On November 8, 2011, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued another judicial hallucination regarding ‘Obamacare’ stating “..the centerpiece of the health care law – a mandate for individuals to buy health insurance or pay a fine – was an encroachment on individual liberty, but no more so than requiring businesses to serve all customers regardless of race. ” The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local – or seemingly passive – their individual origins,” wrote Judge Laurence H. Silberman.”

Later that night, the people of Ohio said no:

Ohio Votes to Nullify Insurance Mandates

“On the eve of the 213th anniversary of the passage of Thomas Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, laying the intellectual groundwork of nullification, the people of Ohio exercised their power and nullified the insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“Ohio’s passed Issue Three, a constitutional amendment to preserve their right to choose their own health care and health care coverage. Preliminary returns indicated a wide margin of victory, with more than 60 percent approving the amendment. The amendment makes it illegal for any local, state or federal law to require Ohio residents to purchase health insurance, effectively nullifying a key component of the PPACA.

“This signifies that state level resistance to federal power is not just an old idea relegated to history books,” Tenth Amendment Center executive director Michael Boldin said, “It’s something that’s alive and well right now.

“”Ohio became the tenth state to reject the insurance mandates in the PPACA.

“James Madison said that power over objects which in the ordinary course of affairs concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State would remain with the states. Health care choices clearly fall into that category,” TAC communications director Mike Maharrey said. “Ohio sent a strong message to D.C. tonight. We are not going to just sit back and accept your unconstitutional power grabs.

“”On Nov. 10, 1798, the Kentucky legislature adopted resolutions authored by Thomas Jefferson in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts. In these resolutions, Jefferson explained the states’ power to judge the constitutionality of an act, while also asserting that unconstitutional federal acts hold no force.

“He wrote, “That the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and measure of redress”

“Jefferson continued, “whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force”"

As the federal government continues to grow, states have begun to push back more aggressively. Fifteen states have defied the federal government and legalized medicinal cannabis, and six years after the passage of the Real ID Act, states continue to successfully resist its implementation.

“Nullification is so simple, even a 3-year-old can do it. You just say, ‘No!’” Boldin said. “Washington D.C. will never willingly limit itself. It’s up to the states to put a check on federal power and say, ‘No!’ when Congress passes these unconstitutional acts. Ohio stepped up and did that tonight. Thomas Jefferson would be proud.

“Of course, this is a tremendous win in pushing back against the agenda to impose a totalitarian noose around our necks. As I have written so many times and most recently in my column,Sheriffs, state legislators, OWS and the constitutional militia, you have to put teeth into all these efforts like the sluggish Tenth Amendment movement; it’s called the power of the purse and sword. While nullification is gaining ground, there are still too many socialists, communists and weak-kneed Republicans in the State Houses who refuse to get the job done. The bottom line is it takes putting tremendous heat on your state reps and senators, but unfortunately, too many Americans who are trying to make a difference continue to be distracted with the garbage (beltway politics) tossed out by the thoroughly corrupted dominant media and cable network anchors.

No doubt millions now know about the lawsuits below:

“On 10/25/11 Liberty Legal Foundation filed two simultaneous lawsuits against the Democratic Party. Both lawsuits request injunctions prohibiting the Party from certifying that Obama is Constitutionally qualified to run for the office of President in the 2012 election. Without such a certification from the Party, Obama will not appear on any ballot in the 2012 general election. (Tennessee TN Complaint) (Federal DNC Complaint).

“While reading the announcement, I happened to spot this on their site:

Nullification Done Right

“A couple weeks ago I shared about why state laws nullifying Obamacare were “toothless”. This message references two nullification laws we are trying to get passed in Tennessee that have “teeth.” They are TN SB620 and TN SB1108/HB0959 – please use these links to go to the web site and download copies of each bill.

“The key point between these bills and nullification bills without teeth is that they have a method of enforcement. These bills actually empower local law enforcement to arrest Federal officials who attempt to enforce nullified laws within the state. We are making good progress on getting these bills the support they need. Already, we have TN Sheriffs affirming that they will support this enforcement should the legislature pass these bills.

“Please consider supporting similar legislation in your state. Rally your state TEA Parties, Liberty and Constitutional groups to make their voices heard that they want nullification with teeth.” (Rest at site)

I went and read those two bills linked in that posting. I was particularly overjoyed to see this language in SB620:

“Further, the power to regulate commerce among the several states as delegated to the Congress in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution, as understood at the time of the founding, was meant to empower Congress to regulate the buying and selling of products made by others, associated finance and financial instruments, and navigation and other carriage, across state jurisdictional lines. This power to regulate “commerce” does not include agriculture, manufacturing, mining, major crimes, or land use.

“The language in TN SB1108/HB0959 is very strong, but again, while the sheriff is the highest law enforcement officer in a county, please remember the words of Patrick Henry: “Let Mr. Madison tell me when did liberty ever exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle shall interpose, no nation ever did, nor ever can, retain its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse.” I highly recommend you go to this link and read the rest of what Patrick Henry said because the tyrants out in the District of Criminals are not going to relinquish control without a real fight.

When you talk about local law enforcement arresting “Federal” officials, things can get tense. We don’t want violence, which is why I can’t stress enough how important it is to understand the full meaning of the Second Amendment: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

While the bickering and ‘business as usual’ continues by the crooks, cowards and criminals in the U.S. Congress, the battle for freedom has to be taken to the state capitols and tell them we mean business: Stand up to tyranny. Print out the bills above and send a copy to your state rep and tell him/her to get off the dime, forget about the next election and stand up for the right of the state to say no to the criminal syndicate out in Washington, DC.

Also recommended reading – Larry Becraft, explains constitutional limitations regarding the states regarding fish and wildlife: Jurisdiction Questioned (2004)

Devvy Kid 2011

http://www.devvy.com.

 

WesternFront America

By J. D. Longstreet

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within.   An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly, but the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.  For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.  He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.   A murderer is less to fear.”   — Marcus Tullius Cicero 42 BC.

I count myself fortunate, and even lucky, to have born into the last generation of independent freedom loving Americans. That’s on the one hand.  On the other, I feel depressed that my generation will be the first to see a free America voluntarily choose slavery as a way of life.

As Americans look about them today, they can see the effects of just toying around with socialism: A nation in decline, a nation financially broke, a nation of people depressed, hurting, and angry, a nation deeply divided by the race baiting and class warfare imposed on them by a major political party in their grab for the power to rule America as the “elite class” in a socialist America.  We refer, of course, to the Democratic Party.

Slavery?  Yes!  Socialism is slavery to the state (and to those elite socialist politicians who will run your life from the cradle to the grave). Under the Obama Administration, it has already begun.  The evils of Pandora’s box can’t hold a candle to the evils of Obamacare.

Socialism is the slavery of forced labor.  Americans will work for the government. I don’t mean the 48% of the American workforce who are on the government’s payroll. I mean 100% of the American workforce, which will be receiving those wages the government decides you need to exist and continue working at your government assigned job.

All the labor union demonstrations remind one of nothing more than the “useful idiots” Vladimir Lenin used to mock.  He was referring to westerners, including Americans, Who publicly and privately sympathized with the socialist movement in what would become the Socialist Soviet Union. He was, of course, right about one thing:  They were, and are, idiots — and they were, and are today, useful to the cause of socialism and communism. This time, however, the targeted country is the United States.

Today, those of us in America who see what is happening to our country, to our freedom, to our future as a free country, are derided as some sort of alarmists.  To that, allow me to say:  “You’re darned right, I’m ALARMED!”  It is as clear to me as sunrise this morning that a free America will only be a legend to my grandkids.

I expect that in the not too distant American future there will be a time when those of us who pen such comments as these will be arrested as enemies of the socialist state of America … if we live long enough. As I have been spouting these kinds of commentaries and public addresses since I was a sophomore in high school, I expect they will have a lot to work with!

Socialism is a killer of nations.  It is a terminal illness that rots a nation’s core until it is hollow and then implodes in upon itself — taking that nation’s society along with it.

Today in America we are awash in socialism.  There is Marxism, Leninism, Trotskyism, socialist feminism – and the Democratic Party.

I mention ObamaCare above.  ObamaCare is socialized medicine … socialism!  Americans have no idea how much freedom and liberty ObamaCare will strip from the citizens of the USA.  But it’s coming — and it will be startling!

Distressingly, I see no pushback against the steady encroachment of socialism in America. Make no mistake about it, socialism is on the march in the USA and we will awaken one morning to find that America is no longer a free country but a slave nation shackled to a socialist government… and even sadder, Americans will have no idea how America came to be socialist.

Even now the chains are being forged for America’s enslavement.  The foundry is working 24/7 turning out the bonds that will hold a nation of once proud, free, Americans.

Well over one-third of our national government is already socialist … the executive branch.  One half of the Legislative branch, the Senate, is controlled by socialists, and the Judicial branch is very close to falling under the control of socialist sympathizing justices.

Do you begin to understand the threat America is living under today?  I hope so, because the change from freedom to slavery is going to be rapid and startlingly complete.

A re-elected Obama will be free to stoke the furnace and boost the speed of America’s enslavement.  He has no opposition, to speak of, in his bid for re-election. The loyal opposition has caved.  They will not field a candidate with a snowball’s chance against Obama; instead, the GOP is eying the 2016 election.  THAT, in my view, is a sell-out of the American people who yearn to preserve what little is left of our free nation.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

E-Mail:  longstreet1862@gmail.com

 

WesternFront America

Bipartisanship has no place in the next Congress. Getting along with Democrats should not even be a consideration. We conservatives did not send representatives to the US House of Representatives and the US Senate to “get along” with Democrats OR the Obama Administration. We sent them there to bring the current goings on to a “screeching halt” and to turn the country around and take it back to its conservative roots as a constitutional republic and not the socialist “People’s Republic” the liberal-socialists of the Democratic Party have striven so hard to make it into.

Our country is bearly recognizable today as a constitutional republic. The democratic controlled congress made clear they did not give a rip what the people wanted and they set about to “fundamentally change” America into a socialist dung heap. The many government regulatory agencies under the command of the Obama Regime have taken on so much power they resemble more the Nazi Gestapo than they do agencies of the US government… a government supposedly controlled by the people of the country. They, too, must be stopped, even if that means closing them down — forever. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Homeland Security, the Education Department, the Energy Department, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, all top the list of government agencies that must be stopped.

Speaking of US government regulatory agencies – have you ever taken the time to discover just how many government agencies there are? Well, now you can. Go (HERE) for a complete list of all US government agencies. It is an “A” to “Z” list – and you will be astounded! These represent only those agencies made public. We have no idea, who, what, or how many others exist without the knowledge of the citizens of the country.

Prepare for the liberal-socialist democrats to begin, very shortly, to complain that the US government is “broken.” See, it is NOT broken as long as they get their way. Only when the American people get THEIR way is the US government broken to the Democrats!

If the politicians we sent to Washington, as a result of the November elections, do as we want and have instructed them to do, there will be a knock-down-drag-out brawl within the US House of Representatives and the US Senate over the next two years.

We don’t want compromise. We don’t want bipartisanship. We did not send them to Washington for either. We sent them to Washington to rescue our country — before it is lost forever.

For instance: We want ObamaCare repealed. We want it COMPLETELY repealed! That, alone, will be a monstrous job. The so-called “Dream Act,” which is only another rendition of Amnesty for illegal aliens must be stopped as well.

There will be weeping, and wailing and gnashing of teeth among the democrats at any effort to repeal ObamaCare, especially. Its repeal will mean the government losses control of one-sixth of the US economy. You’d better believe they will fight tooth and nail for control of the lives of every American citizen. They will weep on the floor of their respective chambers. They will tell America that ObamaCare is for the children, for the oppressed minorities, for anything and everything they can think of that might tug at America’s heartstrings. They have won so many battles before by playing on the voter’s emotions that they will not care how ridiculous they look with the crocodile tears streaming down their façade covered faces. It will be a ridiculous comedy played out before the eyes of the world.

We conservatives must be prepared for the onslaught of vile propaganda unleashed on their efforts to rescue America. The Mainstream Media, which is totally immersed in the agenda of the liberal-socialist democrats, will ride to the rescue of Obama and his socialist agenda. It has already begun. They currently sing his praises as the “come-back-kid” after his mediocre successes in the lame duck session of Congress.

Over the next two years, conservatives will need to take careful notice of the remaining “RINO’s” in Congress and prepare a plan of attack to remove them from office in the elections of November 2012.

And we must discover a conservative republican candidate for president who actually has a chance to win. Frankly, I see no possible winner among the host of names being floated about for consideration as possible candidates for the republican nomination today. We may need to go outside the usual herd to find a new face, a new name, with hard rock conservative values to carry our banner into the Oval Office.

The next two years will be two of the most difficult years in the conservative movement in the United States. We must be unrelenting as we push forward the conservative agenda.

Someone once said: “A nation of sheep, breeds a government of wolves.” It is time for conservative Americans to re-assert themselves as neither sheep nor wolves – but as lion-hearted Americans.

Ours is a rescue mission. If we do not press home our advantage over the next two years our mission will become a “recovery” mission.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

 

WesternFront America

More lies from the Obama Regime are surfacing. Just as the putrid corpse of a drowning victim will rise after a short period, the stench of the sub-surface lies of ObamaCare are coming to the surface — one at a time.

Remember US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement that the Congress would have to pass the ObamaCare law for the citizens of the US to learn what is in it? Of course, you do! That’s why she will be the “FORMER” Speaker of the House is a few days!

Well, they passed it – and now we are learning, just as Pelosi said, what is in it. The majority of Americans STILL hate it! The more we learn about it, the more we learn what is in it, the more we hate it.

Obama is a fast learner. He has learned, since November 2^nd, that he must hide his machinations from the new republican led House of Representatives. He is going to rely on his Czars and his regulatory agencies to pass into law the control over US citizens necessary to “fundamentally transform” (Obama’s words) America into the socialist utopia he dreams about. Conservative commentators and pundits warned Obama would do this… why… because he is an ideologue. He eats, sleeps, and breathes socialist ideology! He can’t help himself. He absolutely MUST bring down America’s constitutional republic.

Remember the “Death Panels” we were warned about by Sarah Palin and other conservatives. It was the so-called end-of-life plan written into the original ObamaCare Plan. When the public learned about it, all heck broke loose and the democrats were forced to drop it from the ObamaCare plan.

But never fear. Obama is doing an end run around the national legislature, the Congress, and forcing it on the American people, anyway! ObamaCare supporters refer to it as a “quiet victory.”

See what I mean?

A new Medicare regulation, which goes into effect next year, “ … will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.” Go here to read the entire article: (SOURCE: NEW YORK TIMES)

The Obama Regime, and his cohorts in the Democratic Party, were hoping to keep this quiet for they knew that once the public learned of it, they would immediately pressure their new Republican led House of Representatives to either force Medicare to abandon the regulation or cut off funding to effectively starve the regulation to death.

NOW – do you see why so many of us were concerned that Obama would use his regulatory agencies to force the full brunt of the ORIGINAL ObamaCare plan on America??? I am more convinced than ever that THAT is THE PLAN!

Czars, executive orders, and regulations have already begun pouring from the faucet of “Big Brother SOCIALIST” government. Watch for the stream to become a flood in very short order.

This, dear reader, is how you lose your freedom, your liberty, and your country.

But how could this possibly happen in AMERICA – to AMERICANS? The answer is simple, really: Ignorance and Apathy.

The public education system in America, the “government schools,” are turning out some of the least educated graduates on earth. The democrats run the schools. Ok, labor unions, then. But what’s the difference? They are symbiotic. They feed off each other.

Americans have no clue, anymore, about whom they are, where they come from, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, freedom, liberty, what it costs to obtain freedom and, even more important, what it costs to remain free. That is ignorance of the “deadly” kind.

The second deadly killer of freedom and liberty is not caring enough. Freedom and liberty must be cared about and CARED FOR.

Americans MUST get involved in the life of their nation. Why? The election of 2006 and 2008 ought to tell you everything you need to know. We placed our country into the hands of liberal-socialists, called democrats, and they, in turn, have taken America so far down the road of ultimate destruction that our actual survival as a free people is in serious question. The results of both those elections hinged on ignorance and apathy.

The ignorance and apathy of Americans also gave us ObamaCare – and — Obama’s “Death Panels”, government officials deciding who lives and who dies, who receives approved treatment as they approach the end of their lives – and who doesn’t.

And this is just the beginning. It WILL get worse. Trust me.

America has surely entered a time of great tribulation. The handwriting is glaring at us from the wall. America cannot continue to survive on the path she chose in the 1960’s and continues on today.

The path to survival is narrow. It is hard, difficult, and certainly not pleasant. The path we are on, the path to destruction, is broad. It is wide and easy – not difficult at all. But at the end lies destruction.

America’s new Congress is going to need all the help it can get from the citizens of this country – even when Congress doesn’t want it.

I intend to aggravate the living daylights out of my congressman, who happens to be a conservative democrat. (I know that is difficult to believe.) The same goes for my Senators — one democrat and one republican. Why… because it is my job as a citizen… and as a father and grandfather.

America can be saved. She is worthy of being saved. But we cannot save her by sitting back and waiting on the next fellow to do it.

It is time to fight back — to fight for our freedom. Freedom, once lost, is almost never recovered. Doing nothing will certainly allow evil to triumph!

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

 

WesternFront America

The great issue of our times is the same great issue of the 1830s. The question is whether Congress can pass legislation or the President issue executive orders that are not authorized by or consistent with the Constitution?

The federal government is a republic composed of separate and sovereign republics.

What recourse do the States have individually and in combination when the central government acts in a fashion that is contrary to the limits and enumerated powers of the Constitution?

The answer, other than an appeal to the courts, is nullification. This term is defined as the assertion that States can and should refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal laws.

This is no trifling matter.

In the past two years since the advent of the Obama administration, the federal government has seized control of one sixth of the nation’s economy, asserting control over the provision of healthcare.

It seized control of General Motors and Chrysler auto manufacturers, arbitrarily casting aside the rightful expectations of their bondholders and other creditors.

It has imposed absurd and invasive demands on air travelers.

It is considering a United Nations treaty that would render the Second Amendment null and void.

It has sued Arizona for enacting an immigration law that mirrors its own.

It is attempting through the FCC to assert control over the Internet.

In the 1860s the issue of state’s rights led to the Civil War.

One hundred and fifty years ago, on December 22, 1860, the State of South Carolina declared its independence and seceded from the Union. It did not arrive at this decision overnight. In fact, on December 10, 1832, President Andrew Jackson issued a proclamation to South Carolina disputing its right to nullify a federal law.

A South Carolina convention had declared that the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 “are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State.”

Subsequent to Jackson’s proclamation, Congress passed the Force Act that authorized the use of military force against any State that resisted the tariff acts. A compromise engineered by Henry Clay resulted in the tariff of 1833, designed to reduce southern objections. South Carolina ended its nullification effort, but by 1861 it would no longer bend to the mandates of the federal government.

Contrary to some historical reinterpretation, the Civil War was all about State’s rights. Though President Lincoln opposed slavery, he did not introduce the issue into the conflict until after the awful slaughter on the battlefields that led to the Emancipation Proclamation. It came three years after the war had begun and was intended to introduce a moral dimension to the conflict. Slaves, however, were only freed in the Confederate southern States.

There are many issues worthy of nullification these days.

At the top of the current list is Obamacare and the fact that some twenty States have filed suit against its enforcement clearly demonstrates (1) an intense rejection of it and (2) the willingness of States to use the judicial system to seek relief.

Beyond that, we have entire federal agencies that have no legitimate basis in the Constitution.

The Department of Education should be abolished. The Constitution makes no mention of education as a federal concern. It was and should be up to the States and local communities to oversee general education. Part of the controversy raging these days concerns teacher’s union contracts that are contributing to the bankruptcy of many States.

The Department of Energy, created by executive order, should be abolished. States should have the right to determine how their natural resources should be either protected or utilized. Requiring states to use so-called alternative (wind and solar) energy is seriously wrong.

Likewise, the Environmental Protection Agency, also created by executive order, has so exceeded its original mandate that it has become a lethal threat to the economy and the welfare of all Americans.

Nullification should be utilized to rid us of these and other federal entities that overstep their mission, threatening the Bill of Rights and other constitutional limitations and freedoms.

To learn more about the nullification movement, visit the Nullify Now website and the website of the Tenth Amendment Foundation.

This nation has been heading toward nullification since the 1930s when many of the Constitution’s restrictions of federal power were cast aside. This has brought the nation to the brink of financial collapse. To save it, nullification may be required.

Editor’s note: To learn more about this topic, Tom Woods has written “Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 2lst Century.”

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, science and business writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

http://www.nullifynow.com/

http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/02/23/state-sovereignty-resolutions/

 

WesternFront America

Prior to the American “War Between the States,” the southern states began to nullify those laws passed by Congress they felt were overbearing, or would harm the people of the states in any way. It was a legal approach toward a too powerful federal government, which was created by the states to act as an agent of the states and not as the master of the states.

We don’t see much of that today. The federal government has had a great deal of success through their government run schools of re-educating the citizenry that the states are subservient to the federal government.

There are some reports that at least ten states are currently, or soon will be considering nullification laws in their sovereign states that would make ObamaCare illegal with their borders. Fourteen other states are suing in the courts in an effort to have ObamaCare overturned and tossed out. We wish them all good luck.

If a new bill, which has already been filed in Texas ahead of the 2011 session of the Texas state legislature should pass it would nullify Obamacare. The bill provides penalties of up to $5,000 in fines and up to five years in jail for anyone guilty of the “felony” of attempting “to enforce an act, order, law, statute, rule or regulation” of ObamaCare.

The bill was pre-filed by Leo Berman, a Republican, from Tyler, Texas. It is House Bill 297 in case you would like to look it up.

The bill would simply nullify Obama’s federal health care law in the state of Texas. Texas HB 297 says that federal health care legislation is invalid in the state of Texas, is not recognized by the state of Texas, is specifically rejected by the state of Texas, and is null and void and of no effect in the state of Texas. The bill explains: “The federal Act is not authorized by the United States Constitution and violates the Constitution’s true meaning and intent as expressed by the founders of this country and the ratifiers of the Constitution.”

Just so everyone knows the bill is serious it says, plainly and simply the following: “”a person who is an official, agent, or employee of the United States or an employee of a corporation providing services to the United States commits an offense if the person enforces or attempts to enforce an act, order, law, statute, rule, or regulation of the United States in violation of this chapter.” The bill goes on to say: “assumption of power by the federal government in enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590; Pub. L. No. 111-148) as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (H.R. 4872; Pub. L. No. 111-152) interferes with the right of the people of this state to regulate health care as they determine is appropriate …”

Understand this: This nullification of a federal law within a state is legal. It is well within the scope of all the sovereign states. In fact, James Madison often praised as the writer of the Constitution, but undeniably one of those who did said that the states have a duty to assert their power as a sovereign state when the federal government oversteps its authority. Madison had this to say in the Virginia Resolution of 1798: “That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”

Somewhere along the line, Americans have forgotten that the states are sovereign. They are separate countries with their own governments elected by the people of those states. We have forgotten the formation of the federal government was an act of the states, not to create their own master, but to create a servant of the states.

I suspect many of the leaders of the various states are frightened witless that should they buck the federal government, the same thing will happen to them as happened to the southern states when they asserted their right to secede from the union and form their own country over their dissatisfaction with a federal government that had grown, even at that early stage of American history, into a near tyrannical regime. They fear the revenge with which the federal government savaged the southern states. It was called “Reconstruction” and it was damaged the southern states even more than the shooting war.

As a southerner, I am convinced the current federal government has stepped way across the line with ObamaCare and deserves to be confronted with nullification laws in as many states as believe it to be the act of a federal government grown intoxicated with power and intend to use that power to force their will on the people of the states who want no part of the takeover of a huge chunk of the US economy and intervene directly into the lives of Americans who do not want them there.

The states have a right, AND the DUTY, to say no. We will not bow to the will of an out of control federal government that has over-stepped its constitutional restraints.

ObamaCare is a slap in the face to freedom loving Americans across this great land. The states must band together to stop it and destroy it.

J. D. Longstreet

NOTE: Two articles you might enjoy reading on this same subject can be found at:

Tenth Amendment Center

And the

World Net Daily

********************

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

 

WesternFront America

Historically, the Federal Reserve has had a poor record when it comes to correcting an economic slide into Depression.

In his book, “New Deal or Raw Deal?” historian Burton Folsom, Jr, asked and answered the question “What caused the Great Depression?” Among the factors he cited was the huge debt left over from World War One. In the United States, the national debt had ballooned from $1.3 billion to $24 billion in three short years, half of which consisted of loans made to the allies.

Today the U.S. is feeling the impact of the aftermath of 9/11 when military action was taken first in 2001 and then in 2003. We are still in Afghanistan and Iraq without much to show for it. As opposed to short, preemptive, lightning strikes, we have become involved in “nation building.” Forgotten is the fact that it was the Russian intervention in Afghanistan that ultimately brought down the former Soviet Union.

In the 1930s, in addition to tariffs on imported goods, “The third cause of the Great Depression was the poor performance of the Federal Reserve,” concluded Folsom. “The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to control the money system by regulating interest rates and lending money to banks.”

In an eerie way, Raymond Moley, a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “brain trust” of advisors and an initial advocate of the New Deal, reflects the widespread perception of Barack Obama today. In 1933 Moley broke with FDR and became a conservative. Following a meeting with FDR, Moley recorded his observations.

“I was impressed as never before by the utter lack of logic of the man, the scantiness of his precise knowledge of things that he was talking about, the gross inaccuracies in his statements, by the almost pathological lack of sequence in his statements, by the complete rectitude that he felt as to his own conduct, by the immense and growing egotism that come from his office, by his willingness to continue the excoriation of the press and business in order to get votes for himself, by his indifference to what effort the long continued pursuit of these ends would have upon the civilization in which he was playing a part.”

This description of FDR is, in astonishing ways, a mirror image of Barack Hussein Obama.
The dissatisfaction that Moley expressed has been manifested in the immergence of the Tea Party movement and the rejection of many in Congress who supported Obama’s agenda, including Obamacare, his failed efforts to jump-start the economy with large, temporary stimulus bills, temporary housing rebates and business tax credits, and the one-time cash-for-clunkers program that followed the federal takeover of General Motors and Chrysler.

There are harsh facts being ignored about the present economic crisis. More than 42 million Americans were on food stamps in August, an all-time record and a number that is 17% higher than a year ago. The U.S. is experiencing massive unemployment and the American Bankruptcy Institute predicts there will be an estimated 1.6 million consumer bankruptcies this year.

The U.S. government is completely and totally broke. A Boston University economics professor, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, has concluded that the U.S. government is facing a “fiscal gap” of $202 trillion dollars.

John Allison, who for two decades served as chairman and CEO of BB&T, the nation’s 10th largest bank, told CNSNews.com that it is a “mathematical certainty” the United States government “will go bankrupt unless it dramatically changes its fiscal direction immediately.”

Having tried “quantitative easing” once already the Federal Reserve is undertaking a second effort. It consists of printing magical money and using it to purchase U.S. treasury securities. QE-1 cost $1.7 trillion and did not work. QE-2 will fail as well to the tune of $0.9 trillion.

The U.S. dollar has lost 50% of its purchasing power since 1986 and it has dropped 11% in value since June of this year.

Writing in the November 8 edition of The Wall Street Journal, Kevin M. Warsh, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, went public to warn against QE-2. “Fiscal authorities should resist the temptation to increase government expenditures to compensate for shortfalls of private consumption and investment,” said Warsh who urged “a strict economic diet of fiscal austerity.”

Whether it is Congress or the Federal Reserve, the failures of the present reflect the failures of the past. Major surgery is needed to pare the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare. Instead, Obamacare added millions to the Medicare rolls.

The government sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, need to be privatized to avoid using billions more in public funds to save them and the too-big-to-fail banks that engaged in “liar’s loans”; mortgage loans that ignored prudent lending practices resulting in the housing market collapse.
TARP did work as an emergency measure, but the government has got to stop being the lender of last resort. It’s our money.

The Federal Reserve is contemplating the creation of “magical money” at a time when the U.S. economy is in deep trouble. It is a trouble that can only be cured by retaining the Bush tax cuts and by simplifying the current insane tax code. Why is there such slow growth? American corporations pay the second highest tax rate in the world.

The burden of federal regulation must be reduced. Economists W. Mark and Nicole Crain, noted in a September Wall Street Journal that “The annual cost of federal regulations increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008, a 3% real increase over five years, to about 14% of U.S. national income.”
The President’s original economic advisors have departed. They, like Raymond Moley in the 1930s, know that he is either clueless and/or resistant to any pragmatic solutions.

The midterm elections gave power to the Republicans in the House, the branch from which all financial bills must originate. Failing to do the same in the Senate, it may take two years to repeal Obamacare, but efforts must be taken to defund it, to render it inoperable. The courts may offer relief with a decision that it is unconstitutional.

When the new Congress meets in January 2011, every pressure possible must be brought to bear on the Federal Reserve to stop short-term failed “solutions” before the U.S. dollar is utterly debased.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

 

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But, Hey! The Communists Love It!

I am asked, occasionally, why I harp on ObamaCare so much. The answer is simple. America was sold a bill of goods.

I should probably qualify that last statement. Only those Americans who bought into the idea of Obamacare, as Obama and the liberal-socialists who make up the modern Democratic Party presented it, were hoodwinked.

Most of us who are clear-thinking adult human beings saw through the scam from the beginning and warned and warned and warned against it. We TOLD you what it was — and is — and we told you what it would do to America, as a whole, and to you and I as individuals.

Many did not believe us, choosing, instead, to believe they could have something for nothing — when the truth is – THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH! Everything costs something and in the case of ObamaCare the cost is the freedom of the American people.

ObamaCare is a lie, one of the biggest lies ever told the American people and one of the biggest lies/hoaxes ever perpetrated upon any nation on the globe. It was — and is — a grand “CON.” It is founded on Marxism and is, in fact, Socialism. But it is more than that – much more. It brings America to the threshold of becoming a police state.

In an editorial piece at the Washington Examiner entitled “Obamacare is even worse than critics thought” the writer says the following: “Six months ago, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare down the throats of an unwilling American public. Half a year removed from the unprecedented legislative chicanery and backroom dealing that characterized the bill’s passage, we know much more about the bill than we did then. A few of the revelations:

Obamacare won’t decrease health care costs for the government. According to Medicare’s actuary, it will increase costs. The same is likely to happen for privately funded health care.

As written, Obamacare covers elective abortions, contrary to Obama’s promise that it wouldn’t. This means that tax dollars will be used to pay for a procedure millions of Americans across the political spectrum view as immoral.

Obamacare won’t allow employees or most small businesses to keep the coverage they have and like. By Obama’s estimates, as many as 69 percent of employees, 80 percent of small businesses, and 64 percent of large businesses will be forced to change coverage, probably to more expensive plans.

Obamacare will increase insurance premiums — in some places, it already has. Insurers, suddenly forced to cover clients’ children until age 26, have little choice but to raise premiums, and they attribute to Obamacare’s mandates a 1 to 9 percent increase. Obama’s only method of preventing massive rate increases so far has been to threaten insurers.

Obamacare will force seasonal employers — especially the ski and amusement park industries — to pay huge fines, cut hours, or lay off employees.

Obamacare forces states to guarantee not only payment but also treatment for indigent Medicaid patients. With many doctors now refusing to take Medicaid (because they lose money doing so), cash-strapped states could be sued and ordered to increase reimbursement rates beyond their means.

Obamacare imposes a huge nonmedical tax compliance burden on small business. It will require them to mail IRS 1099 tax forms to every vendor from whom they make purchases of more than $600 in a year, with duplicate forms going to the Internal Revenue Service. Like so much else in the 2,500-page bill, our senators and representatives were apparently unaware of this when they passed the measure.

Obamacare allows the IRS to confiscate part or all of your tax refund if you do not purchase a qualified insurance plan. The bill funds 16,000 new IRS agents to make sure Americans stay in line. (SOURCE)

We suggest you read the article at the Washington Examiner in its entirety. ObamaCare is socialized medicine through and through. In an article posted on April 4^th, 2010 by Austin Miles at Great Minds Think Right.Com and entitled “We did it!” Communist Party Newspaper on Obamacare”

Mr. Austin says the following: The People’s World is a direct descendant of the old Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker, first issue published by Long View Publishing Co.in1924. Like The Daily Worker, People’s World states that they, “are unashamedly Communist.” They acknowledge their affiliation with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the Young Communist League.

When Obamacare was rammed through, the People’s World proclaimed, “We did it! Yesterday’s historic vote on health reform sets the stage for future victories.”  Catch that? WE (The Communist Party) did it!…and sets the stage for future victories, which means of course, Marxism for America.” (SOURCE)

According to a recent Rasmussen Poll 61% of US voters favor repeal of ObamaCare. (SOURCE)

Rasmussen also says: “A strong majority (60%) feel that under the new law, the cost of health care will go up.  Only 13% say costs will go down, and 18% say they will stay about the same.” (SOURCE)

As we were writing this commentary we learned the President has contacted a number of religious organizations and asked them to help sell ObamaCare to their parishioners and members, etc. I cannot speak for you, but if my pastor were to take to the pulpit and begin to expound upon the benefits of ObamaCare for me and for the country, I’d leave the pew and head for the door! (Where are the “separation of church and state” zealots now, huh?)

What we have, dear reader, is a socialist government in power in Washington D. C. It must be excised just as one rids one’s body of a cancerous tumor. If it is not removed from our body politic it will kill it as surely as that cancerous tumor will kill the human body. Thank goodness, surgery is scheduled for November second.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

E-Mail: longstreet1862@gmail.com

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Will Republicans take the pledge? I mean the Pledge to repeal ObamaCare.

The Independent Women’s Voice is promoting the pledge. They are asking members of Congress and candidates for Congress to sign the pledge. So, who, or what, is the Independent Women’s Voice? According to their website: “The Independent Women’s Voice is a 501(c)(4) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization for mainstream women, men and families. IWV is the sister organization of the Independent Women’s Forum.

Like IWF, IWV is dedicated to promoting limited government, free markets, and personal responsibility. IWV believes that too often the media assumes that all women are represented by liberal organizations that push to expand government. IWV seeks to ensure that our mainstream voices are heard in the media and before state and national policymakers, in order to educate the public about how our conservative principles benefit women, men, and families, and are critical to the future of our country.” (SOURCE)

Let’s take a look at the pledge to repeal ObamaCare candidates are being asked to sign. Here is the text:

“I pledge to vote for all bills which seek to REPEAL the health care bill, HR 3590, signed into law on March 23, 2010.*

“To that end, I do now and will in the next Congress endorse and vote for all measures, including discharge petitions, leading to its defunding, deauthorization, and repeal.

“I shall do so whether those measures are taken for the whole of the bill or those component parts that impose mandates, restrict patient and doctor choice and access, violate individual freedom and privacy, reduce healthy competition, increase costs, or raise taxes.

“*The healthcare bill is defined as consisting of: 1) The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), signed into law on March 23, 2010; and 2) The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (H.R. 4872), signed into law on March 30, 2010.” (SOURCE)

It will, indeed, be interesting to learn who signs and who does NOT sign the pledge to repeal ObamaCare.

Those of us who are set on riding this nation of ObamaCare understand that as long as Obama is President, he will veto any bill repealing ObamaCare. We KNOW that. But, we also understand we have to begin chipping away at it, as soon as we can, to cripple it and hopefully “starve” the despicable law by seeing that funds for its implementation are cut off, bottled-up, or in some way denied to those who will put the law into practice. Those efforts must begin immediately.

The repeal of ObamaCare is the primary goal. That should never be forgotten. It will take time. It will take dedication on the part of citizens and legislators alike. And it will take work.

The first step is to insure that we vote for candidates for Congress who are dedicated to repealing ObamaCare. The pledge from the Independent Women’s Voice is important in defining who those candidates are, exactly.

In an article at The New American entitled: “Repealing ObamaCare” William F. Jasper describes ObamaCare this way: “This is one of the most far-reaching legislative efforts ever passed by Congress. It is far more than “mere” nationalized, socialized medicine. It will, if allowed to stand, inaugurate social engineering by “experts” on a scale heretofore unimagined … except in the dreams of apostles of the total state. Did the American people demand healthcare “reform” that mandates federally imposed “lifestyle behavior modification” with regard to “proper nutrition,” “appropriate exercise,” “mental health,” and “behavioral health”? Did we envision the invasion of our homes and family privacy to implement “domestic violence screenings,” “childhood home visitation,” and “improvements in parenting skills”? How will ObamaCare’s provisions on abortion, sex education, vaccinations, rationing, and database monitoring play out — if we fail to repeal it?
Analysts for pro-life organizations have charged that the abortion provisions of ObamaCare represent the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. Other sections of the legislation are sure to prove equally far-reaching.” (SOURCE)

If America is to remain free it is imperative that we repeal ObamaCare! It is as simple as that. But just because it is simple doesn’t mean it is easy. The forces in America, and in America’s current government, striving for a totalitarian state in America are dug-in and ready to repel any and all attempts to rid this country of the plague known as ObamaCare.

The current lawsuits in the courts will take years to reach a conclusion, one way, or the other. Those states nullifying the law will, almost certainly, be challenged in the courts by the federal government resulting in years of legal wrangling costing the state taxpayers whopping amounts from their state treasuries — with no assurance they will win. Not to mention the risk they run of having federal funds for ongoing projects in their states cut off.

ObamaCare must be repealed by the US Congress either with the President’s signature or by overriding his veto.

In the next few weeks pay close attention to reports of who signs the Pledge to repeal ObamaCare — and who does not. Then you will know how to vote in November.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

E-Mail: longstreet1862@gmail.com

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Democrats have inadvertently stumbled across a sure–fire method of depressing Republican turnout in November: put House Minority Leader John Boehner (R–OH) on TV discussing how he intends to vote on taxes.

Heretofore the Dems had been in a panic because their base is in a coma, while GOP supporters are so fired up about voting they’re willing to visit an ACORN office to register.
Then Boehner said that while he thinks it’s a bad idea to raise anyone’s taxes during a recession, he’s willing to vote for Obama’s plan to raise taxes if that’s “the only option I have.”

I can’t wait for Rep. Boehner to apply his nuanced voting philosophy to the question of Obamacare repeal: “I believe Obamacare should be repealed, but in the meantime, if the President twists my arm, I’ll vote for the new, improved Obamacare that urges doctors to greet patients by their first name and requires credit card companies to give frequent flyer miles for purchases of mandatory health insurance.”

Someone needs to tell the esteemed member that the TEA party also stands for Temporized Enough Already. People are tired of wishy–washy pols afraid of their own electoral shadow.

Unfortunately, this splitting–the–baby philosophy is not confined to Washington.

Here in Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, to his credit, decided the Commonwealth has no business selling booze and we wants to privatize state–owned ABC liquor stores. His problem is General Assembly appropriators are crack addicts. Make that they have a crack–like addiction to the revenue the state gets from booze.

McDonnell’s solution to this conundrum is Obamacare marinated in corn squeezins.

McDonnell promises privatization of John Barleycorn will generate the same revenue the state monopoly produces, plus the money will be used for transportation projects.
So “one for the road” will help pay for the road.

His plan almost triples the number of liquor stores but proposes to sell licenses for a minimum of $100,000.00 each!

The Virginia Privatization Coalition (a cabal of major retailers including Wal–Mart and Costco) says the plan is a “responsible and balanced approach.” What they don’t say is the plan limits competition and, by making the licenses so costly, gives the bum’s rush to the little guy. Once again, Republicans confuse helping corporate rent–seekers with support for the free market.

Meanwhile voters, like the Soviets, are supposed to be grateful that we’ve exchanged a monopoly for an oligopoly.

McDonnell has also embraced 60’s–style civil rights affirmative–action programs. Some of the licenses that McDonnell himself says are “expensive” are supposed to be set aside for small, women–owned or minority–owned businesses.

Set–asides for women, minorities, atheists, alcoholics, Wiccans, influential contributors and other forms of tokenism are Democrat policies. It’s not progress to go from controlling the sale of alcohol to subsidizing the salesman.

It’s time Republicans who claim to support free enterprise act like it. Otherwise you are just another market–meddling “expert,” no different from the faculty–lounge lizards currently in the White House.

Anyone who meets zoning requirements, OSHA requirements, ABC requirements, ADA requirements, maximum number of illegals on the premises requirements, low-flush toilet requirements and pays the excise tax should be allowed to have a liquor license.

If the administration’s inner meddler insists on playing favorites, I could support giving current ABC employees an incentive to buy the store where they work. The staff at the store nearest me does a great job working for a government sauce monopoly, I’m certain they would do even better on their own.

The original sin in this issue is the gusher of revenue the state gets from being in a business that is not a function of government. The irony is that in trying to undo the Democrat booze monopoly, McDonnell acts like the Democrats. He favors corporations; decides some license applicants are more deserving than others and advocates the highest excise tax on liquor in the nation — although he says it’s not actually a tax, just a “new point of collection.” (This is bureaucrat for instead of taking money from the left pocket; we will now take your money from the right pocket.)

In the end McDonnell will gain nothing from his impersonation of a moderate Democrat, because both the Democrat Senate and the Republican House are guaranteed to reject his plan. And who can blame them? Keeping the monopoly is better than adopting a policy of crony capitalism.

Conservatives will vote for Republicans in November because the country is seriously off the rails and the GOP is the only alternative to Democrat misrule. But if Republican leaders continue to misread the electorate and accommodate instead of repudiate, they may discover the same fire that heats up the TEA party may also brew up a third party.

Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He’s a dynamic and entertaining speaker and can be reached at michael–shannon@comcast.net.

 

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