn’t delay this package over unrelated policy matters that have no place on must-pass spending bills. Get the poison pills out and pass the bills.”

Such audacity! With the Health and Human Services bill attached to the Defense bill it is very much germane to decide whether or not to fund abortion providers with taxpayer money.  It’s just a matter of which group GOP senator leaders wanted to cater to — members of their own party or openly radical socialists.   Senator Lee comments:

The best measure of any government or any policy or proposal can be  measured according to its impact on the least among us. Too often today, Washington acts as though “the least among us” refers to our most vulnerable incumbents rather than our most vulnerable constituents. This $1.3 trillion spending bill exemplifies that very confusion and fails that very test….

I understand that fighting on contentious issues comes with a cost. I  understand that it is not easy. But other things come with a cost too.  It is not just this that comes with a cost — so, too, does not fighting on them, especially in the rare moments when we could win. This bill represents a significant opportunity missed — and missed at a time when we can’t be sure how many more we will be given going forward, how many more opportunities like this one we might have. Some causes are worth fighting for, even in defeat — the God-given equal rights and the dignity of all human beings paramount among them. [Emphasis added.]

Senator Lee’s complete remarks
For your interest, we include here the complete text of Senator Lee’s remarks as reported in the Congressional Record (9-18-18) [Emphasis added]:

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah):  “Mr. President, I am a Republican because I am a conservative. I am a conservative because I believe the Constitution  and the ideals that it asserts on behalf of the American people are worth protecting, worth defending, even when they are untimely, even when they are unpopular, and especially for the vulnerable, for the marginalized, and for the forgotten among us.

“Equal rights, equal opportunity, equal justice under the law, equal dignity under God — we fail as Americans when we violate these ideals, when we neglect them to whatever degree, when we exclude some number of  our neighbors from their God-given share of our common inheritance,  when we declare in the interest of expedience and in defiance of our  own national creed that some people somehow are less equal than others.

“Such was the cruelty of our Nation through our laws, long-visited on  African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and ethnic minorities,  on women, on the disabled, and on religious minorities, including  religious minorities like my own forebears as members of the Church of  Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   Happily, this is no longer the case. Happily, all of these groups — who, taken together, comprise the vast majority of all Americans — were at different times in our history affirmatively brought under the  protection of our laws. This work of inclusion, of expanding the circle of legal and constitutional protection, was not a natural, organic,  spontaneous, evolutionary process; it was the product of hard work — the  work of vigilant citizens, activists, and lawmakers who affirmatively,  aggressively, painstakingly advanced the cause of justice at every  opportunity, even against the entrenched forces of the political status quo.   Republicans in this Congress have undertaken such efforts on behalf  of certain priorities — in particular, the tax relief and spending  increases that are poised to yield a budget deficit of nearly $1 trillion this year.

“But no such legislative progress has been achieved advancing the right to life nor the plight of those denied it. For the second straight year of unified Republican governance — unified pro-life governance — Congress’s annual spending bills will include no new reforms protecting unborn children or getting Federal taxpayers out of the abortion business. The House version of this Health and Human Services spending bill included multiple reforms. It denied taxpayer funds to the largest abortion provider in the country, Planned Parenthood. It eliminated title X family planning grants, which cross-subsidize abortion providers. It prohibited Federal funding of research on aborted fetal tissue. It included the Conscience Protection Act protecting pro-life people and groups from funding discrimination.

“None of these modest, commonsense spending reforms survived the House-Senate negotiations — none of them. None was made a priority by the people empowered to set the priorities. The authors of this bill defend their $1.3 trillion compromise. And of course, this being Washington, I know, as is always the case, that  in this case, it could always be worse. But before this bill passes with an overwhelming bipartisan supermajority as its base of support — despite it being mostly unread by its supporters — someone ought to speak up for the Americans whom this legislation conspicuously leaves behind.

“The best measure of any government or any policy or proposal can be  measured according to its impact on the least among us. Too often today, Washington acts as though “the least among us” refers to our most vulnerable incumbents rather than our most vulnerable constituents. This $1.3 trillion spending bill exemplifies that very confusion and fails that very test. Under this bill, neither the unborn nor taxpayers are any more protected from the abortion industry than they were under President Obama and a unified Democratic Congress.

“I understand that fighting on contentious issues comes with a cost. I understand that it is not easy. But other things come with a cost too.  It is not just this that comes with a cost — so, too, does not fighting on them, especially in the rare moments when we could win. This bill represents a significant opportunity missed — and missed at a time when we can’t be sure how many more we will be given going forward, how many more opportunities like this one we might have.  Some causes are worth fighting for, even in defeat — the God-given equal rights and the dignity of all human beings paramount among them.   The arc of history may, as I hope, bend toward life, but only if we bend it. I oppose this legislation, but I do so neither in anger nor in sadness; rather, I do so in hope, looking forward to another bill, another time in the not-too-distant future, one that stands up for  those Americans who asked nothing more than the chance to one day stand  up for themselves. I yield the floor.”

How to Perpetuate Roe vs. Wade

Writing for Conservative Review about the “worthless” confirmation hearings for SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Daniel E. Horowitz starts with a question we consider fundamental:

How much longer are conservatives going to continue playing this cat-and-mouse game with the courts? Democrats have demonstrated that through their ideological extremism and shamelessness, they will savage any nominee, whether he is in the mold of Anthony Kennedy or Clarence Thomas. They will accuse us of litmus tests and having guarantees, as they absolutely have from every one of their lower court and Supreme Court nominees. So why not actually nominate a guaranteed Clarence Thomas who is unashamed to articulate the authentic view of the important constitutional clauses without playing the game of agreeing with premises of people who will never vote for you anyway?
— Daniel E. Horowitz, Top 9 observations on the worthless Kavanaugh hearings, September 6, 2018

Exactly. Given Trump’s opportunity to nominate a real constitutionalist to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy — who upheld Roe vs. Wade every time he had the chance — why waste it by nominating a clone of Kennedy?

Kavanaugh No Threat to Roe
Make no mistake: Despite Leftist propaganda, the Kavanaugh nomination poses no threat to Roe — a ruling which even a majority of liberal judicial scholars considers embarrassingly unconstitutional. Rather, this nomination’s perpetuation of Roe is much more likely:

When prompted by [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein on Roe and Casey, Kavanaugh emphatically referred to these cases as “precedent upon precedent.” It seems that with every new GOP nominee, with the exception of Alito, the nominees get more categorical with their agreement thatRoe is settled, and it seems that Kavanaugh used the most unqualified language…. Anyone who tells you [Kavanaugh] is likely to overturn Roe is lying. We just don’t know, and he certainly indicated the opposite. This was the 45-year promise, and it’s gone.
— Daniel E. Horowitz, ibid.

With regard to Trump, however, one must admit that the man never campaigned very seriously as anti-abortion or pro-family — or even constitutionalist. It is not really surprising, therefore, that he followed such bad “advice” as to nominate Kavanaugh.

Pro-Family Groups AWOL
What is shocking, even if it shouldn’t come as a real surprise, is that so many “Christian” and other allegedly “pro-family” groups — on the whole sadly AWOL, on family issues, since Trump’s inauguration — have supported or been at best wishy-washy about Kavanaugh’s confirmation. They are thus betraying their own constituency — including the tens of millions of unborn babies aborted because of the 1973 Roe ruling.

One notable exception to the “fecklessness” (Horowitz’s description) of conservative groups, re Kavanaugh, is the Judicial Action Group. Their Phillip L. Jauregui came out strongly against not only Kavanaugh’s nomination, but also his confirmation. (Unfortunately, Jauregui’s prediction of that confirmation’s failure was overly optimistic.) Also a very few conservative authors or journalists, including Cliff Kincaid and Gregg Jackson, have excoriated the Kavanaugh nomination and called for its rejection.

But again, these are the exception to the rule. Namby-pamby “pro-family” groups who expressed some doubts re Kavanaugh but remained non-committal pending his confirmation hearings, have swallowed the poisonous advice of well-known “Pied Piper” Tony Perkins, of the “Family Research Council”:

“Anyone who doubts Kavanaugh’s bona fides should keep in mind: this president has an exceptional track record on the judiciary,” says FRC’s Tony Perkins. “For the time being, we have to trust President Trump’s judgment — a benefit of the doubt that, based on his previous nominees, he’s earned.”
— OneNewsNow, Questions about Kavanaugh temper enthusiasm for Trump pick, July 11, 2018

Say what? Perkins is effectively advising us to put personality above principle. But conservatives, particularly Republicans, have had 60 years to notice how suicidal that strategy is. Nor has any media source — including any “right-wing” media — ever explained how that strategy makes any sense.

So, what does explain the recent AWOL and feckless nature of the “pro-family” lobby? There seems no shortage of money sloshing around in those groups; but, apparently, the agenda that these dollars are pushing is not really the “Christian,” pro-family, or Americanist one. Rather, their absence of principled opposition to Kavanaugh suggests a strange willingness to reinforce Roe vs. Wade as (horribly unconstitutional) judicial precedent.

True pro-family conservatives need to get much more selective, regarding to whom they send their hard-earned dollars — as well as, whom they support for their Congressional seats, and for other federal offices. One telltale sign of a group or campaign that is set up simply to siphon off conservative money and make it ineffective is that the group or campaign never mentions Congress’s constitutional power, in Art. III, Sec. 2, to restrict the jurisdiction of federal courts.

Restore Regular Order PLUS!

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 and the subsequent massive 1.3 trillion FY2018 omnibus appropriations bill are now fait accompli. So attention naturally shifts to FY 2019, which begins on October 1, 2018.

However, it’s important that the American people learn what’s wrong in Washington and what to do about it.  And a good place to start is to examine the FY 2018 appropriations process and the refusal of congressional leaders to restore regular order (separate votes on the 12 appropriations bills).

During the February 8 Senate debate over the Budget Act, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) gave a particularly eloquent explanation of what is wrong with the current last-minute appropriations process.  We repeat here, at length, some of his excellent remarks as recorded in the Congressional Record:

“Mr. President, we find ourselves in another position like those we have found ourselves in before. We find ourselves in a position in which the government’s spending authority is set to expire in just a few hours. We have known this was coming for weeks, just as we did with the last continuing resolution and the one before that and the one before that….

“Sometimes we are so focused on the policy and the price tag that we forget about the process.  It is primarily to this subject, the process, that I would like to turn my attention for the next few minutes….

“The Constitution is, itself, all about the process….  It is all about making sure that there is responsiveness and accountability from the government to the people, making sure that the government serves the people and not the other way around….

“Nowhere is this more important than when it comes to spending bills.   You see, it is in spending bills that we have the opportunity to exercise oversight over the Federal Government — a government that requires the American people to spend many months out of every year working just to pay their tax bills, a Federal Government that imposes  $2 trillion every single year in regulatory compliance costs on the American people, a government that has the power to destroy a business  or a livelihood or, in some cases, lives.

“It is important that we exercise this oversight, and without spending  constraints, there can be no meaningful oversight. Without an adequate process, the Republican form of government cannot fulfill its role. The American people are no longer in charge of their government when this  happens.

“For this reason, it is a little disturbing that a government that spends nearly $4 trillion every single year makes its spending decisions in one fell swoop as it does. You see, whenever we pass a continuing resolution, what we are doing as a Congress is effectively pressing a reset button. It keeps current spending levels intact, in place, unchanged, as if there were no reviewing body, as if there had been no election, as if the American people didn’t matter at all to the process by which they are governed.

“This is an abdication of our role as the people’s elected representatives. It disconnects the American people, and we wonder — we wonder why it is that this is an institution, Congress, that enjoys an approval rating somewhere between 9 and 14  percent, making us slightly less popular than Fidel and Raul Castro in America and only slightly more popular than the influenza virus, which  is rapidly gaining on us….

“We have a bill before us that is quite lengthy and that we have had access to for only about 24 hours — a little bit less than that — and we are asked to make a binary choice as to that legislation, yes or no.  Vote for it and, in this case, there are some things that you get. You get $90 billion in emergency spending. You get an increase of spending caps of about $300 billion over 2 years. You get in excess of $1 trillion in new debt. Some have estimated it could be more like $1.5 trillion, but we will be talking about a $22 trillion debt by the second quarter of 2019 as a result of this bill….

“Members are told over and over and over again: You are either going to vote for this and accept the government as is, with no changes or with changes that you might find incredibly disturbing, or you will be blamed for a shutdown. Why is this OK? …

“Through the amendment process, people offer up legislation, and they offer to improve legislation. If they have concerns with it, they can offer up amendments. When Members are denied that opportunity, the American people are disconnected yet again from that process.  Who benefits from this? Well, it certainly isn’t the American people, who find that their government gets bigger and more expensive. It does so at their expense, at the expense of the American people.

“Every time we undertake this process again — we pass another continuing resolution — we suggest that it is somehow OK to fund the government this way, with one decision affecting every aspect of government, in one vote put forward under sort of extortive circumstances in which Members are told: You have to do this, or the government is going to  shut down, and you will be blamed for that if you vote against it.

“This isn’t right. Why couldn’t we bring legislation to the floor not hours but weeks or even months before the deadline? Why couldn’t we allow that to occur, to allow the debate, the discussion to occur under the light of day rather than having this legislation negotiated under cover of darkness, behind closed doors, where the American people are left out?

“I have thought about this on many occasions, and there are very few circumstances in our day-to-day lives that are like the way Congress spends money.  It has occurred to me that it is as if you moved into a new area, a very remote area, and you had access to only one grocery store for many, many miles, many, many hours away. You were on your way home from work and your spouse called you and said to stop at the store and pick up bread, milk, and eggs. You go to the store and get your grocery cart. You go to the bread aisle and put a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, and a dozen eggs in your cart.

“You get to the checkout counter, and you put out your bread, milk, and eggs. The cashier rings those things up and says: I am sorry, you may not purchase bread, milk, and eggs unless you also purchase half a ton of iron ore, a bucket of nails, a book about cowboy poetry, and a Barry Manilow album. In fact, this is a special kind of store where you have to buy all of those things. In fact, you have to buy one of every item in this entire store in order to buy any of these things, including the bread, the milk, and the eggs.

“That would start to approximate what it feels like to spend money in Congress, where we are told: You can’t fund any part of government unless you are willing to fund all of government, subject to such changes as the few people who write the continuing resolution might  insert. And you, by the way, having been duly elected by the citizens of your State, will be left out of the process other than to exercise the binary choice of yes or no.  So we have seen that this is how we get to be $20 trillion in debt, soon to be $22 trillion in debt….

“So process matters. The fact is, we will not always come to an agreement as to how much we ought to spend. We will not always come to an agreement as to those things on which we will be spending, the requisite amount of money. But I think we should be able to agree that the American people deserve a process, one that allows them to be heard through the people’s own elected representatives. If not us, who? If not now, when? At what point are we going to start appropriating funds through this government, through a process that is open, that is transparent, that can be observed by the American people and through which the American people can be heard?” [Senator Lee voted no!]

Freedom First Society:  Restoring regular order is a necessary first step towards the vital goal of rolling back unconstitutional spending.   Following the passage of last year’s omnibus measure (The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017), Representative Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) explained how the public is being misled:

“House Leadership and the media have led the public to believe that passing one giant omnibus every year, at the last minute, is a legitimate way to fund the government and that anything else will result in a total government shutdown. Both are false. We should write, debate, amend, and pass 12 separate appropriations bills as the law prescribes, so that if any one bill fails to pass, only 1/12th of the Federal government shuts down.”

As James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” pointed out in Federalist No. 58, a simple majority in the House alone has the power to bring government under control:

“The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government.  They, in a word, hold the purse — that powerful instrument … [for reducing] … all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of government.  This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The reality today, however, is that a majority of congressmen with that agenda does not exist.   Congress is marching to a different tune, reinforced by an Establishment media also controlled by big-government forces.

Frustrated voters cannot accomplish change at the ballot box if representatives, once elected, decide they must march to the big-government tune to stay in office while merely talking conservative to their busy constituents, particularly at election time.

The solution: A major educational effort, outside the Establishment media, to build informed constituent pressure will be required to wrest control of Congress from the big-government architects.  Only an informed electorate can force the House to use its “power of the purse” to roll back unconstitutional spending, departments, and functions.   To accomplish such a task, organization is required — the purpose of Freedom First Society.

As part of its mission to build informed pressure on Congress, Freedom First Society has created a no-nonsense online congressional scorecard to help constituents understand how their representative and senators are voting. We urge visitors to sign up to receive an alert when we score a new House Roll Call or Senate Vote (sign up on the upper right of our home page) and then share these alerts and our scorecards widely.

Gun Grab Cover-up

“Gun control advocates and Democratic lawmakers are keeping the pressure on President Trump and Republicans to act on gun reform even as other controversies threaten to consume the spotlight nearly three weeks after a school shooting that left 17 people dead in South Florida.” — The Hill, 3-4-18

Much of the media and numerous politicians would have us believe that the easy availability of guns is responsible for the recent mass murder of 17 Florida high school students, i.e., the weapon caused the crime. The media would also have us believe that the survivors of the mass shooting are now unanimous advocates of more gun control as the solution. At the same time, the media covers up the revolutionary organization and totalitarian objectives driving the gun-control agenda, while retailing the fiction that the gun-control movement is only interested in promoting “gun safety.”

In her February 28th column, Ann Coulter gave us good reason to question the media-created impression that all the school’s shooting survivors are now passionate gun control advocates. Coulter pointed out how the perpetrator, Nicolas Cruz, had repeatedly and openly threatened to kill students, but that school and law enforcement officials had refused to act. The reason: an official Broward County policy on school discipline ostensibly intended to end the “school-to-prison pipeline”:

“If Cruz had taken out full-page ads in the local newspapers, he could not have demonstrated more clearly that he was a dangerous psychotic. He assaulted students, cursed out teachers, kicked in classroom doors, started fist fights, threw chairs, threatened to kill other students, mutilated small animals, pulled a rifle on his mother, drank gasoline and cut himself, among other ‘red flags.’…

“At least three students showed school administrators Cruz’s near-constant messages threatening to kill them — e.g., ‘I am going to enjoy seeing you down on the grass,’ ‘I’m going to watch you bleed,’ ‘I am going to shoot you dead’ — including one that came with a photo of Cruz’s guns. They warned school authorities that he was bringing weapons to school. They filed written reports.

“Threatening to kill someone is a felony. In addition to locking Cruz away for a while, having a felony record would have prevented him from purchasing a gun.”
Coulter concludes: “When it comes to spectacular crimes, it’s usually hard to say how it could have been prevented. But in this case, we have a paper trail.”

The Cover-up

Yet there is much more to this story and its fallout than intolerable law enforcement “failure.” Ann attributes the refusal of Broward County officials “to report, arrest or prosecute dangerous students” to their “pursuit of a demented ideology.” With this focus, Coulter insulates her readers from a much more sinister, decades-long agenda — the drive for civilian disarmament as a precursor to totalitarian control.

Establishment Insiders have pursued this agenda, domestically and through the United Nations for decades, but a corrupted media ensures that the public has zero awareness of the supporting organization and its real objectives. It’s not “demented ideology” driving the disarmament agenda; it’s a deceptive, unscrupulous power grab.

And so Ann, along with most of her controlled-media colleagues, ignores the critical reason why the horrible Florida crime has been so extensively adopted as a new convenient emotional pretext to drive the civilian disarmament agenda.

Americans who listen only to the major channels of Establishment opinion regularly hear about the monsters that have targeted defenseless school children and civilians. But they are not told about another monster in the wings — uncontrolled government, which so animated our founding fathers long before Professor R. J. Rummel documented the totalitarian record of the 20th Century in his Death By Government.   Nor are they reminded of the Rwanda genocide resulting from UN-supported civilian disarmament.

And naturally, Americans are not told of the organized forces behind the deadly gun-control deception. For example, in the their 1958 classic, World Peace Through World Law, Grenville Clark, head of the United World Federalists, and Louis P. Sohn, later a member of the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations, spelled out an agenda for a “world police force” and called for rigid controls on all firearms and ammunition possessed by police and private citizens.

A clever propaganda piece, “Jefferson’s ‘tree of liberty’ and the blood of schoolchildren,” published by a Senior Editor for Yahoo News (2-15-18) illustrates the media-created ignorance of the gun-control threat:

“The idea that Americans should arm themselves to fight ‘state overreach’ is a staple of gun-rights groups and politicians occupying the political terrain that runs rightward roughly from the NRA to the edge of the earth. It goes back at least to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that ‘the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with blood of patriots and tyrants.’

“And — call me naïve — but I would much sooner entrust my freedom to America’s justice system, which is also part of the Constitution, than to a bunch of middle-aged guys running around the woods in camo pants, no matter what kinds of guns they have.”

Of course, the preferred value of an armed citizenry is as one deterrent against a blatant assault on our liberties or form of government. Nobody should imagine that a minority of unsupported civilians could prevail in battle with the state. If the deterrent failed, universal support for action by an informed public, including even members of the military, would be necessary to reestablish “the tree of liberty.”

But many defenders of the Second Amendment make the mistake of relying solely on gun ownership for safety against tyranny. Would-be totalitarians do not depend on a single campaign such as gun-control to secure their aims — they seek to manipulate public opinion through control of the mass media, to create dependence on government for basic necessities, such as health care, and to create a submissive culture, among many other initiatives.

Other Ignored Factors

On October 11, 1798, President John Adams, while addressing the officers of the Militia of Massachusetts, explained: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

We often find that Insider-controlled government is concocting a dangerous antidote to the poison it has itself created. In light of Adams’ admonition, consider the Federal government’s role in the culture war: the attack on the traditional family, the disrespect for religion, and the denigration of traditional moral standards.

Almost a century ago, Communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, a prime strategist in the culture war, argued that in the developed Western democracies, the quick seizure of state power was doomed to failure. Instead, he insisted that for a revolution to be successful the supporting culture first had to be changed. The altered culture would then prepare the people, intellectually and morally, to accept the revolution.

In his 1969 book, Journey into Darkness, John Douglas, legendary FBI profiler and expert on the criminal personality, concluded:

“Unfortunately, no matter what we do with our criminal justice system, the only thing that is going to cut down appreciably on crimes of violence and depravity is to stop manufacturing as many criminals…. [T]he real struggle must be where it has always been: in the home.”

And the home has been the target of the Insiders and the liberal agenda for decades.

Revolutionary Parliamentarianism

An internal Czechoslovak Communist Party strategy paper, discovered following the post-World War II takeover of Czechoslovakia, documented the deceptive practice known as “revolutionary parliamentarianism.” The tactic seeks to create the appearance of widespread popular pressure for revolutionary action.

Sympathizers in parliament (Congress) can then advance the revolutionary measure as though they were just responding to overwhelming public demand. Others congressmen, finding it difficult to stand up to the illusion, are pulled along.

Let’s look at several current examples of how the media, sympathetic politicians, and revolutionary organization create the illusion of genuine mass support for the gun-control agenda:

“Congress is under intense pressure to take action following the shooting, which reopened a national debate on guns.” [Emphasis added] — The Hill (2-27-18)

What debate? What the media calls a national debate is merely a media-orchestrated propaganda assault, masquerading as a debate. The voices put forth in the “debate” are carefully selected to keep the message within “acceptable” bounds and with an “acceptable” impact.

And how is the pressure organized, by whom, and for what purpose?

“Teenaged survivors of the Parkland, Fla. High school shooting have amassed huge followings on social media in the weeks since a gunman attacked their school, assembling powerful social media tools in the national debate over guns and mass shootings….

“The survivors’ emergence as pro-gun control voices on social media is a new development in the response to mass shootings.” — The Hill (3-3-18)

No one should doubt the initiative of teenagers to make use of social media and the new tools of technology. But somewhere the activists among them were mentored or encouraged by unmentioned adult forces. Nor should we accept that several hundred teenagers all have the same mind or speak with one voice.

Earlier, AP (2-20-18) reported:

“Students who survived the Florida school shooting began a journey Tuesday to the state Capitol to urge lawmakers to prevent another massacre….”

“Three buses carried 100 students who, in the aftermath of the attack that killed 17 people, want to revive the gun-control movement.”

Are we really supposed to believe that the teens organized this all by themselves?   Consider this report in The Hill (2-20-18):

“Lawmakers say they are feeling more pressure than ever to act on gun control after the latest deadly mass shooting at a public high school.

“A large reason, aides and lawmakers alike say, is the emotional pleas from students who survived the shooting — and who have expressed horror at the idea that nothing will be done in response to the killings of their schoolmates.

“The grass-roots movement, dubbed ‘Never Again,’ has kept an extra layer of pressure on members to enact stricter gun laws and take other steps to prevent future massacres….

“Still, the public outcry that followed last week’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., has fueled some hope among gun reformers that the political winds are shifting in their favor.

“Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) said the protests in recent days constitute ‘a new type of organic outcry,’ one even more prominent than the demonstrations that followed a similar shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

“But after the latest deadly shooting rampage in Florida, high school students are taking the fight into their own hands — a powerful shift that appears to be having an impact on the national conversation surrounding the emotional and heated gun control debate….

“Young activists have been making impassioned pleas on national television, demanding action from their elected officials and organizing rallies, walkouts and marches — including one planned for Washington, D.C., on March 24.” [Emphasis added.]

The Hill and Democratic Representative Mike Thompson would have us believe that the teens planned this all by themselves. AFP (2-18-18) reveals more of the extensive planning:

“The ‘March for our Lives’ will take place on March 24, with sister marches planned across the country, a group of students told ABC News, vowing to make Wednesday’s shooting a turning point in America’s deadlocked debate on gun control.”

And Fox News (3-5-18) also reported the advertised planning, while cooperating with the revolutionaries to hide the “rest of the story” and keep the public in the dark:

“So along with 16-year-old Madeline Paterna, Giancola began to arrange for her school to participate in the National School Walkout, a protest led by students demanding action against gun violence, on March 14 – one month after the Parkland school shooting….

“For 17 minutes at 10 a.m. across each time zone on March 14, students, school faculty and supporters around the world will walk out of their schools to honor those killed in the massacre at the Parkland high school earlier this year and to protest gun violence.

“More than 185,000 students are expected to participate in the walkout, according to the latest numbers provided by a Women’s March spokesperson. And a map of participating schools on the event’s website shows the walkout has gone international – with schools in Ireland, Israel and Mexico participating.”

Fox News did point to a https://www.womensmarch.com/empower/coalition group calling itself Women’s March Youth EMPOWER, sporting a clenched fist in its website logo, as the organizers of the March 14 demonstration.   But the Fox story supported the protest by pointing students to another website where students could find out if their school is participating and the story recited the group’s objective to “protest Congress’ inaction” at face value.

Good Morning America (2-27-18) reported on a Rhode Island executive order to “establish a new ‘red flag’ policy” to “help keep guns away from people who ‘could pose significant threats to public safety.’”

“‘The executive order I signed today is an immediate step we can take to make residents safer. It sets the table for a complementary legislative effort,” Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, said in a statement Monday. ‘We cannot wait a minute longer for Washington to take action to prevent gun violence.’” [Emphasis added.]

And for “authoritative” input to the public “debate,” Good Morning America gave us this:

“‘Today is a major victory for Rhode Islanders and an encouraging sign for people throughout the country as they demand lawmakers take concrete action to prevent gun violence,’ Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said in a statement.” [Emphasis added.]

Leadership Betrayal

As usual, we see political leaders in both parties eagerly supporting the orchestrated Insider media spin that what the Florida mass shootings demonstrate is the need for government to give us more “gun safety.”   Here are a few examples:

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC):

“Propose something, Mr. President. And I think Republicans have an obligation to work with Democrats to make it law if we can,” Graham said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”  — The Hill (3-4-18)

Ohio Governor John Kasich (R):

“Ohio Gov. John Kasich commended young Americans for demanding that their elected officials take decisive actions to reduce gun violence in the aftermath of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla…..

“According to Kasich, their idealism may actually succeed in ushering in new gun measures to protect Americans.

“‘And the more they push, the better chance we have of getting something done — to have greater gun safety and better protection for everybody in our country,’ he said.” — Yahoo (3-4-18) 

House Minority Leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.):

“‘Yesterday, we were encouraged by what President Trump had to say, our members who attended the meeting,’ Pelosi said.

“The minority leader was also encouraged by Trump pushing for legislation that would institute background checks for firearms purchased online or at gun shows. A bipartisan measure from Reps. Peter T. King, R-N.Y., and Mike Thompson, D-Calif., that would do just that has reached 200 co-sponsors in the House.

“‘We’ve never had anything like 200 names on a gun safety bill. This is remarkable,’ Pelosi said. The King-Thompson bill is something Democrats have long pushed for in the wake of mass shootings like the one February 14 at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 dead….

“‘I know if the comprehensive bill on background checks came to the floor, it would win,’ Pelosi said.” — Roll Call (3-1-18)

Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas):

“Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), who is leading the GOP response to gun violence in the upper chamber, told reporters after the meeting with Trump at the White House that he still favors a limited approach….

“‘For me the most obvious place to start is the Fix NICS [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] bill that has 46 cosponsors,’ Cornyn said of the bill he’s co-sponsored with Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.).” [Emphasis added.] — The Hill (3-1-18)

A Final Word:  The Wisdom of James Madison

From his deep study of history, James Madison warned of the dangers of ignorance, deception, and betrayal:

“Although all men are born free, and all nations might be so, yet too true it is, that slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant — they have been cheated; asleep — they have been surprised; divided — the yoke has been forced upon them.

“But what is the lesson? That because the people may betray themselves, they ought to give themselves up, blindfolded, to those who have an interest in betraying them? Rather conclude that the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it, as well as obey it.”

Please share this perspective widely!

 

Constitutional Camouflage

“Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.” — Thomas Jefferson, September 7, 1803

House rules requiring a Constitutional Authority Statement for every bill submitted have been around for some time. In 1997, the 105th Congress adopted such a rule, imposed on Committee reports. Early on the rules were likely inspired to some extent by outside pressure, but more recently the House GOP merely seems to have discovered a political public relations opportunity.

The current and latest such Rule was adopted by the Bohener-led House in 2011, as promised in the House GOP’s 2010 Pledge to America. The Rule mandated that every bill or joint resolution submitted be accompanied by a statement “citing as specifically as practicable the power or powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the bill or joint resolution.”

In its January 5, 2011 explanation of the new rule, the House Committee on Rules stated:

“The adequacy and accuracy of the citation of constitutional authority is matter for debate in the committee and in the House. The rule simply requires that the bill be accompanied by a constitutional authority statement upon introduction.”

Unfortunately, the “debates” in the House are generally little more than chest pounding by a lead by proponent from the majority party with equal time allotted to a representative of the minority party. If the measure has bipartisan support, opponents are rarely heard. Moreover, in reviewing hundreds of pages in the Congressional Record, your author cannot recall the constitutionality of a measure ever being challenged on the floor of the House.

As the Rules report further stated: “Ultimately, the House will express its opinion on a proposed bill, including its constitutionality, by either approving or disapproving the bill.” So nothing really changed. The requirement for an accompanying Constitutional Authority Statement has not prevented unconstitutional business-as-usual one iota.

No one should be surprised. Given the tremendous forces behind the centralization of more and more unconstitutional functions in the federal government, it would be unreasonable to expect the House GOP leadership willingly to bind themselves down with “the chains of the Constitution.”

As confirmation of those expectations, let’s look at the abuses of Constitutional Authority Statements that pretend those chains don’t exist. Three clauses in particular have been misinterpreted to portray the Constitution as a blank-check authorization: The “General Welfare Clause,” the “Interstate Commerce Clause,” and the “Necessary and Proper Clause.” These willful misconstructions, supported by activist Supreme Court decisions, have long served as protective coloration for the successful drive to create unlimited government.

The “General Welfare Clause”

Undoubtedly, the most common citation of constitutional authority is Article I, Section 8, particularly the introductory “General Welfare Clause.” Here is a typical such authority statement

“Congress has the power to enact this legislation pursuant to the following: Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, to ‘provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.’”

The “general welfare clause” in Article I, Section 8, is commonly misused to create the appearance that unconstitutional congressional acts are constitutional. In 1987, Notre Dame Law School Professor Charles Rice clarified the misuse of the clause:

“The Constitution created a government of limited, delegated powers. The term ‘general welfare’ in Article I, Section 8, does not confer on Congress a general power to legislate and regulate for purposes beyond those enumerated in the remaining clauses of Section 8. If the General Welfare Clause had been intended to confer an open-ended power to legislate for whatever purposes Congress might consider necessary for the general welfare, it would have made no sense for the framers to have followed it with what would have been a needless list of particular powers that would have been included by implication in the general one. In fact, the clause did not confer a general power to enact legislation at all.

“Instead, it conferred a power only to enact legislation to ‘lay and collect’ taxes and, by implication, to spend the revenue raised by those taxes for the ‘general welfare.’ It was, then, not a general power to regulate the activities of the people, but a power to tax and to appropriate, i.e., to spend, which was limited to the purposes stated in the remaining clauses of Section 8.”

In the Federalist No. 41, James Madison, “the Father of the Constitution,” had also rejected the claim that the General Welfare Clause “amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare”:

“For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.”

During congressional debate on February 7, 1792, Madison warned:

“[I]f Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress….”

But politicians today still get away with claiming that the clause gives them a grant of power to do almost anything if they can project some benefit for the general welfare. (Our example: How about Congress forbidding families from having more than one child to promote population control or to stop climate change?)

Frequently, Congressional Authority Statements merely refer to the entire Article I, Section 8, and not just its preamble, without identifying any particular power. They thus imply that Article I, Section 8 provides Congress with general legislative authority. But Alexander Hamilton refuted this notion in The Federalist, No. 83 by pointing to the Constitution’s enumeration of specific powers:

“This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended.”

The “Interstate Commerce Clause”

Statements of Constitutional Authority for unconstitutional acts also cite clause 8 of Article I, Section 8 — the “Interstate Commerce Clause.”  In so doing, they are following creative Supreme Court decisions overturning long-established understanding.

Clause 8 states: “[The Congress shall have Power:] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” [Emphasis added.]

The middle section of this clause was designed to give Congress the power to prevent the states from inhibiting the interstate flow of goods through trade barriers, as they had previously done. In allaying Anti-federalist concerns, James Madison stated that the clause was not designed “to be used for positive purposes,” but was to serve as a “a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves.”

And for many years in our nation’s history this was well understood and observed. “Nonetheless,” as the late Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald observed in his book, We Hold These Truths — A reverent review of the United States Constitution (1976), “more pressures were put on Congress to enlarge its powers under the Interstate Commerce Clause than under any other provision of the Constitution. Commercial affairs, being among the most pervasive and the most profitable of man’s activities, produced many reasons for such pressures.”

The “Necessary and Proper Clause”

Article I, Section 8, Clause 18, commonly referred to as the “necessary and proper clause,” authorizes Congress to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.” [Emphasis added.]

In The Federalist, No. 44, James Madison wrote: “Without the substance of this power, the whole Constitution would be a dead letter.” And a report on the Virginia Resolutions, drafted by Madison, stated that this clause “is not a grant of new powers to Congress, but merely a declaration, for the removal of all uncertainty, that the means of carrying into execution those [powers] otherwise granted are included in the grant.”

Yet despite its clear meaning, the clause has been eagerly misinterpreted as an “elastic clause” authorizing Congress to do virtually anything it decides is “necessary and proper.”

In arguing against the constitutionality of a national bank, Thomas Jefferson further admonished against the creative use of the “necessary and proper clause” (February 15, 1791):

“It has been urged that a bank will give great facility or convenience in the collection of taxes. Suppose this were true: yet the Constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary,’ not those which are merely ‘convenient,’ for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers.”

And One More

The House Appropriations Committee has often cited Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 as authorization for appropriations for blatantly unconstitutional programs and departments.   The clause states: “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law….”

Citing this clause as an authorization to spend money is an insult to our intelligence. The clause is akin to a corporate requirement that two officers sign every check.   In no way would such a requirement by itself entitle the officers to write checks at their pleasure.

In Summary

For decades, the Establishment media in “informing” public opinion have conveniently ignored: 1) the federalist principles America’s Founders incorporated in the Constitution; and 2) their vision that the Constitution imposed strict limits on what the federal government could and could not do — it could only properly do what was specifically delegated to it.   With regard to both, James Madison stated in The Federalist No. 45:

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce….”

And in The Federalist No. 14, Madison further commented on the limited purpose of the federal government:

“Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.” 

The Solution

America’s Founders intended for the people to control their new government through the House of Representatives. To promote local accountability, they required representatives to stand for frequent elections (every two years) in relatively small districts, and they gave the House the all-important power of the purse. As James Madison emphasized in the Federalist No. 58, a simple majority in the House alone has the power to bring government under control:

“The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse — that powerful instrument … [for reducing] … all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The reason the House hasn’t exercised that authority in recent times is that no simple majority has, or can acquire on its own, the desire and backbone to do so. Such a majority would have to stand up to the Establishment’s grip on the parties and withstand its dominating influence on public opinion.

Realistically, the necessary backbone must come from an informed, engaged electorate following new leadership, provided through a new channel of communications. Freedom First Society was founded to offer that leadership. See also our online no-nonsense congressional scorecard to find out whether your representative is voting to continue or roll back Washington’s assault on America and our campaign page: Congress: Just Vote the Constitution!

Footnote:  The history of Supreme Court misconstruction of the Constitution is recounted in We Hold These Truths — A reverent review of the United States Constitution (1976) by the late Congressman Lawrence (Larry) Patton McDonald (See Chapter V: A Breach in the Wall).

 

Voter-Supplied Backbone Needed!

On May 3rd, the House approved a massive $1.07 trillion appropriations bill to finish off the last 5 months of FY 2017 (which ends on September 30th). The Senate followed suit the next day, and on May 5th President Trump signed it into law.

In any omnibus spending bill, there is good mixed with the bad. That’s one reason why omnibus appropriations are so destructive — the “good” in the bill makes it easier to obtain congressional support. And proponents of this measure argued that there was something in this legislation for everyone — except, of course, for those who have to pay the bill and whose liberty is threatened by the federal monster.

It is easy to assess the 1,665-page measure, the product of a “bipartisan deal,” from the fact that only 15 House Democrats opposed it. The good news is that GOP support was split 131 in favor to 103 against.   (In the Senate, the only opposition came from 18 Republican Senators.)

AP (5-3-17) reported that both President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan “declared victory, but the opinions of top party leaders were not shared by the rank and file…. Negotiators on the bill say it looks pretty much like the measure would have looked like if it had been ironed out last year under Obama — save for Trump’s add-ons for the Pentagon and the border.”

Why did 103 House Republicans buck their party leadership to vote against this measure?   Certainly, not because they are all committed constitutionalists. It’s because they know they have to face the voters back home and ward off any challenges to their reelection.

This shows that an organized effort to build a much better informed electorate can still help Americans fix the direction of the House and unleash its power to battle the other branches effectively.

Wielding the Power of the Purse

Two widely perpetuated myths provide cover for the House’s unwillingness to use its power of the purse to trim spending. The first is the notion that when pushed against deadlines the House needs to include all 12 appropriations measures in a single omnibus measure for an up-or-down vote.   With an omnibus bill, the big spenders can use the specter of a government-wide shutdown to scare a public increasingly dependent on federal spending in order to obtain congressional support.

In reality, the House could easily schedule several independent votes and play hardball with one or more of the areas. In fact, in the case of the just completed FY 2017 appropriations, the least controversial of the 12 regular measures — Military Construction, the Department of Veteran Affairs — was passed and became law last September.

In the new 115th Congress, the House passed appropriations for the Department of Defense on March 8.   There was no need for the House to include that measure again in an omnibus measure: A tough House would demand that the Senate deal with the House bill already before it. The bottom line is that we need to insist that our representatives refuse to support omnibus appropriations measures.

The Compromise Myth

The other destructive myth is an ostensible need for compromise. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell repeated it recently when he stated that spending bills “cannot be done by one party alone.”   The idea that appropriation legislation has to be a compromise with socialists, as happened here, is a sure road to our destruction.

The Founding Fathers gave the House the power of the purse so that an informed public could use its leverage with their elected representatives to give government its marching orders.

Separate votes on the 12 appropriations measures would help restore the House’s leverage. Unfortunately, that is not the program of the House leadership. House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks often of returning to regular order (12 independent votes), but Ryan and his GOP predecessors are always willing to kick this can down the road to the following year.

The Usual Charade

Once the FY2017 appropriations were completed, the White House sent Congress a proposed budget for FY2018.   Although presidential budgets are merely an administration’s statement of priorities, in no way binding on Congress, the Trump budget is instructive.

The plan proposes to balance the budget in 10 years, while allowing next year’s deficit to increase. We’ve heard such promises many times before. Moreover, as along as the notion persists that federal spending must be a compromise with socialists, such a projection is certainly nonsense.   And it’s certainly nonsense with the current Congress and media-controlled voter understanding.

Of course, Democratic leaders immediately railed against the plan’s proposed cuts, thereby helping to create the illusion that the budget is fiscally conservative.

Our real leverage is in helping others understand the issues and the voting record of their congressman. Building informed constituent pressure is the key to obtaining a Congress responsive to the Constitution.  And sharing our online scorecard for an individual congressman or printed copies is a great way to start.

[Note: Once there are enough significant votes for us to update our scorecard for the current session of Congress, the House and Senate votes on the above $1.07 trillion “Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017” will certainly be included. In the meantime, please use these links to the official voting records for each chamber: House Roll Call 249 (5-3-17) and Senate Vote 121 (5-4-17). (Both are still misleadingly titled as the HIRE Vets Act, the vehicle used by the House).]

 

Renegotiate NAFTA? No Way! — Get US out!

“Making good on a campaign promise, the Trump administration formally told Congress Thursday that it intends to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico….

“Last month, White House aides spread word that Trump was ready to pull out of NAFTA. Within hours, the president reversed course and said that he’d seek a better deal first.”
— “Trump administration announces plans to renegotiate NAFTA,” AP, 5-18-17

NAFTA has unquestionably exacerbated U.S. manufacturing and capital flight, with a corresponding decline in quality jobs and middle class opportunity.

However, “trade pacts” such as NAFTA involve much more than lowering tariff barriers to regional trade. They set up governing institutions, contrary to our Constitution. And improving prosperity through increased trade is never the objective.

Indeed, the discussion of NAFTA as a mere trade agreement acts as a smokescreen, obscuring the fact that NAFTA is an Internationalist-designed trap targeting our national independence and freedom.

The national press omits any mention of the real reason that Internationalists worked so hard to have the U.S. accept NAFTA. Although NAFTA was sold as a conservative “free trade” agreement, its real purpose was to erode the sovereignty of independent nations with an ultimate goal of capturing them under a totalitarian world government ruled by elites.   Recall that the precursor stages to the European Union (e.g., the Common Market) were misleading sold as just an economic arrangement.

Progressive Regionalization

Rather than trying to deceive the public into submitting to a world authority in one step, the Internationalists have promoted a “regionalism” strategy, modeled on the successful tactic use to ensnare nations in the European Union. The Fall 1991 issue of the CFR’s [Council on Foreign Relations] Foreign Affairs confirmed that the Internationalists saw NAFTA as following in the EU’s footsteps:

The creation of trinational dispute-resolution mechanisms and rule-making bodies on border and environmental issues may also be embryonic forms of more comprehensive structures. After all, international organizations and agreements like GATT and NAFTA by definition minimize assertions of sovereignty in favor of a joint rule-making authority.

Both David Rockefeller (former CFR chairman) and CFR heavyweight Henry Kissinger lobbied in the nation’s press for NAFTA, candidly claiming that NAFTA was a steppingstone to something larger. In a 1993 column that appeared in the July 18 Los Angeles Times, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared:

It [NAFTA] will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere…. [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system.

A few months later, David Rockefeller championed the agreement in the Wall Street Journal: “Everything is in place — after 500 years — to build a true ‘new world’ in the Western Hemisphere,” Rockefeller enthused, adding “I don’t think that ‘criminal’ would be too strong a word to describe … rejecting NAFTA.”

Submitting to WTO “Authority”

The World Trade Organization is another element of the elitist architecture for ruling the world. A recent news report illustrates how U.S. decision-making has been delegated to a body over which Americans have no control:

Mexico can impose annual trade sanctions worth $163.23 million against the United States after winning a dispute over trade in tuna fish, a World Trade Organization arbitrator ruled on Tuesday….

However, the ruling could be overturned later this year if a subsequent WTO decision finds the United States has stopped discriminating against tuna caught by its southern neighbor. —   “WTO lets Mexico slap trade sanctions on U.S. in tuna dispute,” Reuters, 4-25-17

The “Just Promoting Trade” Deception Continues

The Peterson Institute, a “think tank” named after Peter G. Peterson, Chairman Emeritus of the Internationalists’ Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has long been a driver of “progressive regionalization” under the cover of promoting trade. Indeed, the opening AP report cites comments from Gary Hufbauer, member of the CFR and former VP of the CFR, 1997-98, lending credence to the pretext that NAFTA is just an orderly way to promote regional trade:

Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, said the United States could seek modest “technocratic” changes, including provisions to update NAFTA to reflect technologies that have emerged since the original agreement was negotiated.

In 1994, Hufbauer had co-authored a study for the Institute, entitled “Western Hemisphere Economic Integration.”

For further explanation of the deceptive Internationalist strategy of “progressive regionalism,” of which NAFTA is a part, please see Chapter 6, “Free Trade Pacts” in our booklet Media-Controlled Delusion. Chapter 6 concludes:

[T]he so-called national debate over trade totally ignores the real purpose of post-World War II regional trade pacts — to create unaccountable regional authorities at the expense of the sovereignty of the nation-state. Our national survival requires that this agenda be exposed, understood, and defeated.

Renegotiating NAFTA is not the road to prosperity. Instead, validating NAFTA through renegotiation strengthens the Internationalist power grab targeting our survival as a free nation.

Ryan-TrumpCare

“[M]y plan … unapologetically seeks to apply our nation’s timeless principles … to today’s challenges. It does so in a way that honors our historic commitment to strengthening the social safety net for those who need it most…. It fixes what is broken in our health-care system without breaking what is working.” [Emphasis added.]
— Paul Ryan, Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders, 2011

“Scott Pelley: Universal health care? Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” [Emphasis added.]
— 60 Minutes, 9-27-15

The claim that the federal government should provide welfare has no basis in the design of America’s Founders. However, socialists rely on precisely that notion to create an ever-larger federal monster.

Unfortunately, hardly anyone in politics today acknowledges that to make America great again (and safeguard our liberties) we must get the federal government entirely out of the health care and health insurance businesses.

Ravages of Obamacare

Obamacare took federal welfare and control of the health insurance market a giant step forward:

“The Affordable Care Act expanded coverage to about 20 million more Americans by setting up state exchanges, where people could buy insurance with subsidies based on their income, and by giving states federal money to expand Medicaid to more of their populations.” — Yahoo News, 3-10-17

Since the law’s inception, Republicans have campaigned on the need to repeal Obamacare. Unfortunately, many have also embraced the goal of replacing it, thereby affirming that Obamacare addressed a legitimate need. More than a year ago, Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) correctly emphasized: “Replacing Obamacare is just actually replacing it with another government-run program and I think some of us as conservatives don’t want the government to be running that.” — Roll Call, 1-7-16

Bipartisan Treason

For decades, both parties have supported unconstitutional federal expansion.

One astute analyst recently assailed the Republicans for regularly following a ratchet pattern. On the campaign trail, they rail against Democrat-supported big-government. But once they gain the majority, their leadership simply adopts the previous socialist inroads as the baseline, makes a few tweaks, and calls it progress.

Opposition limited to defending against further expansion of federal authority can only lead to disaster. Major rollbacks must be the goal.

The American Health Care Act (AHCA)

So now that the Republicans control the White House as well as the House and the Senate, what about their proposal, the American Health Care Act?

Presented as part of a GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, the AHCA would do neither. More than a dozen congressmen protested the betrayal:

“[M]embers of the House Freedom Caucus, backed by conservative Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, have said that it doesn’t keep faith with the GOP’s promise to unravel Obamacare.” — Roll Call, 3-10-17

“‘It’s Obamacare in a different format,’ Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio … said in a phone interview.” — The Atlantic.com, 3-6-17

“The House Republican leadership plan — quite frankly it is the largest welfare program that Republicans have sponsored in the history of the Republican Party.” — Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), “Rep. Mo Brooks: AHCA ‘Largest Welfare Program’ Sponsored By GOP,” MSNBC interview, 3-16-17, on YouTube

Conservative Review Senior Editor Daniel Horowitz makes a strong case that the AHCA is actually worse politics and policy than Obamacare. In a March 7th article, “RINO-Care: A more insolvent version of Obamacare … except this time GOP owns it,” Horowitz points out that the Ryan plan, with strong support from President Trump, would leave most of the regulatory structure and the exchanges in place.

And once the Republicans take ownership of this massive entitlement expansion, the challenge to undo the damage increases dramatically.

See No Evil

Yet the betrayal is even worse. Socialism is not a misguided humanitarian plan promoted by do-gooders. It is an evil deception. The humanitarian pretext cleverly serves to advance and cloak a totalitarian power grab.

Such is especially the case with socialized medicine. The socialist breakthrough came in 1965 with the enactment of King-Anderson (Medicare), but only after decades of infiltration and preparation by Fabian Socialist organizers, their Americans for Democratic Action front, and radical union organizer Walter Reuther. (See Media-Controlled Delusion, Chapter 1 Socialized Medicine and Code Blue, by Edward R. Annis, M.D., past president of the A.M.A.)

In a February 19 post, “Repeal and Replace (Big Brother!),” before the details of the Ryan plan became known, we predicted: “[T]hose expecting real progress will be deceived, because the media reports and political claims carefully avoid what is essential for the public to understand.” And what are those omissions? We identified three, quoted from our from Media-Controlled Delusion booklet:

  1. “First, almost no one dares mention that the Constitution does not permit any federal involvement in health care (other than to provide for the military and its own employees).”
  1. “Next, federal involvement locks in the third-party payer system (where someone other than the patient pays for even routine costs). The third-party payer system bears a good share of the responsibility for ballooning costs. Another primary source of rising costs is the immense federal bureaucracy created to manage the system.”
  1. “By far the most serious omission in the health care ‘debate,’ however, is its failure to address the revolutionary organization, the deceptions, and the ulterior motive driving the steady expansion of federal authority…. The revolutionary socialist network extends back more than a century. The goal of this network is central control of virtually every human activity (socialism) and world government.” [Emphasis added.]

What to Do?

Currently, there is nowhere near a majority in Congress with the will to do the right thing — get the government out. Many Republicans will seek compromise with liberals in violation of the Constitution, claiming they are negotiating the best deal possible.

But that is a betrayal, too. The deal may appear to slow down our enslavement, but it deceives the public. The only responsible course for a principled congressman is to vote against the continuation of unconstitutional programs.

Despite lobbying by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and House Speaker Ryan, a number of conservative congressmen steadfastly refused to support the Ryan plan. As we go to press, House leaders twice abandoned a scheduled vote due to insufficient support.

Achieving a majority of principled congressmen in Washington cannot occur until there is more understanding created back home.   Former Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald (D-Georgia) showed that he could vote on principle and get re-elected, despite Establishment attacks, because his district had a strong base of informed voters.

As the patriot Robert Welch emphasized, “All we must find and build and use, to win, is sufficient understanding.” And that takes strong organization that is committed to correct principles and understands the forces working to enslave us.

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