By not effectively addressing illegal immigration issue, the anchor baby issue all while leaving our borders insecure and porous, we have left our country vulnerable on several accounts including massive unreimbursed costs, security, increased crime, overburdening of our educational system and reduction in its quality and effective resources.
This has also become a political issue with significant implications on both sides of the aisle. The Democrats largely refuse to effectively address the problem claiming that these individuals deserve better and it is our obligation to facilitate it by providing resources such as free health care, education and food stamps (all at the expense of us, the taxpayer). Part of the reason is related to their socialist utopian ideas of equality independent of effort, circumstances or national origin. They claim that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees them these rights.
However, the real reasoning is political expediency, power and money. These illegals vote Democrat by a margin of at least 2 to 1. By allowing the status quo, the Democrats are, in essence, guaranteeing themselves re-election in the future as there will be potentially a net increase of Democrat voters over Republicans by at least 4 million. Even worse, this will dilute the effects and power of the votes of true, homegrown citizens thus abridging our rights.
Attacking the Constitutional argument, most constitutional scholars agree that the 14th Amendment was inserted into the Constitution to ensure that children born to African slaves would be considered citizens. It was not intended to be interpreted as it has been for many years now. The consequence of this distorted “interpretation” is illegal aliens steal their way into our great country for the sole purpose of birthing "anchor babies" in order to gain access to our generous welfare benefits and live a more enjoyable life?
As the article below points out, the illegal immigrant parents of stateside-born children gain access to $600 million in social services benefits each year in Los Angeles County alone! When health care and public safety expenses are factored in, this cost exceeds $1.6 billion which doesn’t even include the costs associated with educating these children. With most municipalities in California and the state itself drowning in red ink, this is a burden the taxpayers cannot and should not be required to bear. Project the well over $2 billion in L.A. County alone (for just one year) to every other city, county, and state in America burdened by this fraudulent cost and we are talking well over $100 billion per year.
This massive expenditure of taxpayer dollars could be better employed to reduce our debt and deficit. This could be facilitated if changes were made such that the Fourteenth Amendment was followed as intended, not as the Progressives and Democrats want it to be interpreted - as part of their living, breathing document shtick.
Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants Estimated at $600M in L.A. County
January 19, 2011 FoxNews.com
Welfare benefits for the children of illegal immigrants cost America's largest county more than $600 million last year, according to a local official keeping tabs on the cost.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich released new statistics this week showing social spending for those families in his county rose to $53 million in November, putting the county government on track to spend more than $600 million on related costs for the year -- up from $570 million in 2009.
Antonovich arrived at the estimate by factoring in the cost of food stamps and welfare-style benefits through a state program known as CalWORKS. Combined with public safety costs and health care costs, the official claimed the "total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers" was more than $1.6 billion in 2010.
"Not including the hundreds of millions of dollars for education," he said in a statement.
Antonovich's figures, though, center on costs generated by American-born children of illegal immigrants. Isabel Alegria, communications director at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said it's "unfair" to roll together costs associated with both illegal immigrants and U.S.-born citizens.
"Those children are U.S. citizens, children eligible for those programs," Alegria said.
She also questioned the authenticity of Antonovich's numbers regarding health care and public safety -- though for the welfare program statistics, Antonovich cited numbers from the county's Department of Public Social Services.
Antonovich acknowledges that the children whose benefits he's focusing on are U.S.-born. But he argues that the money is collected by the illegal immigrant parents, putting a painful burden on taxpayers, including those who are legal immigrants.
"The problem is illegal immigration. ... Their parents evidently immigrated here in order to get on social services," Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell said. "We can no longer afford to be HMO to the world."
He said the state should cut back on these social benefits. According to the November statistics, that cost accounted for 22 percent of all food stamp and CalWORKS spending in the county.
Over the summer, the Federation for American Immigration Reform also looked at these kinds of costs nationwide to get an idea of the burden to local governments at a time when many are grappling with budget deficits.
The organization reported that the cost of illegal immigration stands at about $113 billion a year. Nearly half of that amount went toward education costs, according to the study. Costs were naturally higher in states with large illegal immigrant populations -- in California, the total annual cost was pegged at $21.8 billion.
On the O’Reilly Factor, John Stossel illustrated what affirmative action is with a metaphorical bake sale. That is, he charged Asians $1.50 for the same cupcake that a white pays $1.00 and blacks and Hispanics $.50. This is obvious discrimination that everyone can see and understand as evidenced by the responses in the video below.
When it comes to admission to colleges, for example, this same parallel applies. Asians have to score much higher on their SAT’s to get in the same schools as whites whereas Hispanics are admitted with much lower scores and blacks even lower than that. No matter how you evaluate this, it is racism; that is, how a person is treated (admission to college) is based on race and not on abilities.
THIS IS RACISM! (Technically, it can be considered to be reverse racism.)
“Affirmative” action is a euphemism for sanctioned reverse racism. It is “negative” for the vast majority of more deserving or qualified individuals who are discriminated against because of these race based policies.
We see the same unequal treatment or opportunities in other areas such as bidding for federal, state or municipal contracts. This has become government mandated racism brought to you by the compassionate liberals. It is, however, a technical violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and it should not be condoned or accepted.
Affirmative action needs to be relegated to the trash heaps of history. This includes not only governmental related programs but also in education and the private sector. The state of Arizona with the successful approval of its Proposition 107 in the recent elections is the most recent state to ban this legislated discrimination.
We strongly recommend that the remaining states should pursue passage of similar legislation. Federal affirmative action policies should also be deep-sixed.
A continued flow of evidence regarding the Dept. of Justice and the New Black Panther Party case reveals egregious violations of the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act as a consequence of unequal treatment and rights of Americans based on ethnicity. That is, the top on down mandate was to throw out any discrimination cases brought against minority defendants, especially blacks yet vigorously investigate the converse.
Many heads in the department should roll including Attorney Eric Holder and possibly even Obama. Their racist, depraved actions warrant their expeditious firings.
Travesty Of The Justice Department
Investor’s Business Daily 09/27/2010
Justice: Those who thought hope and change meant equal enforcement of the law were wrong. A top DOJ official testifies about a deliberate policy of not prosecuting minorities or protecting the rights of anybody else.
So much for post-racial justice. First, documents were unearthed showing the Department of Justice lied when it insisted that dropping the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case was a decision made by career attorneys, not by political appointees trying to avoid offending a key administration constituency.
Now we have the explosive testimony last Friday of Christopher Coates, former voting chief of the Civil Rights Division, before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Coates said the Panther decision was "the result of their deep-seated opposition to the equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racial minorities and for the protection of white voters who have been discriminated against."
Coates' testimony supported earlier accusations made by J. Christian Adams, formerly one of those career lawyers in the Voting Section.
Adams had told the commission that DOJ officials "over and over and over" showed "hostility" to prosecution of voter-intimidation cases involving "black defendants and white victims."
Adams testified that Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, a political appointee, himself overruled a unanimous recommendation for continued prosecution by Adams and his associates of voter intimidation of white voters by members of The New Black Panthers at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.
Adams had also testified that Julie Fernandes, a deputy assistant general in the Civil Rights Division in charge of voting matters, told Voting Section leadership that the Obama administration would not file election-related cases against minority defendants — no matter what the alleged violation of the law.
Coates verified Adams' testimony about Fernandes, and also said he had been "specifically instructed" by Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, "not to ask any other applicants whether they would be willing to, in effect, race-neutrally enforce the VRA (Voting Rights Act)."
Coates said he had started asking applicants about race-neutrality in voting cases after he noticed internal harassment directed at lawyers and paralegals who in 2005 had helped prosecute the voter intimidation case of Ike Brown, a twice-convicted felon and political activist who ran the Democratic Party in Noxubee County, Mississippi. Like the Panthers, Brown is black.
When the head of the Civil Rights Division, Thomas Perez, testified before both Congress and the commission that the Panther case was dropped because it was considered legally and factually defective, and that the decision was made by career attorneys, not political appointees, he lied.
In fact, the case is perhaps the most provable case of voter intimidation ever.
Black Panther members were videotaped standing outside a Philadelphia polling place brandishing clubs and, according to witness testimony, uttering racial slurs.
If they were members of the KKK or the Tea Party, would the case have been dropped? We think not.
Dropping the new Black Panther Party case, Coates said in his testimony, "was intended to send a direct message to people inside and outside the civil rights division. That message is that the filing of voting cases like the Ike Brown and the NBPP cases would not continue in the Obama administration."
If Fernandes and King indeed have these views, and if political appointees such as Thomas Perrelli and Thomas Perez made the decision to dismiss the Black Panther case for any reason other than the merits of the case, and then lied about it, they should all be fired.
And so should Attorney General Eric Holder.
Holder's tenure as head of the Justice Department has been a disaster. From the closing of Gitmo to civilian trials of Khalid Sheik Muhammed to instantly Mirandizing the Christmas bomber, Holder and his department have displayed an indifference, even hostility, to equal justice and protecting the rights and lives of the American people. All of them.
Updates on this situation reveal that this decision was also a political one: the Obama Administration didn’t want to rattle its staunchest supporter: the “black community”. This finding alone is an outrage and an action that is both despicably depraved and constitutionally illegal (Fourteenth Amendment).
But then again, Obama is concerned with neither … but we MUST be.
Voting in November will be one of OUR constructive responses. We must also exert pressure to have the abominably incompetent, racist and corrupt Attorney General Eric Holder FIRED.
Black Panthergate
Investor’s Business Daily 09/21/2010
Justice: Despite administration denials under oath, documents obtained by a watchdog group indicate that the decision not to pursue a clear-cut case of voter intimidation was indeed a political decision.
It was perhaps the most clear-cut case of voter intimidation ever. On Election Day 2008, New Black Panther Party members King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were videotaped intimidating voters as they stood, dressed in military garb, outside a Philadelphia polling place.
Their conduct was so egregious that the Justice Department of President Bush charged the three thugs with violations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act through intimidation, threats and coercion. When none of the defendants filed a response or showed up at a subsequent hearing, you'd have thought the Justice Department would have won its suit by default.
But a new administration brought a new, and somewhat jaundiced, perspective. Instead, the Justice Department of President Obama essentially dropped the case in May 2009, letting two of the three walk and issuing a weak injunction against King Shabazz. He was forbidden from showing up at another Philadelphia polling place with another nightstick and intimidating other voters for the next three years, an action that was already illegal. He is presumably free to do the same thing in, say, New Jersey in 2012.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission wanted to know why the case wasn't pursued and if political considerations were involved. On May 14, Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, testified that there was no "political leadership involved in the decision not to pursue this particular case any further than it was" and it was only "a case of career people disagreeing with career people."
The DOJ stonewalled, claiming that all documents involved in the case were "privileged information," that there was nothing to see and we should all move along. The watchdog group Judicial Watch pursued the case, and a court ordered the DOJ to provide it with withheld documents and an explanation of each privilege asserted.
The information that was unearthed reveals that several political appointees were involved in the decision not to pursue the New Black Panther Party. Of particular note was a list of 58 e-mails to or from Deputy Associate Attorney General Sam Hirsch, formerly election attorney for the National Democratic Party.
Christian Adams, the DOJ attorney who resigned to protest the New Black Panther Party decision, describes Hirsch as "a former Democratic Party operative" who, among other activities, "led efforts to impose racial divisions on Hawaii by creating native classifications and powers." Hirsch is a fierce partisan with experience in racial politics.
In testimony before the Civil Rights Commission that he says his bosses tried to block, Adams said Attorney General Eric Holder's department refused to prosecute what he has called "the clearest case of voter intimidation that I've seen since practicing law."
A dozen or so e-mails went up the chain of political command to Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli. Deputy Attorney General David Ogden was also in on the political deliberations, contributing, according to the e-mails, his "current thoughts" on the matter.
Adams told the commission that DOJ officials "over and over and over" showed "hostility" to prosecution of voter-intimidation cases involving "black defendants and white victims." Adams says Perrelli, a political appointee, himself overruled a unanimous recommendation for continued prosecution by Adams and his associates.
So when Perez testified that the decision was made only by career attorneys, not political operatives and appointees, he was not telling the truth about the machinations of the most transparent administration in history.
The decision not to prosecute the New Black Panther Party was clearly a political decision designed not to offend a key constituency of the Democratic Party and one of the few bastions of support this administration and the Democrats have left.
The New Black Panther Party should have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law. At least one member of this administration is on shaky legal ground as well.
We have always and vehemently opposed affirmative action or contrived racial diversity for innumerable reasons. It is irrefutably racism – though liberals and Progressives would discount this by stating that it is “only against the oppressive majority” (read: White).
Some call it reverse racism or reverse discrimination but whatever the appellation, it is still discrimination. Technically, it should also be considered to be a violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which guarantees equal rights and protection.
Unfortunately, liberals and Progressives don’t see the noxious ramifications of their actions to all parties involved nor to the negative global effects on society. Such imposed policies have clearly identifiable, permanent and significant impacts some of which are outlined in the editorial below.
Racial demagoguery must cease and affirmative action policies abrogated.
Racial Stupidity and Malevolence
Walter Williams 9/7/2010
The white liberal's agenda, coupled with that of black race hustlers, has had and continues to have a devastating impact on ordinary black people. Perhaps the most debilitating aspect of this liberal malevolence is in the area of education.
Recently, I spoke with a Midwestern university engineering professor who was trying to help an inner-city black student who was admitted to the university's electrical engineering program. The student was sure that he was well prepared for an engineering curriculum; his high school had convinced him of that and the university recruiters supported that notion. His poor performance on the university's math placement exam required that he take remedial math courses. He's failed them and is now on academic probation after two semesters of earning less than a 2.0 grade point average.
The young man and his parents were sure of his preparedness. After all, he had good high school grades, but those grades only meant that he was well behaved. The college recruiters probably knew this youngster didn't have the academic preparation for an electrical engineering curriculum. They were more concerned with racial diversity.
This young man's background is far from unique. Public schools give most black students fraudulent diplomas that certify a 12th-grade achievement level. According to a report by Abigail Thernstrom, "The Racial Gap in Academic Achievement," black students in 12th grade dealt with scientific problems at the level of whites in the sixth grade; they wrote about as well as whites in the eighth grade. The average black high school senior had math skills on a par with a typical white student in the middle of ninth grade. The average 17-year-old black student could only read as well as the typical white child who had not yet reached age 13.
Black youngsters who take the SAT exam earn an average score that's 70 to 80 percent of the score of white students, and keep in mind, the achievement level of white students is nothing to write home about. Under misguided diversity pressures, colleges recruit many black students who are academically ill equipped. Very often, these students become quickly disillusioned, embarrassed and flunk out, or they're steered into curricula that have little or no academic content, or professors practice affirmative-action grading. In any case, the 12 years of poor academic preparation is not repaired in four or five years of college. This is seen by the huge performance gap between blacks and whites on exams for graduate school admittance such as the GRE, MCAT and LSAT.
Is poor academic performance among blacks something immutable or pre-ordained? There is no evidence for such a claim. Let's sample some evidence from earlier periods. In "Assumptions Versus History in Ethnic Education," in Teachers College Record (1981), Dr. Thomas Sowell reports on academic achievement in some of New York city's public schools. He compares test scores for sixth graders in Harlem schools with those in the predominantly white Lower East Side for April 1941 and December 1941.
In paragraph and word meaning, Harlem students, compared to Lower East Side students, scored equally or higher. In 1947 and 1951, Harlem third-graders in paragraph and word meaning, and arithmetic reasoning and computation scored about the same as -- and in some cases, slightly higher, and in others, slightly lower than -- their white Lower East Side counterparts.
Going back to an earlier era, Washington, D.C.'s Dunbar High School's black students scored higher in citywide tests than any of the city's white schools. In fact, from its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of Dunbar's graduates went off to college.
Let's return to the tale of the youngster at the Midwestern college. Recruiting this youngster to be a failure is cruel, psychologically damaging and an embarrassment for his family. But the campus hustlers might come to the aid of the student by convincing him that his academic failure is a result of white racism and Eurocentric values.
Affirmative action is a practice that establishes the provision of granting greater rights for particular groups of people over others which, ipso facto, is a violation of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution (unless, of course, it is interpreted as a living, changeable document by a progressive Justice). The way it has been applied in this country is to inequitably, immorally and probably unconstitutionally assign greater rights, opportunities and privileges to blacks at the expense of whites and Asian-Americans.
Is this fair?
Of course not!
This is reverse discrimination, plain and simple. People are being penalized because their skin is white (or they came from China or Japan, etc.). Such a policy fosters resentment from those who are discriminated against and exacerbates racial tensions and is counterproductive.
In the following editorial by Sen. James Webb of Virginia, a Democrat, he calls for the abolishment of this divisive, inequitable, morally wrong and unconstitutional (strictly speaking) policy. He states that:
“Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners.”
We strongly agree.
Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all 'people of color' are unfair. They should end.
James Webb July 22, 2010
The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations.
Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.
I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.
In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.
How so?
Lyndon Johnson's initial program for affirmative action was based on the 13th Amendment and on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which authorized the federal government to take actions in order to eliminate "the badges of slavery." Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.
The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all "people of color"—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.
Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.
Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith. And the journey of white American cultures is so diverse (yes) that one strains to find the logic that could lump them together for the purpose of public policy.
The clearest example of today's misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South.
The old South was a three-tiered society, with blacks and hard-put whites both dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power. At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that "fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery."
The Civil War devastated the South, in human and economic terms. And from post-Civil War Reconstruction to the beginning of World War II, the region was a ravaged place, affecting black and white alike.
In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt created a national commission to study what he termed "the long and ironic history of the despoiling of this truly American section." At that time, most industries in the South were owned by companies outside the region. Of the South's 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white). The illiteracy rate was five times that of the North-Central states and more than twice that of New England and the Middle Atlantic (despite the waves of European immigrants then flowing to those regions). The total endowments of all the colleges and universities in the South were less than the endowments of Harvard and Yale alone. The average schoolchild in the South had $25 a year spent on his or her education, compared to $141 for children in New York.
Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks' average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.
Policy makers ignored such disparities within America's white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.
Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.
Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.
Memo to my fellow politicians: Drop the Procrustean policies and allow harmony to invade the public mindset. Fairness will happen, and bitterness will fade away.
Mr. Webb, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Virginia.
The Dept. of Justice, which should be protecting the rights of all Americans and the Constitutionally enumerated equality of all (Fourteenth Amendment), apparently is not fulfilling its mandate. Under Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, a racist bias has suffused the agency. Their ideology is that some people - blacks in particular and Democratically voting Hispanics - are "more equal" than others, specifically Whites. Some of this also stems from Obama's 20 years attending the vitriolic, racist rants of Rev. Wright in church where he preached black nationalism and supremacy. (Then again, Obama "claimed" to have heard nothing controversial. And Bill Clinton "didn't inhale" or "have sex with that woman".)
This sanctioned and enforced racism of blacks over whites is something that all Americans need to be aware of and react and respond to aggressively. If not, our rights will continue to progressively erode and we will find ourselves in a racially very hostile country that may be balkanized.
By action and words on myriad occasions, Obama has indicated that the Constitution cramps his style. Exuding arrogance and narcissism, he readily indicates that he will blatantly disregard its restraints and promulgate whatever legislation he so desires, whether it be the Federal government takeover of healthcare, industries or even firearm and munitions restrictions.
Obama has shown particular disdain for and has challenged with legislation the First, Second, Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments. We, the American people, need to be eternally vigilant and vigorously oppose his each and every attempt to abrogate our Constitutional rights and freedoms.
Obama must be stopped!
Obama vs. the 10th Amendment
by Chuck Norris 03/02/2010
Not surprisingly, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released last Friday revealed that 56 percent of Americans think the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to their rights and freedoms.
Particularly apropos here is the feds' health care violation of the 10th Amendment, which is part of our Bill of Rights and was ratified Dec. 15, 1791. The amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Thomas Jefferson explained the pre-eminence of this amendment in 1791: "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
The point is that based on the 10th Amendment, when it comes to legislating and controlling our health care, the federal government doesn't have a constitutional leg to stand on. And even its past violations of the 10th Amendment by implementing government health care services have proved to break more national legs than they have to mend them. The proof is in the pudding. How many times does it have to be pointed out to Washington? Medicare is going bankrupt. Medicaid is going bankrupt. Case closed.
The government is inept to run America's health care system. And now it wants to expand its programs (its health care business) to oversee what equates to one-sixth of the gross national product? What rational board anywhere in the world would rightly appoint a CEO who had a string of miserable business failures and major corporate bankruptcies in his dossier?
I agree with Dr. Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University Medical Center, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who put it best in their article a few months back, titled "Alternatives to government health takeover." They said this: "We think it's critical that power shifts to the American consumer and away from government, employers and insurers, as evidence shows medical care prices come down when patients pay directly.
Government should offer tax relief, such as refundable tax credits, to encourage private health insurance purchasing -- especially for low-income families. Similar ideas, like those in the Patients' Choice Act ... are important for Americans to consider. We would do well also to consider creative ideas such as changing federal payments to state-based medicaid plans to individual vouchers or expanding health savings accounts, as has been done in South Carolina."
Returning the onus of solving health care issues to families, local communities and states would not only return a balance of power to our federal government but also help with America's economic recovery and build up communities at the same time.
The abuse of federal political power to intervene in areas such as Americans' private health care could exist only in a nation that no longer holds its leaders accountable to its constitution and that has governmental leadership that regards itself as above its people and its constitution. Sadly, I was listening to an interview the other day in which President Barack Obama described the U.S. Constitution as "an imperfect document ... a document that reflects some deep flaws ... (and) an enormous blind spot." He also said, "The Framers had that same blind spot."
In so doing, the president established a rationale and justification for disregarding the Constitution. Even worse, he placed himself above the Constitution and those "blind Framers," who just couldn't see the big picture as he does today. After all, he's the constitutional scholar, and the Framers were just, well, the creators of the document!
Our 44th president would do well to learn from America's third president, Thomas Jefferson, himself a source greater than any living constitutional lawyer. Imagine Jefferson sitting there at the health care summit, a ripe sage at roughly 80 years of age. After listening to all the clamoring of both Republicans and Democrats, he politely but sternly utters these words, which he also wrote to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson in 1823: "The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers. They (did not learn from the past), nor (were they) aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government, nor yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold as at market."
Americans who want to preserve what freedoms and liberties we still have need to contact their Senators on both sides of the aisle regarding the Sotomayor confirmation hearings which are being conducted this week. Her confirmation, a lifetime appointment, would impose her abominable misguided “empathetic” legal input and judgments on the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans for decades! Her long dismal track record speaks for itself – someone who consistently considers race, sex, etc. as highly influential factors when she adjudicates thereby ascribing more legal rights to these individuals than to others. As we noted before, this is a clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment where all Americans are mandated to have equal protection before the law. There is no legal authority for “oppressed” or privileged minority groups.
Whatever she reveals in her testimony before the Senate will be just plain expedient, hollow rhetoric. She stated that "Many Senators have asked me about my judicial philosophy. It is simple: fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law." Her previous writings, judgments and statements even captured on video belie these comments, instead showing a racist, manipulative and intellectually dishonest arbiter. Just review her most recent case that was overturned by the Supreme Court, Ricci vs. The City of New Haven to understand the dangers to freedoms, liberties and impartial justice that she represents. This was the fourth out of her six cases that the Supreme Court has reversed – an ignominious record.
The following video captures Sotomayor's comments on judicial activism that contradicts her testimony given today before the Senate. Read between this lines of her comments.
The Fourteenth Amendment mandates that all Americans in this country have the same legal rights and no one is more equal than anyone else. Increasingly, this stipulation is being ignored by the infusion of socialist ideology and “empathy” for certain “victimized” groups into our laws that ironically will give them more rights than other Americans. Affirmative action is certainly the poster child of this but the expansion of federal hate crime laws certainly threatens further erode the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Excerpting from the article below: “As it stands, the bill criminalizes any violent act perpetrated against someone because of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.” Let’s look at the real world consequences of this bill as currently. A White man is beaten by a Black man. The Black man will be charged with assault as under current laws. Now let’s reverse this. A Black man (protected group) is beaten by a White man. Now, not only will the White man be charged with assault but he will also be federally charged with a hate crime.
This same asymmetry of rights is present in other scenarios – just select the protected group. A lesbian attacking a straight female will only be charged with assault but a heterosexual male attacking a gay man not only will be charged with assault but also a hate crime! Though the intentions of the law might have been noble, the unintended consequences on other people’s rights are not. This law should not see the light of day!
Print This Post
Subscribe to Our RSS Feed
Follow Us on Twitter
Comments