Category Archives: Government

Whodunit? Who “Meddled” With Our American Democracy? (Part 2)

America, Conservatism, Constitution, Democracy, Government, Russia, States' Rights

THE NEW COLUMN is “Whodunit? Who “Meddled” With Our American Democracy?” (Part 2). The unabridged version is on WND.com. A slightly abridged version is on Townhall.com:

Not a day goes by when the liberal media don’t telegraph to the world that a “Trumpocracy” is destroying American democracy. Conspicuous by its absence is a pesky fact: Ours was never a country conceived as a democracy.

To arrive at a democracy, we Americans destroyed a republic.

One of the ways in which the republic was destroyed was through the slow sundering of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. The 10th was meant to guarantee constitutional devolution of power.

“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 de facto demise of the 10th has resulted in “constitutional” consolidation.

Fair enough, but is that enough? A perceptive Townhall.com reader was having none of it.

In response to “Whodunit? Who ‘Meddled’ With Our American Democracy” (Part 1), the reader upbraided this writer:

“Anyone who quotes the 10th Amendment, but not the 14th Amendment that supplanted it cannot be taken seriously.”

In other words, to advance the erosion of the 10th in explaining who did our republic in, without mentioning the 14th: this was an omission on the writer’s part.

The reader is admirably correct about Incorporation-Doctrine centralization.

Not even conservative constitutional originalists are willing to concede that the 14th Amendment and the attendant Incorporation Doctrine have obliterated the Constitution’s federal scheme, as expressed in the once-impregnable 10th Amendment.

What does this mean?

You know the drill but are always surprised anew by it. Voters pass a law under which a plurality wishes to live in a locality. Along comes a U.S. district judge and voids the law, citing a violation of the 14th’s Equal Protection Clause.

For example: Voters elect to prohibit local government from sanctioning gay marriage. A U.S. district judge voids voter-approved law for violating the 14th’s Equal Protection Clause.

These periodical contretemps around gay marriage, or the legal duty of private property owners to cater these events, are perfectly proper judicial activism. It flows from the 14th Amendment.

If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government—the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.

Put differently, matters previously subject to state jurisdiction have been pulled into the orbit of a judiciary. Yet not even conservative constitutional originalists are willing to cop to this constitutional fait accompli.

The gist of it: Jeffersonian constitutional thought is no longer in the Constitution; its revival unlikely. ….

Order columnist Ilana Mercer’s polemical work, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

… READ THE REST: THE NEW COLUMN is “Whodunit? Who “Meddled” With Our American Democracy?” (Part 2). The unabridged version is on WND.com. A slightly abridged version is on Townhall.com.

1 Reason The State Department Turned On #RexTillerson: He Tried Trimming Budgets & Getting Rid Of Deadwood

Business, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Free Markets, Government, Political Economy, Taxation, The State

The Economist notes that Rex Tillerson was a poor secretary of state—but not for the reasons I would advance.

One reason for their opinion is that, “Disastrously for morale, he declined to defend his own department when the White House proposed cutting its budget by 25% or more … Mr Tillerson squandered goodwill with a corporate restructuring that felt to many staff like an invitation to resign. At one point, outside consultants sent round a questionnaire asking: “To optimally support the future mission of the Department, what one or two things should your work unit totally stop doing or providing?” (“Trump Unbound: In foreign affairs, America just moved closer to one-man rule,” March 17, 2018.)

TILLESRSON TRIED TO CUT GOVERNMENT! Defending your employees, The Economist here equates with increasing or maintaining the budget for the department, it diplomats, envoys and other career and or deadwood staff.

State institutions are self-reinforcing and not amenable to reform; they grow through failure.

So while it would be nice if state institutions were able to reform, because of the structure of incentives, the state cannot be corrected. The incentive structure underlying state institutions is antithetical to reform.

To correct processes that may be killing people—affirmative action, when the subject of special privileges isn’t qualified—you have to cut budgets in the billions. This likely will never happen, in state institutions, because they don’t abide by the profit motive. So to express belief in this is to express belief in the possibility of the state fixing itself.

The libertarian grasps that the state grows through inefficiency. The more it bungles—the greater its budget will be. Economically, the state’s incentives are inverted. A private company, on the other hand, grows through economic and performative efficiencies; by singles the customer. The state is the opposite. As a monopoly, it need please nobody. For example, the education system is a giant failure. Will it be scrapped? Of course not. The system will reward itself with MORE, not less, funds to fix the problem.

This is a structural fact of the state.

Why can the state grow and prosper through inefficiency? Because it has access to the funds of an indentured third party, taxpayers, and has the promiscuous use of the printing press.

A private institution can come back from the abyss, because, economically, it will go bust if it doesn’t start pleasing customers. However, if, like the Florida bridge collapse, a private enterprise is working in tandem with the state, then taxpayers bail it out.

Profit is privatized, loss is socialized.

Most people no longer read or understand the economics of the state. Ten years ago, I had readers who had at least read Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.

‘What If Democrats Win Enough Seats In Congress To Override A Presidential Veto’?

Democrats, Elections, Federalism, Government, Labor, Welfare

The Conor Lamb victory in Pennsylvania raises the fear that, “When the mid-terms roll round, [Democrats] would win enough seats in Congress to override a presidential veto.”

Democrats far from the seats of power and from Nancy Pelosi’s orbit are looking to appeal to regular Americans, namely the Trump constituency.

* Duly, Lamb is “a former marine and federal prosecutor.” (Used to be the armed fores were squarely in the conservative camp.)

* Mr Lamb campaigned at rallies with unions, such as the steelworkers, the coalminers at a United Mine Workers.

* “Mr Lamb promised to protect pensions of union members as well as Social Security and Medicare benefits for all.”

* “Lamb was ‘a God-fearing, union-supporting, gun-owning, job-protecting, pension-defending, Social-Security-believing … sending-drug-dealers-to-jail Democrat,’ enthused Cecil Roberts, the union boss. The Democrats need more like him.”

MORE: “Conor Lamb has shown Democrats how to win in places they usually lose.”

UPDATE II (3/26): New Bridge Collapses, New Trains Derail, Navy Keeps Crashing, Police & FBI Fail: Are US Institutions Being Hollowed Out?

Affirmative Action, Government, Intelligence, Labor, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Race, The State

A Washington-State Amtrak train, on a maiden trip, ends up dangling over Interstate 5, at DuPont, after leaving the tracks. The train’s engineer is traveling at 78 mph into a curve, where a 30 mph speed-limit is required and signs to that effect posted. Three passengers die, 62 are injured. Clearly a major systemic failure was afoot.

The public receives no follow up, to date. Media demand none.

Has anyone heard what became of the investigation into another Amtrak wonder, “the train that derailed in Philadelphia, May 14, 2015“? Naturally not. Like the more recent derailment, the train “was equipped with an automatic speed control system that officials say could have prevented the wreck, which killed eight passengers and injured hundreds. But the system, which was tantalizingly close to being operational, was delayed by budgetary shortfalls, technical hurdles and bureaucratic rules, officials said Thursday.”

AND NOW, a spanking “new pedestrian bridge collapses at a Florida university campus.” The “newly installed 950-ton pedestrian bridge that spanned 174 feet over the seven-lane road, also known as Calle Ocho, had collapsed, pancaking vehicles and leading to four deaths.”

People in their cars are pulverized.

Who on earth constructed this shit? Affirmative hires?

At least one kid is asking questions about the authorities in charge (something the ban-guns kiddies refuse to do):

One of the basics about construction is that everything should be tested beyond any doubt before it’s opened,” said Junia, 19, a sophomore at FIU. “Was this even tested before it was opened? This is really disheartening.

The navy has had its share of problems (not least its obscene TV ads which still declare a force funded by American taxpayers to be “a global force for good,” helping to eradicate poverty the world-over. Fuck it. That’s a betrayal of the Oath of Office!).

Are America’s institutions being hollowed out by policy? Is the tipping point being reached? I suspect so. All this here is anecdotal, but you too suspect the same when you give it some thought. (Schools, anybody? Run by anti-white, anti-male, dangerous, not-very-bright females, some with the Y Chromosome.)

Government failure is everywhere apparent. Failure at every level was all over the Florida, Douglas-High shooting. Not uncharacteristically, one offending officer, Scot Petersen, has been rewarded with retirement, not punishment, for dereliction of duty during the massacre.

Wait a sec. US government workers are never punished. (And the kids have been dumbed-down by the educators aforementioned as to the role of government. Thus they refuse to demand accountability from their overlords. Next they’ll seek to ban beds where rapes occur on them.)

American institutions were once more merit-based. The attitude of those who’re doing the hollowing-out, through preferential, non-merit based hiring, quotas and set-asides, can be summed thus: Shit happens. Deal.

UPDATE I (3/16): GOVERNMENT KILLS. Like South Africa, the U.S. government, in this case the Department of Transportation, has a pyramid of hiring preferences. You can guess which variable features prominently in the considerations. It’s not competency. Certain kind of companies—ethnic lineage and complexion count—are encouraged to bid for government tenders. The “Munilla Construction Management, the South Florida firm” which gave us the Florida International University Bridge, is a veteran of unsafe practices. It’s what happens when political considerations override competency. It’s ALWAYS the case with government, which is why government should do very little hiring. Very little of anything, for that matter.

MORE: “Companies That Built Collapsed FIU Bridge Had Been Fined for Safety Violations.”

UPDATE II (3/26):

That’s company touted an all women’s engineering team. They have scrubbed their social media of this and YouTube have taken down videos showing this. It’s now a cover up. There was also a dedication plaque on the bridge to the minority women who built it.

— Jason (@JasonJjw8) March 23, 2018