Friday, November 5, 2010

States Have Mandate to Oppose Obamacare

Republicans have made huge gains at the state and local level this past election. The activism of tea partiers and their vocal opposition to Obamacare, and the outrageous spending at the federal level, propelled a huge turnout against a grasping, overreaching central government. A mandate has been issued: it is time to stop the power grab in Washington D.C...

Our country has struggled with our Constitution and duel sovereignty between the states and federal government since the birth of our union. It ended at gun point with the industrial North victorious over the agrarian South. Ever since then, power has slowly been taken away from the states. And one of the biggest proponents of a big statist government is the federal judiciary.

Federal judges have conferred the power of judicial review onto themselves. It started with Chief Justice John Marshall and gained momentum in the 20th century under FDR. Now, the Supreme Court is considered the sole arbiter of our Constitution. This abdication was not the intent of our founding fathers; all branches of government including the states have a responsibility to uphold and defend the Constitution. That responsibility has been relegated to a handful of unelected judges who are unwilling to cede power.

The sovereignty of the states has fallen prey to these arrogant magistrates. It wasn’t always so. There was a time when a Supreme Court decision didn’t carry the weight that it does now. During the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the Bank of the United States was under attack, not only by the president, but by the states as well. The Bank was corrupt and the states were fighting back. They decided to impose a tax that would slowly kill this parasitic monstrosity. A lawsuit was filed: McCulloch v. Maryland. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of BUS citing the “supremacy clause” in the Constitution.

But back in the early nineteenth century, a Supreme Court decision was just an opinion and didn’t carry any weight. The states ignored the ruling. Ohio imposed a $50,000-per-year-tax on each of the two branches in the state. The BUS refused to pay. Ohio sent its tax auditor to collect the money. The bank’s management wouldn’t comply, so the auditor leaped over the counter and helped himself. Needless to say, the BUS filed a federal lawsuit. The Ohio state legislature flipped the finger at the federal government with the following declaration:

We are aware of the doctrine, that the Federal courts are exclusively vested with jurisdiction to declare, in the last resort, the true interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. To this doctrine…we can never give our assent.

President Andrew Jackson also offered his opinion on the Supreme Court’s decision on BUS:

To this conclusion I cannon assent…Congress and the President as well as the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. It is as much of the duty of the House of the Representatives, of the Senate, and the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented…The opinion of the [Supreme Court] justices has no authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive…but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.

Obamacare is completely dependent upon the cooperation of the states. Even that liberal rag the New York Times agrees:

How much the administration can, or should, compromise in ways that could dilute the effect of the new law in the next few years is a subject of much debate, depending on the politics from state to state or the economic dynamics in a particular market.


Policy experts say much of the authority to enforce the new law rests with the states, and they say the federal government may have little ultimate control over whether insurers will keep offering coverage in specific markets

The key to defeating this statist piece of legislation is to not enforce it. If lawsuits are filed, we need not to participate. If federal judges rule from on high, all we have to do is ignore them. They are dependent upon our compliance and we should do what Ohio did to the Supreme Court and the Federal Government in the early nineteenth century: give them the finger.

Source:  Hamilton's Curse by Thomas J. Dilorenzo

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/07insure.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1286456712-y86bw9dTH0NWQo8Wnl0rmA

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