Category: Tenth Amendment federalism

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folly free trade & free markets national politics & policies Tenth Amendment federalism too much government

Derailing Washington’s Train Fixation

The great age of trains — the 19th century — spawned a few amazing political careers, not excluding the railway lawyer, Abraham Lincoln. Many major railroads depended on moving politicians first, earth and iron second.

More than ever, today’s passenger rail lines are creatures of the state. Amtrak loses money, and could only be successful as a private operation were politicians able to let its unprofitable lines go.

Congress insists, instead, on putting up more money-losing railways in as many places as possible. President Obama even tried to get a bullet train put through between Tampa and Orlando, despite the fact that the two Florida cities were too close to each other for a super-fast train to make any sense.

Worse for the bullet was the politics.

In 2000, Floridians had voted in high-speed monorail; in 2004, they voted in greater numbers to kill their own project. Voters realized that, with politicians in charge, railroad projects tended to go runaway.

Perhaps that helped convince Rick Scott, the new governor, to reject the federal government’s offer to pay $2.4 billion of a $2.6 billion bullet train. The billions of “free money” that the Obama Administration promised began to seem, well, costly.

So, of course, the federal government sued. In early March, a Florida court ruled that the governor did indeed have the power to tell the feds to play with trains elsewhere.

A minor victory for railway sanity. A major victory for federalism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Ninth Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism too much government

Two Words to Know and Share

Two old words, newly relevant: Federalism and nullification.

Last Sunday, on Townhall.com, I noted ten state ballot measures to watch. Third on my list was Colorado’s Amendment 63:

If swing-state voters in Colorado join Missouri voters, who in August enacted a state measure protecting citizens from being forced to purchase health insurance through the “Obamacare” mandate, it will go a long way in strengthening GOP backbone to repeal the mandate should Republicans regain control of Congress.

The surface issue is your right to contract, freely, with medical professionals. Or not.

Below the surface lie the doctrines of enumerated powers, individual rights, and state prerogatives. After all, the logic runs, the Constitution — a deal among the states — grants the federal government no power to regulate medicine. And nullification, one of Thomas Jefferson’s favored notions, promises to serve as an actual, effective check on out-of-control federal politicians.

A similar storm brews in California, where the state’s Regulate, Control and Tax Marijuana Act goes way beyond a narrow reading of “medical marijuana.” Flouting federal (and probably unconstitutional) law, this citizen initiative seeks to legalize the plant for recreational use.

At issue, really, is not drugs or medicine, but who’s in control: Distant and privileged politicians and bureaucrats, or the citizens of the states.

On the side of the citizens is the founder’s theory of federalism, with its corollary that the states should serve as experiments in legal innovation.

We sure need innovation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall Tenth Amendment federalism

Wayward States?

While Washington, DC, steps in to take over responsibility for determining just how much and what kind of medical insurance we should buy, the states march, instead, towards personal responsibility, defending a right to self-medication.

More than a dozen states have enacted medical marijuana laws, in defiance of Congress and Executive Branch nannies.

Now, California’s initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana, or cannabis, has garnered enough signatures to qualify for November’s ballot. Oregon has a measure in the works, too, as do other, less bellwether-worthy states. You can follow the story as it develops on Ballotpedia.org.

California, the state most addicted to politicians (having the highest citizen-to-representative ratio in the union) also has one of the union’s most severely messed-up budgets. Barring cuts, the state needs money. Legalizing and taxing Americans’ favorite weed might help out, some advocates think. No wonder the initiative is popularly known as the “Tax Cannabis Act.”

We’ve heard this story before. The Great Depression allowed the repeal of the 18th Amendment. The Progressive Era’s crowning achievement in social control, the prohibition of alcohol, was seen by the world as weird, and by those who admired the original Constitution of the United States as rubbing against the grain of American liberty.

But it wasn’t freedom advocates who ended Prohibition. It was the separate states seeking revenue from selling booze.

Ah, politics. Nasty when going wrong. Messy when going right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies Tenth Amendment federalism too much government

Idaho’s Healthy “No”

By hook and by crook — ignoring the constitution and twisting parliamentary rules — the president and his congressional allies are succeeding in imposing command-and-control health care on all Americans.

If the new law is allowed to stand, the scraps of freedom we still enjoy in matters of health care will dwindle as provisions of the bill kick in. And that’s only the prequel. Pelosi and other Democrats promise to introduce even more constrictive legislation once Obamacare Round One has been rammed through.

Friends of freedom aren’t giving up. There’s an election in 2010, for one thing. But many state governments aren’t waiting for that. The Idaho legislature just passed the Idaho Health Care Freedom Act, which states, in part, that “every person within the state of Idaho is and shall be free to choose or decline to choose any mode of securing health care services without penalty or threat of penalty.” Governor Otter is signing the Act because, in his view, health care laws should treat people as individuals “rather than as an amorphous mass whose only purpose in this world is to obey federal mandates.”

Idaho is the first state to pass such a measure, but similar legislation has been proposed in 22 others. Such declarations will most likely have only symbolic significance if Obamacare remains in effect and other legal challenges on the grounds of federalism get beaten down. But those are two big ifs. Americans aren’t ready to surrender to the health care commissars just yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy Tenth Amendment federalism

We Told You So

Say it with me: We told you so.

Over the years, I’ve tried to help citizens regain control over their prodigal representatives. Sometimes I got called a radical for these activities. An extremist. But I think of myself as a moderate, as someone promoting moderation.

In government spending, for example.

Among the most moderate of these many statewide initiatives have been what are sometimes called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, initiatives. These proposals are designed to limit spending increases to a formula of population growth-plus-inflation.

Sometimes we succeeded. Too often we failed.

The consequence of our failures, of each defeat at the hands and promotional budgets of groups that called us, of all people, extremists?

Now, state after state has become what Reason magazine dubs “Failed States.” They did what politicians demanded, spent at rates far greater than moderation would allow. And now that we’ve hit hard times, and state revenues have drastically fallen, how the politicians whine! Indeed, they demand bailouts.

Say it with me, you who’ve voted for TABOR in the past: “We told you so. Lacking our measures, the states have become part of the out-of-control federal deficits and ballooning debt.”

And remember, you who opposed our moderate measures to limit state spending: You are the radicals. You are the ones who helped set our country on its current, self-destructive course.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tenth Amendment federalism

The Tenth Amendment Movement

When Sarah Palin announced her resignation as governor of Alaska, she caused quite a stir. Both Palin haters and Palin lovers united in their inability to talk about much of anything else.

Then, a week later, she had an op-ed on environmental policy published in the Washington Post.

And then, not long after that, she signed a resolution declaring the state of Alaska sovereign under the Tenth Amendment, and telling the federal government to back off from engaging in activities not delegated to it in the United States Constitution.

This sounds weird to lovers of big government, to Palin haters in general. But even some Palin lovers misconstrued the event.

It was not about Sarah Palin. She was not the only governor to sign such a resolution. Tennessee’s Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen, had done the same thing, earlier.

In fact, it’s not about governors at all. Other states, like Oklahoma and New Hampshire, have passed similar resolutions. As I wrote recently at Townhall.com, “[a]ll these resolutions have passed state legislatures. It’s not just lone ‘whacko’ governors doing the deed. Deliberative bodies have decided these measures.”

What’s happening is the re-emergence of the original idea of our federation: A central power limited in scope, and states with different sets of powers and responsibilities.

And people’s rights and powers limiting both.

Yes, folks, there are signs of hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.