Of course, the only reality is some combination of perception and received truths, so, you know — what the hell, right? Terence Jeffrey, CNS:
Mitt Romney may believe Social Security is constitutional, but he would have a hard time convincing some of the people who pushed the Social Security Act into law.
As I wrote in my book, “Control Freaks,” some of the main players involved in creating Social Security believed it was unconstitutional — and for good reason.
Yet, for them, not unlike many in today’s Washington, the ultimate questions were not: Is this good for the long-term future of the country, and does Congress have authority to do it? They were: Will this serve our immediate political interests, and can we get away with it?
At Monday’s Republican presidential debate, Romney attacked Texas Gov. Rick Perry for, as Romney put it, holding the view that “Social Security is unconstitutional.”
It is important to note that neither Perry nor any other contemporary Republican leader is calling for the abolition of a program that has been in place for more than seven decades.
But was it founded on a sound constitutional basis? Is there anything to be learned from how it was forced through?
In 1961, 26 years after the bill was enacted, Eliot gave a speech at the Social Security Administration in which he said he was relieved he had never been called to testify about the constitutionality of the “old-age insurance” provision in the bill.
“The opponents rallied as soon as the bill was introduced,” said Eliot. “Those opponents were spearheaded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. Counsel for the latter, John Gall, made effective and strong arguments against that phase of the bill (old-age insurance). He questioned the constitutionality of the bill.
“These arguments I found rather difficult to refute,” said Eliot, “and I’m glad I wasn’t really called upon to do so as a witness before the committees of Congress because I had very grave doubts at that time about the likelihood of the Court’s upholding the old-age insurance section of the bill.”
Edwin E. Witte was executive director of Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security. In 1955, he gave a speech to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Social Security. “And at all stages there hung over the Social Security bill uncertainty as to its constitutionality,” Witte said. “These doubts were increased during the pendency of this bill in Congress by the decision of the Supreme Court holding the Railroad Retirement Act to be unconstitutional.”
“A majority of the members of the Senate Committee on Finance believed old-age insurance to be unconstitutional,” said Witte, “and it is my belief that several voted for it in the expectation that it would be invalidated by the Supreme Court.”
Why did the Railroad Retirement Act decision make people believe the Supreme Court would toss Social Security? Because it was a small-scale version of Social Security. […]
[…]
The Roosevelt administration argued that the Commerce Clause — which gives Congress the power to “regulate commerce … among the several states” — gave the federal government the power to force railroad companies and workers to fund and participate in a federal retirement program.
The court slapped this down 6-3. Justice Owen J. Roberts — the Anthony Kennedy of that era — wrote the opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the other swing vote of that time.
Roberts clearly envisioned how the Railroad Retirement Act could open the door to a massive federal welfare state.
“If that question be answered in the affirmative, obviously there is no limit to the field of so-called regulation,” wrote Roberts. “The catalogue of means and actions which might be imposed upon an employer in any business, tending to the satisfaction and comfort of his employees, seems endless. Provision for free medical attendance and nursing, for clothing, for food, for housing, for the education of children, and a hundred other matters, might with equal propriety be proposed as tending to relieve the employee of mental strain and worry.”
Two years later, in 1937, the Social Security Act came before the same court. The Democrats and FDR had just won a massive election victory in November 1936. In his 1961 speech at the Social Security Administration, Thomas Eliot was asked: “Just what do you think caused the Supreme Court to reverse itself in its decision to declare the Act constitutional?”
“What happened in 1937 was that in February the president came out with a scheme to ‘pack’ the Court,” said Eliot. “No one knows, and there is some dispute about it, but I think that probably it’s fair to say that the Court was not unmindful of this attack.”
“There were nine justices on the Supreme Court; one or two of them had to change their positions pretty fundamentally to thwart the threat of that number of nine being added to by six new justices appointed by the president,” said Eliot. “The old saying about that particular change of front is that, ‘A switch in time saved nine.'”
And significantly expanded the control the federal government has over the lives of individual Americans.
File this under “more important historical shit they simply will not teach you about in school.”
Justice Thomas is one of the few SCOTUS justices in my political lifetime who is willing to reverse course on Court precedent — and who seems intent to place the intended text of the Constitution over and above the palimpsest of additive rulings, over and above what is the failing of most conservative justices, this fidelity to stare decisis (which, whether they admit it or not, is a tacit move to place the judicial class above Constitutional reproach).
Which is why we need more SCOTUS justices like Thomas, and more political journalists like Jeffrey, if we’re to make any real legal inroads toward returning the country to its actual — as opposed to its re-imagined and on-the-fly re-written — constitutional parameters.
Hello, meya?
Now that’s just unhelpful.
File this under “more important historical shit they simply will not teach you about in school.”
You may learn about it if you’re going for your Master’s in Political Science. Of course, the lesson isn’t so much about recognizing the limits of federal power as it is learning the most effective ways of getting around such limits.
How dare you appeal to authorial intent?! Everyone knows the law means what Janeanne Garofolo says it does.
So its a twofer: Romney exposes himself as utterly careless vis a vis Constitutional interpretation and Perry as uncommitted while vaguely grasping some murky truth about it. Must be a powerful pleasure to facilely maintain the Constitution is an infinitely malleable document, as overagainst the rigors of striving to understand a fixed intent, which, whenever is the pleasurable payoff for that?
It really is amazing to see how much of what we take for granted as American “rights” nowadays was wholly invented out of thin air back in the mid-20th century.
As much as I *hate* Ron Paul (LOATHE), he pointed out something truly stunning in the second Republican debate — Medicare and Medicaid only came into being in the 1960s, and yet we really don’t have horror stories of Americans being left on the hospital steps to die before then.
So, given that these agencies did not exist before they were created, how in the world did America “care for its poor?”
Paul correctly pointed out that it was Americans themselves, through charitable donations and churches, that did what they felt was their sacred duty to care for the poor.
I, for one, am definitely wishing for a return to that more honest time.
Too bad it takes an absolute lunatic like Ron Paul to point out the obvious, instead of “mainstream” Republicans. Perry should absolutely own that soundbite, IMO.
Does that statement cause you any pause, Brian L.?
geoffb, how is Rep. McCotter’s plan indistinguishable from wheeling 90-year-old Granny to a cliff, ripping off her cat’s head, and stuffing her purse full of old dynamite before shoving her off to a certain and painful death?
I have been disgusted with the Republican National Committee since the Days of Bob Dole, which ironically was the first Presidential election I participated in. The RNC couldn’t even remotely be farther out of touch with everyday Americans than it has been for the past 20 years.
(Though you do bring back fond memories of angrily faxing Gringo De Mexicos to the RNC way back in the 2004 timeframe. Good times!)
Brian in #6.
Though I agree with you about this you are painting with too broad a brush is saying all was hunky dory back then. It wasn’t but as with the Democrat solution to our various health-care problems, most caused by previous meddling, so too Medicare was a solution just as Obamacare is one to things that could have been dealt with much less intrusively and expensively but would not have conferred power to Washington which was the real reason for both.
For the left problems, real or made up, are seen as opportunities to gain power. Solving them is not a priority and is even counterproductive to the real end sought.
Except that yesterday, Hewitt INSISTED that SS is constitutional, if you rearrange the letters or something.
It’s probably not Darth. It is however quite similar to one my (at that time) Congressman from the MI-7th pushed in the 90s. At that time it could have been done with out having to come up with extra funds but I consider the “ savings realized from the elimination of other federal programs ” to be a feature which Democratic politicians have made available.
Perhaps, perhaps not. (a) I wasn’t alive back then, and (b) Ron Paul (whom I loathe) spoke of direct personal experience serving as a doctor during that time, which I think is something to consider.
Though I can’t stress how much I *hate* Ron Paul. I’m not trying to sound like a troll or anything, I just don’t want any of you to get the wrong idea about me! Biggest Non-Paulbot Ever!
Washington since the 19-teens has been in the business of expanding The Federal State at the expense of The Real States, so you’re absolutely right that this is not necessarily a “new” problem. (In fact, one can look back farther to the 1870’s, the Civil War, and Andrew Jackson’s battle against the Federalists for older examples of this centralist tendency. We as a citizenry used to be better-equipped to battle these foes, though. The independent spirit of “The American” is something that I see as uniquely missing during OUR generation. Or MY generation, I reckon. I’m not trying to make any assumptions about anyone’s age here. :) )
Agreed 1000%.
And my apologies — I’m not trying to run for King Of The Run-On Paragraph on purpose over here. Maybe. :)
I too was alive back then, different generation than you or Dr. Paul I believe, and have different experiences from Dr. Paul however that is back then and as we agree that the “solutions” are not solutions but power grabs in disguise they must be dealt with.
Don’t worry about paragraphs. In comments online they read better with breaks which wouldn’t be there in a print medium. If you go “wall ‘o text” however all bets are off.
Glad to have you here.
Glad to be here as an official commenter! I’ve been lurking for *years*, though. :)
(Well, to clarify: I think I’ve spent all that time lurking. Not sure if I have an alternately-named comment account hanging around from some forgotten period in the past, but if I do, I’ll just apologize in advance to Jeff for cluttering up his server with more chaff. :) )
Mr. McCotter’s plan is very opaque so far. I don’t get it.
You haven’t answered the question, Brian L. You called the one Republican candidate who doesn’t flinch from calling out the establishment as the utter conflict of classically liberal interests it is — especially with regard to the fiat dollar and the superhighway between DC and Wall Street — an “absolute lunatic”.
Last I checked that’s two absolutes in a row and both call the man violently insane. Seems to me you’d shy from any party that’d allow such a lunatic on stage. Or on-ticket.
While I disagree with Paul’s entirely questionable views on national security, I don’t challenge his view that the military is itself part of the problem we face, which is client statism.
At a couple hundred trillion upside down and with a clearly indifferent and out of control ruling elite with obvious globalist intent, the American Republic is quite probably over and done, save for the billions a day it prints to keep the bread and circuses rolling and the masses more or less off the streets.
How many Team R candidates talk in those terms? One?
Mr. Governor Perry is frank as can be without provoking a widely held impression that he’s violently insane.
You sort of have to walk a line in these matters.
Disagree, feets. In Perry I see a guy who is carefully positioning himself just to the right of what he thinks is the next right-leaning Team R loser. Save for the violent lunatic calling for monetary, fiscal, and thusly, constitutionally-aligned reform. Because the right blogosphere labels him so.
Is he mad on foreign policy? As for Iran, I think Israel knows kneecapping better than most. You’d have to to exist in that dynamic and exposing that nerve does not strike me as a bad thing, as deeply in the shit the mideast is and getting worse daily.
Right level headed.
I called Paul an absolute lunatic based on his wide disconnection with reality on a large number of topics, be they Israel or Iraq or chickens coming home to roost or whatnot. That’s not to say that I disagree with everything he says, but I do disagree with enough of what he says to comfortably discard him in the Loony Bin.
The nearest candidate I’ve seen so far that even remotely comes close to where I stand is Rick Perry, who has yet to impress me with his supposed skills at debate. Having a good stump speech is great and all, but one must be able to argue for what one believes forcefully; if that’s not possible, then how can one even have beliefs?
Re: the military, having grown up around and worked with the military for a majority of my life, I can’t disagree with your characterization of them as a “problem” enough. These men and women are serving, generally, one of the core tenets outlined in the Constitution: namely, defending our nation from foreign enemies. While we certainly have no shortage of enemies within (even inside of the military, thank you Clinton), I’d place my lot with our military on any given day, when it comes to identifying people who enjoy fighting for liberty.
(That’s not to say I enjoy having our military tangled up in foreign affairs, incidentally. I am merely trying to illustrate the type of people that make up our armed forces.)
I trust Perry in spite of his flaws Mr. JHo. I don’t trust Mr. Paul. Mostly cause of I can’t get my head around his position on Iran and such.
But if ever there was a little country what needed a leader with qualities they might could rally around it’s definitely our rapidly declining failshit one, and I think Mr. Perry has that sort of ineffable leaderlyness that Paul lacks entirely.
Of the Team Rs running Mr. Governor P is the only one what stands out in that respect. Rally round the Romney just doesn’t sound like a fun game to me.
I did neglect to address the Federal Reserve: While I generally agree with Ron Paul on that, in that a strong currency backed by precious metals is A Good Idea(tm), the conspiratorial messaging he uses to get that across comes across as Certifiably Insane(r). We need solutions based in reality, not fearmongering.
Audit the Fed? Absolutely, as a tax-funded entity, this must happen.
Bankers secretly working to take over the world? That right there is Johnsonesque levels of “Crazy.”
Moral equivalency and some nice friends there.
‘Bout says it all, don’t it?
As profound as my mistrust in the ruling class in the US is, geoffb, and with good cause — witness the raw numbers describing the state of our disunion and the utter lack of original principle they describe — I don’t have much to quibble with this on.
There are two great existential threats to the US, one greater and more immediate than the other. Mexico isn’t either. I’d suggest the rest of us get our heads out of the sand with regard to where monetary policy is without question taking us. And why and how.
So you’ll double down on the assertion that a madman inhabits the Republican ticket and yet at least to millions, best describes the single greatest threat to your liberty and property, it being, in his words, not unlike what this site’s host has been describing for some time. I mean to put no words in JG’s mouth, except to say that there is an increasingly clear view emerging on the nature of the machinery running DC and it knows no party loyalties.
Paul calls it, many of us call it, and it exists. I hear Team R calling only for more Team R, and making this a race to end one man’s occupancy of the White House. I think that that’s spectacularly partisan and naive at best, and indicative of the tenacity and trajectory of that establishment at worst, probably regardless who is is elected in a year.
His failing to call things what they really are so far, his stump talent is unimportant. Such is damn important to the progressive but pretty damn unimportant to the classical liberal intent on remaining one by rights and on principle.
I read between Perry’s projections as best I can, just as I do Gingrich’s and I do Paul’s. I find the rest of the group unimpressive. Except, of course, for their ability to influence the polls, that bellweather of all classically liberal statesmen from the soon to be late American era.
“Them” or it, Brian L., because unless you genuinely miss the difference, as a individual in a force and then as an establishment, you and I are not describing the same thing.
Look me in the eye and tell me that a thousand installations around the world are a power — manned, naturally, by the finest rock-ribs we can produce from our best stocks — we can afford as we go upside down somewhere around a quarter quadrillion dollars. Are you aware of that number? Do you think we’ll print more, justifying it with this massive, unsustainable overhead?
Tell me, how? Reconcile that number with our past. With our founding principles. With simple fiscal feasibility when a fifth of us collect federal assistance and the problems you exist with our national collective intellectual trajectory exist as you yourself observe they do, all the way from the age of five years.
Lovely. And irrelevant. Over at PJM, for example, you can find on any week a huge hew and cry going up from the right’s many NASA boosters, declaring “space exploration” the single highest manifestation of American greatness. No, it’s actually a wasteful socialism for scientists; a way to convince ourselves again of our long-lost greatness, usually employing emotion and frankly nonsensical science in order to make ourselves feel better about what are our declining years as a constitutional republic based in fiscal responsibility, personal independence, classical rights, and freedom from as many foreign entanglements as possible.
I dig that you feel that way. It’s just that you can’t justify it and shouldn’t try to do so by way of the federal socialist collective, which despite national defense being a constitutional authorization, does not legitimize any of the many federal establishments and make-work industries.
I take it then that neither of us can justify the excesses of the American military establishment, notwithstanding the character of its inhabitants and the ostensible charge it should be fulfilling. And not one dime more.
If you say so. Which gets you in with the right crowd.
I’ll await your answer to the why and how of $250,000,000,000,000 of red ink and the pen to make more at a whim. Then we can get into who pockets the interest and how that and the decisions on how much and when is constitutional.
Or I’m a conspiratist; your call.
C’mon Brian, board the Ronulan Starship…
So Noam cancels Paul. Yet the first paragraph you excerpted is entirely realistic and the second merely guilty of vaguely and passively violating certain Team R dogmas.
I’m not sure — read: I’m at this time uncertain — that that’s all that condemning beyond what what I said in the third paragraph here.
Look, I don’t promote Paul and I do not because I’m sensitive to your doubts, which I share to some degree. But those doubts do not eliminate that there are systemic flaws of such a magnitude that we’re falling apart because we’re not sorting them correctly according to their harms to classical liberalism, which is to say that we’re falling into the same appearances-centric trap the left has laid, knowingly or not.
Apologies for your thinking criticizing your employer criticizes you, LTC John.
@JHoward, I am not a booster for “Team R” exclusively, I merely live within the constructs of the system as it exists today. In that third parties in American politics tend to not exist until one of the two primary parties collapses. (Thus the fall of the Federalists; Thus the fall of the Whigs; Thus the rise of the Republicans, which were “progressives” in the beginning, and are “conservatives” today; Thus the rise of the by-name Progressive Party; and its subsequent collapse.)
Our country was not intended to be a European democracy, with dozens of party structures struggling to control a plurality of the government; It was intended to be a federal republic in which power was for the most part divested to the States. That is ultimately what I hope for.
I will not find common cause with people like Ron Paul to make that happen. The man has dangerous beliefs on many topics which negate any amount of good views he may or may not have. (Besides which: When he speaks, he sounds bat-shit crazy. Presentation counts, you see.)
As far as parties go, I find myself in closest agreement with the Constitution Party. Regrettably, they are nowhere near being a “factor” in American elections, so vocal support is my only recourse at present.
(And as far as the military “establishment,” goes: The military “establishment” has done more to protect and preserve America and American interests than any other, so I regret to say I must retain my fealty to said establishment. We can discuss whether or not we should be in Shitistan or when we should pull our troops out of the Federal Republic of Stupid all we want, but the fact of the matter boils down to this: The military “establishment” goes where our political leadership tells it. To blame the military for our idiot politicians (See: church committee, President Johnson, President Carter, President Clinton, etc.) seems silly in light of that.
:)
the military is part and parcel of the whole failshit enterprise I think, albeit one of the leastest failshit parts of it… but the promises we’ve made to veterans are easily as grandiosely unaffordable as any other promises we’ve made. That’s what happens when you squander all your seed corns.
I’m curious: How does this compare to the promises that the Continental Congress made to veterans, in the form of land grants and health pensions? :)
I have no idea Mr. Brian I am short on facts and long on fatalistic opinion
A primer. Promising things to veterans is a practice as old as our country; The politicians of yester-year were sometimes just as bad at following through as the scumbags* we’re stuck with today.
So to say the promises were “grandiosely unaffordable” seems to miss some of the history of military service promises. (Not that this makes me any less fatalistic about the present, of course!)
* Spoken doubly so for Ron Paul, just because I loathe him so much.
I just can’t imagine that the accumulating pension burden on the pentagon’s books is any different than the pension fiascos what are ubiquitous in America cause of people are living longer and also these sort of things aren’t known for being implemented particularly wisely
Notwithstanding the tinge of cute superiority, I notice you cannot defend a federal establishment. Likewise, I don’t blame the military for the abuses of the people it ostensibly defends visited on both by its managers.
Progress, that.
Never let it be said you’re not a courageous, consistent, and fair-minded man, Brian L. Or that you’d deny that a man’s violent derangement inherently stands in the way of his being arguably the most fiscally, constitutionally-conservative candidate on the tour.
Despite the danger, sadly.
Not trying to be cute, nor superior. You are maligning something that, in my view, is not as much “establishment” as it is “institution,” and I am responding by defending that institution as much as I can. I did enter this by openly stating my background with the U.S. Military in the beginning, did I not?
Signed,
Evil Contractor Brian
I’ll stick with Rick Perry, thanks.
s/as much as I can/to the best of my ability/g
Driving, sorry for being unclear.
Yet you sign off ever so cutely.
I malign no such institution, Brian L. — and if you’re intellectually honest you know it — and therefore I’m not subject to your defense of that strawman of yours. For surely as by your lights my ill will is vicious and intense, I malign federal establishments, because, as feets rightly observes, the entire federal enterprise is as bankrupt as it is almost wholly consumed by special interest.
You are free to refute that, but your noble patriotism — no matter how many times you put it out there with the conviction of a veteran or associate — won’t do that thing. You can walk back or flat retract your ongoing assertion that I am hostile to the military individual or its constitutional institution.
Meanwhile you’ve left the subject of the smoldering, quarter trillion dollar crater in the middle of the classically liberal American landscape conveniently unaddressed. And those who’ve put it there.
Tell me how we’re going to afford these thousand international, um, establishments, Brian L., without printing them “whole” time and again. Until we cannot, which at this rate, looks like it’s going to be within months and not years. Do it while you can, because that’s what you’re defending.
I think we have to reserve the right to heartily malign any and every American institution/establishment in the near future.
Cause of all the endemic fail.
The military, as an institution, is not responsible for our debt. You insinuate that it is, by part or by parcel. Last I checked, defense spending was less than 20% of the Federal budget. Given that, it seems to me that we would be better served arguing over the 80% of the Federal budget that is NOT mentioned in the Constitution… Don’t you think?
Yes, my sig was cutesy. You got me there.
no sacred cows when gutting the federal beast
One of said “cows” is all that stands in the way of New York getting nuked. NTTAWWT, according to the Ronulan wing.
the New York cow is expendable but for sure not the Los Angeles cow
I more than “insinuate” that the military institution, as you’ve carefully framed it, is responsible for the 20% of the utterly bankrupt budget you say its establishment consumes.
Is that 20% part or parcel of that deficit or is it not? And therefore part of an unserviced obligation we’ll never repay, the one I keep pointing you to?
Sure I think, Brian L., and that’s an issue 24/7 in my political mind and in my political circles, should you care to check.
I just want to know which of your creative uses of the language you’d want to be taken literally and rationally from this point forward, and which are rhetoric aimed at vaguely agreeing that no federal establishment is inherently a good federal establishment except the one that pays you. You keep implying this with creative redirections, inferring the virtue of your interests by some characteristic you’ve yet to even claim for them, much less defend on the points, principles, and numbers of the establishment instead of those of the constitutional mandate.
If you think I’m arguing in defense of Defense because I am drawing a salary from there, to quote Rick Perry, I’m a little bit offended by that. Like I suggested above, a strong military is what keeps us from losing major cities to rogue threats. Given that, why in the hell does Defense have to be the FIRST thing we have to cut?
I am not really sure what #34 is supposed to convey – but it comes across with a whiff of distain, and a wee bit condesending.
I could care less who criticises DoD – you should hear me about two beers into the night.
Maybe JH is morphinng into nr-lite?
“Defense have to be the FIRST thing we have to cut?”
defense needs a haircut the rest needs clear cut
JH is not an nr-lite no offense Mr. nr it’s just that Mr. Howard is very very much in possession of an understanding of the inherently unsustainable nature of America
unsustainable in whole or part, meaning
which means oh boy we’re in a pickle
Try and not be offended by your characterization, Brian L., but instead consider what you keep being told about major establishments and address that for once. Postulate: All federal establishments are some combination of corrupt, wasteful, and inherently unsustainable. I suspect that the military has oodles of wasteful make-work baked into the two hundred year old cake. Kindly refute.
It doesn’t. And I’m no leftist.
As did #32 to me, conveying as it did that the Madness™ was Dr. Paul’s presumed, universal characteristic. That tired old establishment-right saw should be retired because it is a canned affront befitting progressive smearing to the other essentially, sound, classically-liberal principles Paul expresses that no other Team R candidate I’m aware of does.
(Disclaimer: I don’t know how any of them would behave if elected any more than you do. I think I’d take Gingrich on doggedness under the pressure of public debate, his knowledgeable precision on important issues, and the acuity of his rejection of leftism. But is he trustworthy, given his record?)
So fair enough and truce, LTC John. I’d love to hear you a few beers into the night.
We make precious little on-shore, we import food and clothing in exchange for our debt, we vastly enrich a financial cabal that’s indistinguishable from the bankrupt treasury in its ruinous effect on the average American, we owe unfathomable sums that will impoverish and enslave us until we collapse, we indoctrinate the lie of progressivism about all of this as an institutional policy from grade school on, and we print a few more billion a day to keep it all running.
So the progressive right — for that is what it is when it defends any of this fraud — patches up these various failed edifices like the nice little pups they are.
there ought to be clowns
JHoward
“Fortress America” doesn’t work. Even Thomas Jefferson realized he had to deal with the Barbary Pirates.
You want to debate the best way to secure America rights and interests? Fine. But any fellow-traveling with the fucking lunacy of Ron Paul’s attempt to “explain” the monstrous evil of al Qaeda in a BlameAmerica brainshit-stain is way beyond the pale. I don’t give a flying fuck that sometimes Paul says spot on things. He’s like that “way smart” uncle the family whispers about that can talk about physics, but is a raging closet Nazi who can’t drive a car without totaling it about once a year.
All principles are not created equal. Saying something halfway obvious about the role of charity in our society doesn’t balance out making excuse for Islamofascism and jihadists.
You want to close all our foreign bases? Fine, let’s have the discussion. But realize that money will then have to go into rehauling and expanding a very muscular Navy and Air force to protect our citizens who travel abroad and our trading goods that set sail or resign yourself to making America a permanent 2nd class country.
I’m getting fairly resigned to the second class country thing
every day I see California leading the way
“But realize that money will then have to go into rehauling and expanding a very muscular Navy and Air force to protect our citizens who travel abroad and our trading goods that set sail or resign yourself to making America a permanent 2nd class country.”
kinda of dire. as the largest consumer of energy on the planet which the leftoids always repeat we could drive down the price of oil to where the opec gang is put out of business by exploiting our resources. kinda sucks if all you have to sale is oil see saudi. we could reagan opec if we wanted to.
beck’s book broke says we got more admirals than ships. there’s lots of overhead to cut in the military. whatever happen to a mean,lean,fighting machine? oh right sensitivity training for jihadis takes up that portion of the day.
maybe when one admiral sleeps a different admiral can do the admiral chores
nr
I have no issue with a lean-mean fighting machine and going over stuff with a fine-toothed comb. Any one that has/or is, in the military can probably rattle-off ten things from the top of their head they see every day that is stone-cold stupid and wasteful.
But slash the military and retreat inside of our borders? Um it didn’t work before … what was that about doing the same thing but expecting different results?
BTW, America never created wealth by keeping trade solely within our borders. We must develop at home to export abroad.
“BTW, America never created wealth by keeping trade solely within our borders.”
oh the 19th century was all about that. it was the age of invention and who invented more? but i agree that fortress america doesn’t work ask mohammed atta.
ot concerning perry
Link
what part of the 19th century nr? e.g.: Remember, the Confederate states had thought to pull Britain into the Civil War because the British relied so heavily on the South’s cotton.
cancer vaccinations are very pro-life I think
cancer vaccinations are very pro-life I think
It’s why schools across the nation require Hepatitis B vaccines
that one is tricky like gardisil it takes two or three shots
hf
when I was a kid, not all my small pox vaccines “took” … had to repeat ’em. I still have the scar on my shoulder
I missed the small pox thing but my sister has a scar thing but she got a tattoo put over it
god bless her
and, just this year, ALL students entering 7th-12th grade were required to get the Tdap
thank god for that and really that’s one I should get a new one done for
“what part of the 19th century nr?”
after 1865 things kinda boomed
with a new grandbaby due in 7 weeks, I’m waiting to hear from my doc about coming in a getting a Tdap for myself.
Whooping cough has made an unfortunate come-back … partially because the anti-vaccine whackos have gained a bit of traction.
is cervix cancer a major problem like being hit by lightening?
after 1865 things kinda boomed
irony, right? cuz somehow I don’t see you embracing Krugman’s broken-buildings/bodies Keynesianism.
hey nr, 12,000 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer.
4,000 of them will die.
Like them odds, eh?
and that’s in the US where we encourage annual PAP smears starting when a woman is first sexually active (or at 18)
rather than delaying it, like NICE insists in the UK and they have a much higher rate of death.
Your passionate, matronly, authoritarian rants always convince me of the anti-Republican nature of my ways, Darleen. Always.
BTW, I’d said that in effect America never created wealth by harvesting imports solely within our borders and exporting nothing but a massive and unsustainable trade deficit. I’ll be damned if that doesn’t also say that we must develop at home to export abroad.
Which we don’t stand a snowball’s chance of doing with an artificial dollar, an artificial market, and the socialist statists on both sides at the wheel.
So anyway, before you go off on what you think I said again, kindly let me know what Brian L. cannot: how we’ll pay for all this stuff — including a top-heavy military establishment — when we have to print billions a day just to foot it.
How we do so is the issue.
oh, btw, about 73 people (no breakdown by sex) die each year from lightning.
the lightning menace won’t stop until it kills us all
Would something shy than an average of fifty bases per each nation on earth suffice? Because if so, maybe we can stop playing from the progg playbook by name-calling a libertarian because we can slander a libertarian.
JHoward
Yep, the “how” is certainly up for discussion, and I was against Perry’s executive order in ’07. That was NOT allowing the citizenry in on the discussion and having an opt-out rather than an opt-in.
I was a kid who can remember the kind of panic that existed prior to polio vaccines – I remember what a huge deal, and the immediate relief to my parents, when I went to the local hospital when I was about 7 years old to get one of the first Sabin vaccines, dosed on a sugar cube.
I’m very alarmed at the anti-vaccine lobby that has sprung up among people who should know better.
we should build those groovy artificial islands except for our military … no just kidding they are very expensive but I was looking at this the other day and it’s really fascinating and wondrous
That doesn’t answer the question of why the hell this task falls to government, Darleen. So why does it? Is government in the business of healthcare?
JHoward
Is Ayn Rand a libertarian or not?
Even Ragnar Danneskjold refused to attack military ships:
Now, just how are you going to export goods from America across the oceans without the military?
there’s already private security companies for shippers what specialize in anti-piracy
they’re expensive though unless you have a promo code
JHoward
Chicken & eggs … until you privatize schools, and each of them can decide their admission policy, then public schools have an obligation not to be incubators of public disease.
It’s like the whole deal about legalizing addictive drugs. I’ll be right there calling for it, one minute AFTER the welfare state is dismantled.
HF
There are private security companies with aircraft carriers and battleships? Do tell.
The US Navy escorts inbound container ships from China, does it? Your strawman wants to know, racing around like he is with those goalposts.
Government schools have an obligation not to be conflicts of yours and my constitutional interests, Darleen. Or incubators of the public disease of pathological progressivism.
What constitutional right is being violated by requiring Tdap upon entrance to 7th grade at a public school?
Let’s play one of those thought games shall we? I have no problem with not requiring vaccines ONLY IF all schools were private, education was NOT mandatory and parents were FREE to choose the school who advertised whether or not their students were vaccinated.
I know I would make the choice not to go near a disease school.
Since those choices currently don’t exist. The healthy kids in school should not be put at risk by anti-vaccine whackos.
“hey nr, 12,000 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer.
4,000 of them will die.”
4000/150,000,000 x 100 = 0.00267%
of women in america. there’s a point of diminishing returns and that people die of sumthing
“I’m very alarmed at the anti-vaccine lobby”
i’m alarmed at merck et al using “public health” scare tactics in the “public schools” to sell product. this whole thing is crony capitalism. ask the nea.
“What constitutional right is being violated by requiring Tdap upon entrance to 7th grade at a public school?”
where are public schools listed in the us constitution?
Forget the schools, as they should be relegated to vouchers or better yet paid by check and property taxes what are collected for them done away with, I don’t want to go to the local mall if there are folks there that ain’t vaccinated against some things like TB and MMR and such. That we have growing numbers of illegals that come from countries without those protections is a very valid reason for securing our borders.
where’s vaccination mentioned in the us constitution? the states go for it. decentralization works.
If you decentralize vaccinations down to the state level, then papers should be required to cross state’s borders. There are reasons the cesspools of the world aren’t tourist hot spots. Vaccinations fall squarely in the common defense portion of the constitution. I want to be able to walk in public in this country secure in the knowledge that the guy walking behind me isn’t a spreader/carrier of a disease that should have easily been wiped out with existing biotech advancements but for some fence jumping or McCarthy idiot having their feelings hurt or having their idiot fears catered to contrary to medical common sense.
It’s all well and good to be for spinning down a hefty portion of the fed overreach, but I don’t want to be in the position of deciding that Oregon is off my travel list because they don’t vaccinate for polio or measles and have a large immigrant community that isn’t required to be vaccinated on entry. As Darleen said Whooping cough is making a major comeback. And what about that idiot from Atlanta that knew he was carrying and possibly infectious and blew it off for his honeymoon and caused untold dollars to be expended tracking down all he came in contact with and having them tested, too (not to mention the cost of his quarantine). Common defense isn’t just about military threats and safeguards. Neither is general welfare. There was a reason Ellis Island existed until the progs decided that it was ‘icky’ and ‘demeaning’ to subject incoming ‘citizens’ to delousing and vaccinations and TB checks. That I can’t walk around the mall or shop for groceries without the security of knowing that the jackass last handling my shopping cart might be carrying and spreading a preventable communicable disease is stupid.
“If you decentralize vaccinations down to the state level”
works when you have a common culture and a media for propagating information rather than dan rather’s opinion.
4000/150,000,000 x 100 = 0.00267%
that’s bullshit, not stats, nr
glad to see how concerned you are with what was (until last year IIRC) the #1 killer of women.
Stephanie
Somehow I don’t think these anti-vaccine people have any clue to the ravages of infectious, and avoidable diseases.
I bet if I said “Iron Lung” they’d wonder if that was some comic book hero.
darleen & stephanie
if the gov’t shut down so what? we be americans and could figure it out.
“I bet if I said “Iron Lung” they’d wonder if that was some comic book hero.”
no i’d look at you like leech lady. let’s use “public health” to implement public policy. oh do tell when you support unbanning ddt for africa you gd goody two shoes?
“if the gov’t shut down so what?”
are you an anarchist? If not why are you mouthing the Leftists claim that TEA Party & Conservatives are anti-government?
Government has legit and limited functions. Read the Constitution.
and read your history too. Even Colonial America tried to control infectious diseases for Public Health/General Welfare … e.g. quarantine for small pox
“4000/150,000,000 x 100 = 0.00267%
that’s bullshit, not stats, nr
glad to see how concerned you are with what was (until last year IIRC) the #1 killer of women.”
your stat 4000 my stat 150,000,000. that’s mathematics no?
“the #1 killer of women”
woman are special they don’t die i see. hey is there #1 for de mens?
“Government has legit and limited functions. Read the Constitution.”
is “public health” in the us constitution?
“#1 killer of women”
their c((ts or their T&Ts or whatever womyns studies decides you go grrrls
Yep it is nr “General Welfare”
when did you decide dead women is a good thing?
You’ve got problems.
Million ways to say that and you had to put it like that.
Their c((ts or the T&Ts? People die from these things, you immature prick. People here reading these subliterate comments from you know people who’ve died from these things.
People they loved.
Grow the fuck up, asshole.
“General Welfare” is in the preamble. I don’t really count that, since it is way too non-specific. Is it anywhere else?
Otherwise, it allows a lot more intrusion than vaccinations. Note that I think not getting vaccinated is completely idiotic, but we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about what is and is not constitutional.
“Grow the fuck up, asshole.”
people die of things sir!!11!!
Fuck off, idiot.
“when did you decide dead women is a good thing?”
when you decided that men don’t count or sumthing letter play
“Fuck off, idiot.”
please do enlighten us with your charm.
It’s the preamble? Goddamn but you sound like some sniveling weasel that complains that it’s old and such, too.
Nice goalpost moving BTW.
I never said guys don’t count. If they develop a vaccine that prevents prostate cancer, Woot!
I’d also like to see them develop a vaccine for sickle cell, Tay Sachs and several other issues that don’t affect me and can never affect me.
That you have issues with something cause it doesn’t affect you and can’t is a really progressive stance. Millennial even.
“It’s the preamble? Goddamn but you sound like some sniveling weasel that complains that it’s old and such, too. ”
play more golf
“Preamble Note
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
yo go grrl
Calling Darleen a ‘gd goody two shoes’ and now another suggestion for me to go play golf and quit worrying my pretty little head with the hard stuff…
I’m surprised you didn’t suggest I cook and clean and birth some more babies. Damn, son. You’ve got as many cooter issues as the pikachu and Sully combined.
Speaking of golf… Bmoe you up for the second annual PW Georgia division golf outing? My treat.
“I’m surprised you didn’t suggest I cook and clean and birth some more babies. Damn, son. You’ve got as many cooter issues as the pikachu and Sully combined.”
well you chicks are kinda of collective in thought. it is all about the “children” no? hey you got “driver” issues hon.
“I’m surprised you didn’t suggest I cook and clean and birth some more babies. Damn, son. ”
the bell curve shows that womyn ain’t too bright. you be lower on the intelligence scale. ask larry summers.
Actually, we can withdraw into “Fortress America”… as long as we are willing to turn to a country like Iran and say “Release our citizens (say the hikers arrested lately) within 24 hours or die.” At the end of 24 hours, they’re either leaving the country or Tehran is a glowing crater. No troops, no planes, just a Trident load of nukes.
You up for that, JH? or anyone else? Because it requires anyone from the US that goes overseas to accept that they will be part of the object lesson. We won’t have to do it too often… Any other policy means that we will have to have a military, and bases around the world, to make it more feasible to launch conventional attacks.
My problem with a few of Darleen’s angry utterances is that she makes the occasional, odd federal success sound like it’s a self-evident constitutional truth and to question it is a sign of some progressive dementia. In this case, that a needle in the arm dispensed under the aegis of the miserable federal government school policy and program is a gift from God that only some freak who loves him some ron paul! hysteria would possibly disagree with.
There is no mandate for federal school. There is no mandate for federal medicine. There is no mandate for government shots no matter how glorious you want to believe them to be. There is no mandate for 900 military outposts because the world is so needful of American values rather than a strong Western, liberal, democratic, functional sensibility.
Per what I’ve written in this comment, and since you’re asking, what I said more than once is that I’m up for you and anyone else to tell me the hell how we ‘re going to pay for a military establishment that with every other establishment the federal government has instituted requires that the whole miserable sum of them have a couple billion dollars of debt printed each day, with that debt adding to the quarter quadrillion bucks we already owe.
Oh, and one more thing: Missile defense. Here. In Europe. In Israel, which has it, which is an independent state, which is a bulwark, and which requires our aid and support as a bastion of that strong, Western, liberal, democratic, functional sensibility. So let’s dispense with the notion that we need all this infrastructure in order to ourselves be safe.
How about the Team R screamers stop playing at scare tactics and address the biggest problem in this nation today, which is its monetary system. Every time you wave Iran at me expect that same question.
Or do you think a quarter quadrillion dollars is somebody elses’s problem? Because, you know, it’s too big to worry about.
NR wrote: please do enlighten us with your charm.
The rest of this thread may be a bunch of regulars assuming bad faith and arguing past one another, but that little nugget from newrouter is the funniest damn thing I’ve read all week.
Really, Stephanie? I point out that it’s in the preamble, which is NOT the constitution, and you say shit like that? Bite me.
By the way, the constitution is supposed to document what government can do, not what it can’t do. People seem to forget that. Often.
All right, JHo. On behalf of the regulars here, we all promise to support and promote Ron Paul wholeheartedly from here on out, because he’s the only one who shares your belief on the looming fiscal collapse. Never mind that he’s fucking retarded on any number of other issues — he’s right on the money thing and that’s all that matters right now.
Everybody — promise JHo that you’ll vote for Uncle Ron right now, lest we have to put up with his ranting for another day.
Now I’m getting confused cranky-d. I thought Stephanie was referring to newrouter (who quoted you) there (“Goddamn but you sound like some sniveling weasel that complains that it’s old and such, too. “), and not to you.
But putting that aside, you mention you “don’t count it” (the Preamble) as on account of “non-specificity”, which is strange to me (since I thought the Preamble is the whole point of the Constitution and as such, to be faulted with “non-specificity” would be so much as to say that the Constitution doesn’t have a point), so I wonder, what do you do with it in that case? And again you say, the Preamble is “NOT the constitution” but when I go to the Constitution, there it sits, right at the front of the document.
And on top of those confusions, here we have a State Governor acting within his State (where the States, I thought, have very broad police powers) and I presume under the Constitution of that State, yet we’ve seemed to elide the distinction between the Federal Gov’t and those State Government actions. Is this done on account of the so-called “incorporation” effects of the 14th Amendment due process clause? Or what?
Because that’s what I’ve been doing this whole thread. Ranting that you all need to vote for Ron Paul.
I thought Stephanie was referring to newrouter (who quoted you) there (“Goddamn but you sound like some sniveling weasel that complains that it’s old and such, too. “), and not to you.
I was referring to NR… and the reference to the sniveling weasel was the idiot (Jonah?) who claimed we should ignore the constitution because it’s old and stuff. Dismissing the preamble, which is the equivalent to the thesis sentence, is kinda ignoring the intentions of the founders who felt the need to put it there. It is the frame around the constitution in which the contents reside. Boundaries for the document if you will.
Ezra Klein
And I wouldn’t call anything in the constitution a ‘mandate’ for or against anything. And yes, I do believe that vaccines are permissible under the clauses as I said last night. Should a worldwide plaque begin, I would anticipate that one of the government’s primary purposes would be to guard against it taking root in the US. Vaccines would sure be useful for allowing citizens to go about their business and not end up having to hunker down in their homes and curtail their daily activities. Any threat against the US that would so curtail citizens movements or actions is something that the founders would have been on board to fight. They believed in freedom and citizens forced to insulate themselves from others due to threats that can now be technologically removed is something that they would have considered a bad thing that infringed on many rights found in the constitution including free association and free trade.
Thanks Sdferr, it’s difficult parsing out the idiots on the left. Too many to count and they are all parrots.
de nada. Sometimes I know ’em, sometimes I don’t. This one I just happened to remember, for reasons I can’t in any way explain.
It’s kinda like federal union membership that way.
It’s kinda like citizenship that way. Civility to your neighbor in not being a pus gushing walking disease what smears their pusiness (pussiness) all over shopping carts and the self serve cups at QT. A personal responsibility to not infect your neighbor nor he you.