Obamacare is Still Unconstitutional

by Gerard Emershaw

Back in the 1970s, one of the first absurdist catchphrases from NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” to enter into the zeitgeist was Chevy Chase’s “Francisco Franco is still dead.” Well, Franco is still dead. And more than a year after “Roberts’ Folly,” Obamacare is still unconstitutional. 

1. Even if Obamacare’s individual mandate is a tax and not a penalty, it is an unconstitutional direct tax.
2. If it is a tax, it was a tax imposed by the Supreme Court since Congress intended it to be a penalty. Therefore, the individual mandate and Obamacare as a whole is unconstitutional.
3. Even if Congress had always intended for the individual mandate to be a tax and not a penalty, the Obamacare bill originated in the Senate. According to the Constitution, tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives.
4. Even if the individual mandate “tax” had originated in the House, it is still constitutionally dubious in that it is a tax for doing nothing rather than a tax for doing something.

“Roberts’ Folly” is likely to haunt the nation in ways similar to the first version of “Roberts’ Folly”—the votes of Justice Owen Roberts in favor of the constitutionality of unemployment insurance and Social Security in Steward Machine Company v. Davis and Helvering v. Davis respectively in 1937. Like unemployment insurance and Social Security, Obamacare is unconstitutional. Alas, all three are forever ingrained in the bloated federal government.

 

Obama on Syria: Nobel Peace Prize Winner Tries to Gin Up War

by Gerard Emershaw

On the evening of September 10, 2013, Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama spoke to the American people and tried to sell them on an interventionist war with Syria that they do not want:

Over the past two years, what began as a series of peaceful protests against the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad has turned into a brutal civil war. Over 100,000 people have been killed. Millions have fled the country. In that time, America has worked with allies to provide humanitarian support, to help the moderate opposition, and to shape a political settlement. But I have resisted calls for military action, because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force, particularly after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Humanitarian support? Like the weapons that the CIA has been shipping to Syrian rebels? Moderate opposition? Like the al Qaeda affiliated group the al-Nusra Front, which an analyst has recently called the best armed al Qaeda affiliate? Moderates like Farouq Brigade cannibal leader Abu Sakkar, who consumed his enemy’s heart in a video? Moderates like the Syrian rebels murdering helpless bound Syrian soldiers in cold blood? Moderates like the Syrian rebels murdering children in Christian villages? With moderates like these, who needs radical Jihadists?  

President Obama claims to have “resisted calls for military action.” What this really amounts to saying is that he followed the Constitution, which states that only Congress may declare war. Given that he egregiously violated both the Constitution and the likely unconstitutional War Powers Resolution with his “kinetic military action” in Libya—which produced as blowback the massacre in Benghazi—perhaps in the bizarre world that we all live in, he should be lauded. Then again, according to Secretary of State John Kerry, President Obama believes that he can attack Syria without the approval of Congress. If he does believe that, then all of this is nothing but a charade. He would claim minutes later:

So even though I possess the authority to order military strikes, I believed it was right, in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security, to take this debate to Congress. I believe our democracy is stronger when the President acts with the support of Congress. And I believe that America acts more effectively abroad when we stand together.

It turns out the speech would be a charade that would basically just waste time and needlessly pre-empt the regularly scheduled television programming. No news here. President Obama never believed in the Constitution, and he still does not.

According to President Obama:

The situation profoundly changed, though, on August 21st, when Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk. On that terrible night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons, and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared them off-limits—a crime against humanity, and a violation of the laws of war. … Moreover, we know the Assad regime was responsible. 

President Obama does not know that Assad was responsible for the attack. Perhaps he believes that Assad did. Perhaps Assad did. Assad is certainly a ruthless and murderous dictator. However, Syrian rebel group and al Qaeda affiliate the al-Nusra Front has claimed that it is responsible for the attack blamed on Assad. Furthermore, the UN investigators have yet to release their report on the sarin gas attacks in Syria.

Assuming that Assad is responsible for the gas attacks, does that make him any worse than the United States that has employed such weapons as atomic bombs, Agent Orange, and depleted uranium tipped missiles? How is what Assad did any worse than what the United States helped Saddam Hussein do to Iranians? How is dying in a gas attack any worse than dying in a drone attack?

According to President Obama, Syrian use of chemical weapons is a danger to national security:

Let me explain why. If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using them. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and to use them to attack civilians. If fighting spills beyond Syria’s borders, these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. And a failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction, and embolden Assad’s ally, Iran—which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon, or to take a more peaceful path.

Talk about a flimsy slippery slope argument! It is unlikely that Syria—or any other nation—would launch any kind of unprovoked gas attack against American soldiers. If the United States launches an illegal unprovoked war against some nation and that nation uses chemical weapons, who could blame them? Are there any weapons that Americans would refuse to use if the existence of the nation were in danger? After all, the United States was prepared to use nuclear weapons against the existential threat of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Any nation that used chemical weapons against the United States or its allies would be crushed. Even the most maniacal dictator knows that. If anyone would ever use chemical weapons against Americans, it would be al Qaeda—the very group that is fighting among the Syrian rebels. If the rebels win, then al Qaeda gains possession of a cache of chemical weapons. How is that good?

The issue of Iran and nuclear weapons has absolutely nothing to do with Syria and chemical weapons. Unless and until the United States stops bringing about regime change in non-nuclear nations like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya while refraining from bringing military action against belligerent nuclear nations like North Korea, then the only sane thing for a nation with ample natural resources and no love for the United States is to develop or acquire a nuclear weapon.

Sounding like Orwell’s Big Brother, the Nobel Peace Prize winner contends that we must make war in Syria:

And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike. The purpose of this strike would be to deter Assad from using chemical weapons, to degrade his regime’s ability to use them, and to make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use.

If Syria is a threat to the national security of the United States, then virtually every nation on the face of the globe is. Does that mean the United States should launch Tomahawk missiles against every nation? Actually, President Obama would later reverse course and claim that “the Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military.” However, it is unclear how targeted strikes would make Assad less likely to use chemical weapons. If the strikes begin to turn the tide against his regime, it would be more likely that he would become desperate and use more chemical weapons. What is the alternative? Toppled dictators do not meet good ends. Just ask Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi. Actually, you cannot ask them anything anymore. Without putting boots on the ground, how does President Obama expect to degrade Syria’s chemical weapons supply? There is strong evidence that Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons is protected from air strikes.

Obama continued his speech by answering questions that he allegedly received from members of Congress and in letters from the American people. When did he start listening to Congress or the American people? Do people really still send letters? It is more likely that these were questions that one of his aides saw on Twitter. Three of these questions were particularly interesting. The first involved the possibility of getting the nation entangled in another needless war:

First, many of you have asked, won’t this put us on a slippery slope to another war? One man wrote to me that we are “still recovering from our involvement in Iraq.” A veteran put it more bluntly: “This nation is sick and tired of war.” My answer is simple: I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like Libya or Kosovo. This would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective: deterring the use of chemical weapons, and degrading Assad’s capabilities.

First, as previously stated, a limited air campaign of targeted strikes will not accomplish any of the President’s objectives. Secondly, how is launching Tomahawk missiles against an enemy not a war? Thirdly, does he not realize that this action could ignite a broader regional war that would pull the United States in? Fourthly, does he not realize that such military belligerency is irrational when it could pull nuclear nations like Russia and China in on the other side? Fifthly, does he not realize that the nation is $17 trillion in debt and even “kinetic military actions” are expensive when you are launching Tomahawk missiles at $1.5 million a pop?

President Obama later considered an even more important question:

Many of you have asked a broader question: Why should we get involved at all in a place that’s so complicated, and where—as one person wrote to me—“those who come after Assad may be enemies of human rights?” It’s true that some of Assad’s opponents are extremists. But al Qaeda will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death. The majority of the Syrian people—and the Syrian opposition we work with—just want to live in peace, with dignity and freedom. And the day after any military action, we would redouble our efforts to achieve a political solution that strengthens those who reject the forces of tyranny and extremism.

Those “moderates” again! A “moderate” Jihadist is like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and a benevolent dictator—it does not exist. Even Orwell’s Big Brother would be confused by President Obama’s doublespeak. How would attacking al Qaeda’s enemy hurt them? Did attacking Nazi Germany during World War II hurt the Soviet Union? Did attacking Japan hurt China? If Assad were to get toppled by air strikes the way that Qaddafi was in Libya, how would gaining control of yet another country hurt al Qaeda? Has he forgotten about the blowback from the Libyan debacle? Of course, he would love to forget about Benghazi, but he surely has not. A political solution? If President Obama wants a political solution, why is he not working on one? Then again, maybe he should just sit this civil war out the way that Britain, France, Spain, and Russia sat out the American Civil War and allowed President Lincoln to crush a violent rebel force even when that meant Lincoln was killing civilians.

Finally, President Obama addressed whether the United States should follow Woodrow Wilson’s dictate to “make the world safe for democracy” by being the policeman of the world:

Finally, many of you have asked: Why not leave this to other countries, or seek solutions short of force?  As several people wrote to me, “We should not be the world’s policeman.” I agree, and I have a deeply held preference for peaceful solutions. Over the last two years, my administration has tried diplomacy and sanctions, warning and negotiations—but chemical weapons were still used by the Assad regime. However, over the last few days, we’ve seen some encouraging signs. In part because of the credible threat of U.S. military action, as well as constructive talks that I had with President Putin, the Russian government has indicated a willingness to join with the international community in pushing Assad to give up his chemical weapons. The Assad regime has now admitted that it has these weapons, and even said they’d join the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits their use. It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments. But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force, particularly because Russia is one of Assad’s strongest allies.

It is nice that the Nobel Peace Prize winner claims to prefer peaceful solutions. But does he? He ordered a surge in Afghanistan, drone campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, and “kinetic military action” in Libya. When has he ever managed to bring about a peaceful solution? In what sense has he done anything but try to act like policeman of the world? Of course, in many instances, President Obama acts like a policeman defending one group of criminals against another group of criminals. In some places like Bahrain, he even acts like a policeman defending criminals against innocent victims. The former KGB goon Vladimir Putin is a despot. There is no doubt about that. He is certainly not working for altruistic purposes here. He only seeks peace because he wants the Assad regime to survive due to the fact that Syria is a Russian client state and provides Russia with a base on the Mediterranean. But what kind of world do we live in when a KGB goon might bring peace while a Nobel Peace Prize winning American President promises only war? During the Cold War, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and ran a police state that spied on its own people. Today, the United States is occupying Afghanistan and running a police state that spies on its own people. Up is down and day is night, apparently.   

As he neared the conclusion of his charade of a speech, President Obama continued to base his hawkish argument for war on an appeal to emotion rather than on logic:

And so, to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just. To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain, and going still on a cold hospital floor. For sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough. Indeed, I’d ask every member of Congress, and those of you watching at home tonight, to view those videos of the attack, and then ask: What kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas, and we choose to look the other way?

If President Obama enjoys watching videos, perhaps he should watch this video of children killed or injured in drone strikes. Or perhaps he should not base his decisions on emotion at all. His job is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. That is a matter of reason and not emotion. Russia killed children in Chechnya. China killed children in Tibet. Should the United States attack these nations? Or is it all really just about the fact that the children in Syria were killed by gas attack? What does that really matter? Assad simply does not have Predator drones or depleted uranium tipped Tomahawk missiles. Tyrants kill the innocent with the weapons that are ready to hand.

As he closed his speech, President Obama quoted FDR:

Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”

Quoting FDR at this juncture might have been a bad idea. After all, it was President Roosevelt who maneuvered the United States into World War II by imposing an oil embargo on Japan and inviting the blowback that occurred at Pearl Harbor. If President Obama is to learn any lesson from FDR, perhaps it should be a lesson of avoiding a world war by being careful what actions one takes in foreign policy.

Like any morally and intellectually bankrupt politician, President Obama closes by invoking the children:

America is not the world’s policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong. But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth.

Children. Always the children. American children will only face danger if President Obama continues with his reckless foreign policy and creates blowback that produces the next major terrorist attack on American soil. Children will die in Syria one way or the other. Sad but true. Perhaps they will die at the hands of Assad. Perhaps they will die at the hands of the Jihadist rebels. But Syrian children should not die from American missiles. Syria has not attacked the United States and poses no threat to the United States. Attacking Syria would just be naked aggression with no purpose.

Each day Syria feels more and more like déjà vu all over again. Ba’athist dictator? Check. Vague intelligence claims about weapons of mass destruction? Check. A lack of an actual threat to the United States? Check. The potential to create a power vacuum that will help Jihadist terrorists? Check. Albert Einstein defined ‘insanity’ as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Why would any sane person believe that military action in Syria will not end up a disaster like Iraq or Libya?

Kinetic Military Action in Syria: Stop Pretending that Damascus Will Not Be the Next Benghazi

by Gerard Emershaw

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A despotic secular leader of an Islamic country is accused of murdering his own people during a civil war. Americans who were still angry over being lied into war in Iraq are not eager for another war. A future head of the Natonal Security Council, the next likely POTUS, and a future ambassador to the UN begin propagating ridiculous propaganda about the despotic secular Islamic leader giving Viagra to his soliders so that they could rape civilians. The United States intervenes unconstitutionally and engages in “kinetic military action” which involves launching Tomahawk missiles—cruise missiles which are tipped with depleted uranium and are properly considered Geneva Conventions violating radioactive poison gas weapons. Dozens of civilians are killed in the American led NATO attacks. The United States succeeds in helping the bloodthirsty Jihadist rebels overthrow the secular tyrant. These Jihadist rebels—who are closely affiliated with al Qaeda—engage in genocidal revenge killings against black citizens who fought on the side of the secular tyrant. Thanks to the United States, the al Qaeda flag flies over a major city in the nation. A year later four Americans are murdered in an attack by some of the very Jihadists that the United States supported in the civil war.

Sound familiar, neocons? Benghazi? Ring a bell? You know, the tragic incident that resulted from blockback that was created by American invervention in Libya? Do me a favor, neocons. Put down your copies of Machiavelli, Plato, and Strauss. Stop making goo goo eyes at that autographed photo of Trotsky that you bought on eBay. Stop pretending that you’re conservatives. Stop thinking about how much you love the Bismarkian welfare state and Keynesian economics. Just listen.

The warmongering neo-Wilsonian President Obama is about to violate the Constitution by declaring war on Syria without the permission of Congress. Just as he did in Libya. He is going to justify it as a humanitarian action against a tyrant who is killing his own people. Just like he did in Libya. He is going to help an al Qaeda allied rebel group topple a secular tyrant. Just like he did in Libya.

In between trying to convince real conservatives that Trotsky was Barry Goldwater with weird hair and glasses and that Irving Kristol was an actual free market capitalist, the neoconservatives will ask: “What could possibly go wrong?” They will say that President Obama must attack Syria in order to not appear weak on the world stage. They will say that President Obama must send a tough message to Iran and that attacking Syria will accomplish just that. Constituton be damned! They will admit that Iraqis were not killing Kuwaiti babies in incubators prior to the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs or conspire to carry out the 9/11 attacks, and that black Libyan soldiers were not using Viagra to rape Libyan women. But they will claim that Syria is different. They will swear that this time the U.S. citizenry can trust them. It’s just not possible that the Jihadists would lie about Assad using chemical weapons. It’s not possible that it was a false flag attack carried about by the Jihadist rebels. Friends of al Qaeda would never do anything nefarious like that.

The neocons will promise that Syria will be completely different from Libya. The Jihadists will send us Christmas cards and flowers for helping them overthrow Assad. These Jihadists are “good al Qaeda.” Sort of like “good cholesterol.” That is the Straussian noble lie which they will tell. When the al Qaeda flag flies over Damascus, they will pretend to be shocked. When Syrian rebels commit atrocities against innocent citizens, they will make excuses. When these Jihadists begin ethnically cleansing Syria of Christians, they will say it's just a few bad apples doing it. When Syria becomes a training ground for al Qaeda, they will pretend that nobody could have seen it coming and claim that not having Assad around anymore somehow trumps that. They will claim that somehow having yet another Jihadist neighbor will benefit Israel.

All those so called conservatives who follow neocon RINOs like McCain, Graham, and King and neo-progressive warmongers like Obama, Kerry, and Rice and support American military action in Syria forfeit the right to express righteous indignation over what happened in Benghazi. All those so called conservatives who think it is okay for President Obama to violate the Constitution by unilaterally declaring war in Syria forfeit their right to complain next time the President violates the Constitution in order to carry out some domestic policy which they oppose—whether it be on immigration, abortion, health care, gay rights, taxation, etc.  

What could possibly go wrong? Unless you count the likelihood of blowback against American citizens in the form of Jihadist terrorism, then nothing. But if you support American military action against Assad, do not pretend you did not see it coming when blowback occurs.

One Simple Rule: Only Congress May Make Laws

Do you like simple rules? Simple rules tell you precisely what you must do in order to be in compliance with them. Wouldn't life be much less stressful if the tax code were simple? Wouldn't life be easier if you didn't have to spend days determining whether you are entitled to this exemption or that deduction? Wouldn't it be easier if you didn't have to choose to either pull your hair out and fill out the IRS forms, hoping that you don't make a costly mistake or instead pay hard earned money to pay a tax preparer when there are so many other uses to which you would rather put your money? The federal government has simple rules in the form of the Constitution. Yet somehow these geniuses cannot follow easy and unambiguous rules.

Take the Congress, for example. Article I, Section 1 of the United States Constitution states "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." Pretty simple. A team of John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Earl Warren, Louis Brandeis, William Brennan, and Charles Evan Hughes are certainly not required to parse out the meaning of this clause. We all learned it in our civics classes. The Congress makes the laws, the President enforces the laws, and the Supreme Court interprets the laws. Simple as pie. But not so fast! The Constitution says that all legislative powers, the power to make federal law, are vested in Congress. But does Congress really pass all laws? Does it even pass a fraction of the federal laws under which we live?

Consider 2009. In that year Congress passed a grand total of 216 laws. All in all, it is probably good that they only managed to pass that many given that it seems that with every new law, we say goodbye to more of our freedoms. After all, how could our legislators be expected to actually do their jobs when they are so busy preening for the camera on CSPAN, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC and raising money for their next misleading re-election campaign? But fear not, there were still countless new rules and regulations for us to follow passed in 2009. It is just that Congress did not have anything to do with them. In 2009, The Federal Register contained over 69,000 pages. The Federal Register is "the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents." Wait a second. Executive orders? Where in the Constitution does the President get legislative powers at all? The answer is nowhere. The presidents only powers are to be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy and of the state militias when they are called into actual service, to grant reprieves and pardons for federal offenses, to make treaties provided that two thirds of the Senate approves, and to nominate and appoint, with advice and consent of the Senate, "Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States." That is all. The President does not have the right in the Constitution to make any laws.

But it is far worse than that. The Federal Register also contains rules and regulations that are made by the faceless and unaccountable employees of over 319 federal agencies. A veritable alphabet soup of administrative agencies that includes bureaucratic bodies such as the Department of Education, the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Labor as well as dozens of smaller bureaucratic bodies underneath each major administrative agency. The truth is that these unelected bodies make the vast majority of what functions as federal law. Where in the Constitution are these administrative agencies named and explained? Again, nowhere.

Statist shills will certainly argue that in the complex modern world such agencies are required in order to govern. Fine. If so, then it is straight forward. Simply amend the Constitution to make legal room for these bureaucratic behemoths. Article V of the Constitution is completely devoted to those procedures. The Constitution has been amended seventeen times since the Bill of Rights were ratified in 1791. So, while it is not an easy thing to do, it is manageable.

If it is not bad enough that we are virtually enslaved by these unelected bureaucrats, it is downright appalling how much we pay for the privilege. The entire situation is like how during the Spanish Inquisition, the prisoners in the dungeons had to pay their jailers for the chains which bound them. The following are the costs in the 2009 federal budget for our administrative inquisitors.

$515.4 billion -- United States Department of Defense $70.4 billion -- United States Department of Health and Human Services $68.2 billion -- United States Department of Transportation

$45.4 billion -- United States Department of Education

$44.8 billion -- United States Department of Veteran Affairs

$38.5 billion -- United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

$37.6 billion -- United States Department of Homeland Security

$20.5 billion -- United States Department of Energy

$20.8 billion -- United States Department of Agriculture

$20.3 billion -- United States Department of Justice

$17.6 billion -- National Aeronautics and Space Administration

$12.5 billion -- United States Department of the Treasury

$10.6 billion -- United States Department of the Interior

$10.5 billion -- United States Department of Labor

$8.4 billion -- Social Security Administration

$7.1 billion -- United States Environmental Protection Agency

$6.9 billion -- National Science Foundation

$4.7 billion -- United States Army Corps of Engineers

$0.7 billion -- Small Business Administration

$7.2 billion -- Other agencies

For 2009, these budgets totaled a whopping $968.1 billion. For a nation that is over $13 trillion in debt and pays over $250 billion a year just on interest on this debt, that seems a hefty price to pay for something that is patently unconstitutional. Our genius leaders' inability to read and follow such a simple rule will ultimately be a major cause when the United States goes the way of Greece or more likely the way of the Weimar Republic or even the Roman Empire.

Again, the statist shill will whine about how complex our modern civilization is compared with the agrarian society of the time of the Founders. But remember that the Congressmen at the time of the Founders did their legislating part time in between their actual jobs. They did not have jet airplanes to travel to D.C. They did not have telephones and smartphones and the internet. The statist shill will again whine that the heads of these agencies are experts in these complex fields and that members of Congress cannot be expected to know all of this. Guess again! The heads of these agencies are typically just more lawyers and BFF's of presidents who could not find work in the private sector or who are looking to eventually parlay their unconstitutional positions into six or seven figure jobs in the private sector as lobbyists. And again, if this unconstitutional bureaucratic alphabet soup is so essential, then amend the Constitution! However, it seems that simply enlarging state and federal courts would accomplish nearly every important thing that these nameless and faceless bureaucrats do, and the private sector would accomplish the rest. The vast majority of these administrative rules and regulations punish all people or all businesses willy nilly rather than punishing those who commit torts as dealing with it in the courts would do. These administrative agencies are basically bought and paid for by large corporate interests and make expensive rules which these corporations can afford, but which stifle competition from smaller businesses, keeping innovation and entrepreneurship out of the market.

How did things spiral so out of control? How did not being able to read and understand a simple rule lead to inquisitional chains for which Americans must pay nearly $1 trillion each year with no end in sight? The answer is the concept of Congressional "intelligible principle" by which the Supreme Court has allowed it to delegate its legislative powers in violation of Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution. In 1928 in JW Hampton Jr. Co. v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a delegation of Congressional authority to the president of the power to raise or lower duties imposed by the Tariff Act of 1922 was constitutional. The Court stated that such delegations of power by the Congress were permissible as long as Congress "shall lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized ... is directed to conform." As with all unconstitutional seeds, this one grew into an immense and twisted tree. Once an unconstitutional Pandora's Box is opened, our genius leaders soon wreak more and more havoc on our rights and our pocketbooks. The question of what exactly constitutes "an intelligible principle" is the sort of question that can kill forests of trees and fill countless law review journals. How vague is too vague? But the bottom line is that Congress simply cannot delegate its authority. The job of the Congress is to make laws and not make legislators. What part of "all legislative Powers" do the Congress and Supreme Court not understand? Do we need to simplify it even more for them? Do we need crayon drawings or something?

The statist shill will again whine (I almost miss old school statists like Hitler and Stalin -- at least those bastards roared instead of whining) that by analogy it is akin to delegating duties under contract law. However, delegation of the duties of a contract is not permitted under contract law where the party to the contract who has the duty to perform has a special skill or reputation. I would say that actually having been elected by voters in the given states or districts is having a special reputation. And our legislators seem to think that they are especially skilled, so once for the sake of argument, let us agree with them.

Congressional delegation of legislative authority is patently unconstitutional. The Congress should spend less time raising money for re-election and less time accepting bribes (er, I mean corporate campaign contributions) and more time doing their jobs instead of passing the buck. The moral cover that it gives them when some alphabet soup agency passes a rule instead of them biting the bullet and doing it is unacceptable. At most, administrative agencies should become lean, mean, and cheap advisory boards for the Congress. But really, they ought to go the way of the dodo bird.

The Patent Unconstitutionality of the Federal Reserve

A group of the world's most powerful men, including an influential United States senator, three powerful international bankers, and the Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury gather for a week for a clandestine meeting at a secluded resort co-owned by one of the wealthiest bankers in the world. When they emerge, they have hatched a plot that with one vote in Congress will give their cartel virtually unlimited power over the United States economy and its currency. These machinations will give them the power to completely direct the American economy. They will be able to inflate the currency at will, redistribute wealth from the American people to their cronies, and give the corrupt United States government the power and means to wage unlimited wars of aggression and to create schemes to gain more and more power over the American people. If you think that this sounds like the plot of a Tom Clancy novel or one of the seasons of "24," think again. These events actually occurred, and the repercussions continue to haunt us today. As the republic stands on the verge of economic collapse, we can only look back at December 23, 1912, a day which truly will live in infamy.

On November 22, 1910, a group of men including Senator Nelson Aldrich, bankers Henry Davison, Paul Warburg, and Frank Vanderlip, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury A. Piatt Andrew gathered at the Jekyll Island Club, a coastal Georgia resort co-owned by banker J.P. Morgan, one of the wealthiest men of the day. Aldrich was a powerful Progressive Republican Senator who had been dubbed "General Manager of the Nation" because of his central position on the Senate Finance Committee from which he dominated American economic policy in the early twentieth century. His daughter Abigail had been married to John David Rockefeller, Jr., the sole son and heir of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, since 1901, essentially making Aldrich unofficial American royalty. Davison was a Senior Partner at J.P. Morgan & Company, the powerful commercial and investment banking institution which had financed such mighty corporations as the United States Steel Corporation. Warburg, a German immigrant, was a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company, one of the most influential investment banks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Vanderlip was president of the National City Bank of New York. Andrew was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and had previously served as Director of the Mint and as an editor of publications of the National Monetary Commission, a government think tank that studied European central banks and sought to create such an entity in the United States. During the week long meeting, these powerful men, who represented an estimated one quarter of all the world's wealth, hammered out the plan for what would come to be the Federal Reserve. This plan was put into motion through the Federal Reserve Act, enacted on December 29, 1913. Through single votes in the Congress, where it passed in the Senate by a vote of 43 to 25 in the Senate and by a vote of 298 to 60 in the House of Representatives, the Act passed and was signed by President Woodrow Wilson.

What precisely is the Federal Reserve? Given its name, most Americans likely assume that it is a government entity. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Although it claims to not be owned by anybody and claims it is "not a private, profit-making institution" but is instead an independent entity within the government with both "public purposes and private aspects," this is simply not true. In fact, the Federal Reserve is owned by its member institutions, which are all private banks. Its powers continue to increase, and it is more clandestine in many ways than even the CIA, with not even a Congressional audit currently permitted for transparency and accountability. What does the Federal Reserve do? In the Federal Reserve Act, which established the entity, Congress said that the Federal Reserve was created "to furnish an elastic currency, to afford the means of discounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes." "A more effective supervision of banking" was sought to deal with banking panics such as the one in 1907 which nearly crippled the nation financially. However, this was clearly just an excuse, as such a powerful entity is not needed to supervise banking. Creating something like the Federal Reserve for that would be akin to using a nuclear bomb to swat a fly. The more important thing to contemplate is the notion of "an elastic currency." What is an elastic currency? It is ultimately "funny money," fiat currency which is backed by nothing and is subject to manipulation which inflates it over time, destroying its value and leaving Americans poorer with each passing year due to the inflation. It is currency which can be effectively created out of thin air through such complex practices as open-market operations, the changing of reserve ratios, and manipulating interest rates. It was these kinds of machinations by which the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression and the current economic crisis.

The pattern is always essentially the same. Thomas Woods, Jr. describes this pattern in a clear fashion in his book Meltdown:

"When the Federal Reserve pushes down interest rates by increasing the money supply, it encourages a boom in the production of longer-term projects: raw materials, construction, and capital goods in general. The boom in construction and real estate this past decade, made possible by these low interst rates, is a good example. Unlike the production that genuine consumer demand stimulates, though, the Fed's artificial stimulus is not in line with real consumer demand, and it encourages more and different kinds of projects to be undertaken than the economy can sustain. The necessary resources to complete all these projects profitably do not exist. Neither the saved resources to complete them, nor the consumer base to purchase the finished products, exist in sufficient volume."

During the 1920's the amount of money increased fifty-five percent due to inflationary policies pursued by the Federal Reserve during the decade. This increase took the form of additional loans to businesses. This pumped up "bubble" created by these inflationary policies, famously burst when the stock market collapsed in 1929. If the government reacted to this prudently by allowing the markets to correct, what became known as the Great Depression would likely have been avoided as such a depression had been avoided at the beginning of the decade. During and after World War I, the Federal Reserve had been inflating the money supply and when it eventually raised the rate at which it lends to banks, it caused the economy to slow drastically. Instead of meddling with the market in a totalitarian manner as Hoover and Roosevelt did a decade later, President Harding simply allowed the markets to correct. As a result, nearly nobody has ever heard of the Depression of 1920.

Similar machinations caused the current financial crisis. The Federal Reserve increased the money supply by lowering key interest rates to historic lows. This caused people to purchase things like half million dollar homes that they could not afford. For the very same reasons as with the Great Depression, the bubble that the Federal Reserve artificially inflated with its machinations burst, causing financial difficulties to spread throughout the economy.

Whether the Federal Reserve is a menace that causes the boom/bust economic cycle as Austrian economists such as Hayek and von Mises claim or is a necessary and benevolent force such as economist Milton Friedman believed is immaterial at the end of the day. The important issue is whether the Federal Reserve is constitutional. Only if it is constitutional must we even debate the merits of the institution.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives the Congress, among its other enumerated powers, the power "To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures." In effect, through its control of the interest rates, it is the Federal Reserve that is now regulating the value of American currency. It is also effectively coining money by inflating the amount of currency in circulation. The Constitution gives Congress no authority to delegate its enumerated powers to other government entities, let alone to delegate them to private banks.

So how did this happen? How did a clandestine consortium of private bankers gain the power to control the economy, control interest rates, and in effect control our currency? To find the answer, we need to go back to 1819 and the infamous case McCulloch v. Maryland, a black eye for the Supreme Court and the death knell for limited government and liberty. The case involved the State of Maryland's practice of taxing any bank within the state which operated without state authority. This included the Baltimore branch of the Second Bank of the United States, a much weaker ancestor of the Federal Reserve. In addressing the question of whether Congress has the power to charter a bank, the majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice Marshall, himself no lover of limited government and no friend of freedom, begins by acknowledging that the United States federal government is one of enumerated powers and that among its enumerated powers cannot be found the powers to establish a bank or to create a corporation. So far, so good. But then the Court employs a strategy of beating liberty over the head with missing adverbs in the Constitution and with infelicitous linguistic analysis. The Court examines the Tenth Amendment, which unambiguously states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The Court points out that the Constitution omits the word 'expressly' in the text of the Tenth Amendment and claims that this leaves "the question whether the particular power which may become the subject of contest has been delegated to the one government, or prohibited to the other, to depend on a fair construction of the whole instrument."

What? Somehow the fact that the drafters of the Tenth Amendment did not use superfluous adverbs like some Romantic novelist creates ambiguity where clearly none exists? What could be more clear? First, the Court itself admits that the powers to charter a bank and to create a corporation are not among the enumerated powers of the federal government. Second, nowhere in the Constitution does it prohibit the powers to charter banks and create corporations to the states. Therefore, these powers are "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Where in the world is the ambiguity here?

The Court next appeals to the Necessary and Proper clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. This clause, among the enumerated powers of Congress, states that Congress has the power "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." The Court finds within the enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8 "the great powers to lay and collect taxes; to borrow money; to regulate commerce; to declare and conduct a war; and to raise and support armies and navies." It concludes that a central bank is necessary for the exercise of these enumerated powers.

However, Marshall recognizes that more work is needed in order to justify the power of Congress to charter a bank. It is clear that further argument is needed because something far more modest than a full fledged banking corporation could do the job of allowing Congress to exercise the aforementioned enumerated powers. Something as modest as a warehouse to store government monies would likely do the trick. Although itself constitutionally dubious from the point of view of originalism (due to it being an illicit delegation of Congressional power to the executive branch), by 1819, the Department of the Treasury already existed. It is completely unclear why this body could not have done what the Court thought "necessary" to allow exercise of the enumerated powers in question. Among the basic functions of the Department of the Treasury (which can presently be found spelled out on their official website) are:

• Managing Federal finances;
• Collecting taxes, duties and monies paid to and due to the U.S. and paying all bills of the U.S.;
• Currency and coinage;
• Managing Government accounts and the public debt;
• Supervising national banks and thrift institutions;
• Advising on domestic and international financial, monetary, economic, trade and tax policy;
• Enforcing Federal finance and tax laws;
• Investigating and prosecuting tax evaders, counterfeiters, and forgers.

Clearly, using these functions, the Department of the Treasury could have done what the Court deemed necessary.

Precisely what is necessary in order to exercise the enumerated powers of Congress that Marshall specifically names that the Department of the Treasury cannot do? Why was the Second Bank of the United States necessary in 1819 and why is the Federal Reserve necessary now? The Court attempts to sidestep this issue by putting a strange gloss on the Necessary and Proper clause. Marshall claims that the word 'necessary' "frequently imports no more than that one thing is convenient, useful, or essential to another." He then claims that "a thing may be necessary, very necessary, absolutely necessary, or indispensably necessary. To no mind would the same idea be conveyed, by these several phrases." It is difficult to determine what sort of fictional lexicon that Marshall employed in coming up with this strange interpretation. 'Necessary' means being essential, indispensable, or requisite. In no sense does it mean merely being useful or convenient. 'Useful' and 'convenient' convey those ideas, 'necessary' does not. In no way is the chartering of a powerful banking corporation necessary to enable Congress to execute its enumerated powers.

Even if it were, for the sake of argument, the Court completely ignores the "proper" part of the Necessary and Proper clause. 'Proper' means "suitable,' but it also means "conforming to established standards." The "established standards" here would be the Constitution. Even if something is necessary, it is not proper if it violates something else explicitly stated in the Constitution. What it violates is the Coinage clause of Article I, Section 8, which states that Congress has the power "to coin money" and to "regulate the value thereof." In effect the Court's interpretation in its majority opinion completely ignores this clause and instead allows the enumerated power to be granted to an external corporation. Thus, it is perfectly clear that Congress (and the rest of the federal government) does not have the enumerated power to charter a bank, that this power is not necessary and proper for exercise of its enumerated powers, and therefore, the federal government simply cannot do it.

Therefore, the Federal Reserve is patently unconstitutional. If its proponents wish to make it constitutional, they simply need to amend the Constitution. But why in the world would we want to amend the Constitution to allow such a monstrous beast to be constitutional? The Federal Reserve creates economic crises such as the Great Depression and the current economic collapse. The Federal Reserve also debases the currency over time, impoverishing all Americans through the "inflation tax." As Texas Congressman Dr. Ron Paul has noted, the Federal Reserve, through its shenanigans, has reduced the purchasing power of the American dollar ninety-five percent over the last century, essentially stealing $.95 of each dollar. More alarmingly, the Federal Reserve allows the federal government to almost clandestinely fund its freedom stealing welfare/warfare state. Without the machinations of the Federal Reserve, such things as the Patriot Act and the overseas American Empire with its unconstitutional wars of aggression would need to be funded by increasing income taxes. However, the Federal Reserve allows it to be funded by simply "printing money." But worst of all, this printing of money by the Federal Reserve is only pushing the day of reckoning forward. One day it will no longer have another economic bubble to create ,and all the low interest rates in the world will not be able to prevent the nation from collapsing under its $16 trillion dollar (and growing) debt. What is left of the value of the dollar will disappear, and the republic will be in ruins. The American people must recognize this unconstitutional demon for what it is, and exorcise it before it is too late.