Down the rabbit hole....

      I’ve heard many times the Lord helps those who help themselves. I think that’s probably true most of the time, depending, of course, on what we decide to help ourselves to. Regardless, things usually work out better if we put forth a little more effort.  

     Last week, when I opened the shop door one morning to load the truck and get ready for work, a young rabbit decided he wanted to hop into the shop for some reason. I’m not sure why, since there isn’t anything in there to eat that would appeal to a rabbit that I know of, and it isn’t any warmer inside than it is outside. But he came in anyway, and despite my excited instructions to vacate the premises, made his way under or behind some workbenches and tool boxes, out of sight, but not out of mind.

     I picked up a 2 x 4 and banged on a workbench and an empty 5 gallon bucket while whistling my shrillest whistle, and then put a Slim Whitman album on the old shop stereo with the volume turned up while I retreated to the office to finish the morning’s paperwork. While I hadn’t seen the rabbit slip out the open door during my whistling fit, I was convinced few of God’s creatures, least of all a young woodland variety, would be able to weather an entire album side of Slim.

     So I closed the door and went to work, secure in the notion that fuzzy little buddy had made good on his escape, and was back in the great outdoors eating clover and avoiding coyotes. Confident I was, but not so confident that I didn’t open the door, pick up a 2 x 4, and give that bucket a couple of good whacks when I returned home that evening. I figured on the outside chance that the rabbit was deaf, or had really bad taste in music, and had stayed in hiding during the morning’s audio onslaught, he would surely be hungry enough by now to come out of hiding and make a dash for the open door.

     While I was convinced the problem had resolved itself when I left the shop that evening, I’m sorry to report that when I went to the shop the next morning, I was greeted by a dead rabbit lying in the middle of the floor. While I was relieved he had the decency not to pass in some obscure hiding spot where his rotting corpse would have been tougher to deal with in a few days, I was also disappointed that he hadn’t taken one of the many opportunities he had been given to live a fuller and longer life. But I also remembered he was a rabbit, and probably not prone to thinking of things beyond the moment.

     Speaking of the moment, at this particular one we’re 16 months or so away from the next Presidential election. We have about that many candidates who have thrown their hats into the presidential ring, waiting on some of us to weed them down to just one survivor. If recent history is any indicator, that survivor will be the one that convinces the most people he or she can help them out of whatever problem they currently find themselves in. And again, if recent history is any indicator, what actually will happen is that survivor will help maintain policies that take from one group of people and give to another group of people, making one group more angry and one group more dependent, all the time adding to a multi-trillion dollar debt that another group down the proverbial road will be expected to pay.

     I can’t help but believe that if the federal government was capable of helping us out, it would have done so already. While it might have a few legitimate and Constitutional duties and obligations, most of what it does nowadays simply puts us deeper in the hole. Fortunately, the Constitution also contains the 10th Amendment, which states that anytime the federal government oversteps its authority, the people and states can nullify its actions and decide how to best help themselves. 

     It’s something we need to seriously consider, before the door closes for good.

Resolutions and rebates...

  Its resolution time again. I try to make a couple every New Years, and if I’m lucky I keep at least one of them. Some I keep longer than others. Exercising more and eating less have never made it past January 18^th of any year, but 2013 did mark my 25^th year in a row without drinking any alcohol, and my second year without drinking any soda pop. For 2014 I felt that I really don’t have too much that I can or want to give up, so I’ve decided that instead of doing something less, I’m going to start doing something else more.

  While cleaning off my desk a while back, (no dear, I’m not resolving to start cleaning my desk off more often,) I found several rebate coupons from one of those big box stores where I occasionally buy building materials.  I intended to fill them out and send them in before they expired. I didn’t.

  Not being much of a shopper, I never saw the attraction of rebates anyway. I always figured that if a company was going to give me a 10% rebate on something, it would be a lot simpler to just take that 10% off when I bought the item, thereby saving both of us the paperwork and the postage. I suspected they offer rebates because there are probably a lot of people like me whose good intentions of returning them seldom make it to fruition.

  My suspicions were confirmed a couple of weeks ago when a family member who works for a company that offers rebates told me that on average, about 5% of the rebate coupons they hand out are returned with the proper paperwork and by the proper date. I suppose I should take some comfort in the fact that I’m not the only rebate procrastinator out there, but I don’t. I also suppose that if everybody, or just about everybody, started sending all of their coupons back in, the companies would probably decide it would be more economical to just discount the merchandise in the store in the first place.

  We’re sort of in the same situation with our federal government right now. When the Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution about 223 years ago, the founding fathers put in the 10^th Amendment, which states that “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.”  It would no doubt be a lot simpler if the federal government would simply stick to its delegated duties right up front, but it’s becoming more and more apparent in recent years that it has no intention of doing so.

  What that means is we as people and states have to step up and nullify laws and regulations that the federal government is imposing on us without having the Constitutional authority to do so. Legislators in South Carolina and Georgia recently introduced bills to nullify federal attempts at controlling health care and firearms in those states. More states have similar bills on similar issues in the works. It takes a little more effort on our part, just like sending in for a rebate. We shouldn’t have to, but if we want our freedom and our money back, that’s what it takes.

   I’m sure the folks in Washington won’t be overly concerned about a couple of states and a few individuals exercising their 10^th Amendment protections, any more than those businesses are about 5% of their customers collecting rebates. But if enough people and states do it, it might just convince them to follow the Constitution in the first place.

  So if you’re still looking for a New Year’s Resolution for 2014, why not consider mailing in those rebate coupons, and putting people in office who will actually uphold the Constitution.

  It’s not about giving something up. It’s about taking something back.

You decide...

This past week, over 70% of voters in Missouri decided that they didn't want to be forced to buy health insurance as required by the recently passed federal health insurance law. It's encouraging that people are taking a stand against the new law, and it's encouraging that more states are moving in that direction. It's an exercise of the Tenth Amendment, which gives the states and people the remedy of nullifying any law the federal government makes which exceeds the boundaries of its Constitutional authority. One of the lines in the above Reuters article wasn't as encouraging. It states, "Experts said because federal law typically supersedes state laws, the state efforts could ultimately be largely symbolic, although it is likely the debate will make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court." I suppose an expert can be mistaken, although I'm not sure they could still be considered an expert afterwards. The assumption by these experts is that the United States Supreme Court has jurisdiction over Tenth Amendment issues.

While I was glad to see Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller jumping into the game, he was off base when he made the following statement: “The unprecedented claim that the federal government has the right to require individuals to purchase a private health insurance product is a question that ultimately ought to be decided by the United States Supreme Court.”

While the Supreme Court certainly has some important duties, also enumerated in the Constitution, deciding who gets to decide on what qualifies as a Tenth Amendment issue isn't one of them. The court is a branch of the federal government, and the Tenth Amendment says that "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."

Imagine for a moment that you and I signed a contract authorizing me to put a roof on your house and to charge you for that service. Then, at some point in time, I decided that your house needed painting, and I informed you that I was also going to paint your house and charge you for that service. When you protest that painting your house wasn't part of the contract, I inform you that I had shown the contract to my wife, and she had decided that roofing and painting were kind of related, and since you had already agreed to the roofing, I was right and you were out of luck.

You could and should justifiably call foul. You could also justifiably ignore any second or third opinions.

The federal government has broken its contract with the states many times over the years. It's breaking that contract more frequently and to a greater extent recently.

And it's not up to federal government to decide when it's breaking the contract.
It's up to the states. And the people.

Nicknames and Nullification

There used to be a guy up in Mooreland who went by the nickname "Banjo". I don't know why people called him by that name. There were a lot of people with nicknames when I was growing up, but I didn't always know where the names originated. I was pretty sure how Stinky Wilmont got his name, and Fat Brown was pretty well self explanatory, as was Slim, Blubber and Shorty. I'm not so sure about Ginky, or Crowbar, or Skeeter.

However the names came about, after a period of time they became so commonly used that a lot of people didn't know the person's given name. I never knew Banjo as anything but Banjo.

Whatever his real name was, Banjo had a way of getting the better end of a deal. I recall a time when Banjo and another friend of mine, Charlie, (a nickname for Charles, I suspect,) decided to raise some chickens. The deal was they would buy 100 chicks, Charlie would furnish the feed, and Banjo would board and tend to the flock until they were big enough to be turned into fried chicken.

Whenever Charlie would inquire as to the progress of the chicks, Banjo always replied, "Mine are doing really well, but two of your died last night." I don't know how many chickens Charlie ended up with, but it didn't take too long to figure out that letting one guy keep all the chickens and make all the decisions about them might not work out so well for the other guy.

Back when our nation was first formed, the individual states decided that a federal government might be useful when it came to performing certain duties. So they all got together and wrote up a Constitution describing what those duties would be, and what the federal government was supposed to do. Then, just to be on the safe side, they threw in the Bill of Rights, ten amendments to the Constitution listing some of the things the federal government couldn't do. The tenth of those amendments states that, "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."

I don't suppose anybody really thought that everybody would always agree on exactly what the Constitution empowered the federal government to do, or made sure it wouldn't do. And as a nation, we've certainly had our disagreements over the years. Even a war, at one point. And I suppose we'll continue to have disagreements as long as we exist. One of the biggest disagreements has been over who gets to decide who gets to decide.

People who like a lot of federal government think that the federal government, and the United States Supreme Court, a branch of the federal government, should get to decide. They think the Tenth Amendment doesn't amount to much. People who don't like a lot of federal government think that's a lot like letting your ex mother-in-law decide on your divorce settlement. They think the Tenth Amendment is pretty important.

If an individual state decides that a federal law is unconstitutional, a lot of people believe the Tenth Amendment gives them the authority to nullify that law. A lot of people don't believe that. The people who don't believe that often point out that some states used that argument in defense of slavery. The people who do believe that often point out that some states used that argument to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act, which required states to return escaped slaves to their supposed owners.

Given the growth of the federal government in recent years, I suspect the interpretation of the Tenth Amendment will become increasingly important in the next few years, and in the next few elections. It would behoove us all to make an informed decision on it. As someone who places a lot of importance on the Tenth, I'd recommend reading the book, NULLIFICATION, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., for a well reasoned history and defense of it. I'll leave it up to someone who doesn't think it is important to recommend something to read in opposition.

Like nicknames, the current interpretation of the Tenth Amendment has been around so long, we've forgotten what it used to be and why it was put in the Constitution in the first place.

Banjo would say it's like putting all your chickens in one basket. Or maybe he said eggs.

I'll ask Stinky next time I see him.

All things being equal...

An axiom is a statement that is accepted as true without proof. I imagine we have all accepted an axiom of some kind in our lives. It doesn't necessarily mean that the statement is true, it just means that we accept it as true.

There's something called Euclid's axiom which theorizes that things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. That sounds reasonable. Of course, it's also possible that people might think things are equal when they really aren't.

About 140 years ago, some states in the southern half of our country decided they didn't want to be a part of our country anymore. There were a lot of reasons for their decision. The worst reason, and probably the one that overshadows all other reasons, was their desire to preserve government sanctioned slavery. Of course, slavery in any form is abhorrent. I've never understood why the founders of a nation that was founded and based on freedom would allow one individual to lay claim to the fruits of another individuals labor or life. They say it was a necessary compromise at the time. I never accepted that as the truth. Some things should never be compromised.

One of the things the founders did get right was placing limits on the federal government, and leaving decisions on matters not specifically granted to the federal government, to individuals and the states. Sadly, some of the people who wanted to separate from the rest of the nation claimed that legalized slavery was a matter of states rights. But in reality, nobody has the right to lay claim to another persons life or labor, and by extension, no government, federal or state, has the right to sanction slavery.

For years we have seen an increasing expansion of federal power. The latest expansion involving health care has brought about a groundswell of opposition, and a renewed interest in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which helps to define the limits of the federal government.

Unfortunately, the renewed interest in the Tenth Amendment has also encouraged some people to put forth the axiom that since some people who supported states rights were racists and supported slavery, and since the Tenth Amendment protects states rights, then anyone who supports the Tenth Amendment and states rights must be a racist.

Most of the people I know who are opposed to the increasing power of the federal government realize this isn't so. Most of those people are opposed to increasing the power of the federal government because they value freedom.

And that's the truth.

For the Tenth time...

In an encouraging sign that all is not lost, Idaho has adopted a policy declaring that it's citizens cannot be forced to buy health insurance under federal mandates. It's a matter of the state exercising the Tenth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which states: "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."

There are getting to be quite a few instances around the country where states are starting to invoke their Tenth Amendment rights to protect their other amendment rights. Montana passed a law last year in an attempt to protect its citizens Second Amendment rights.

From what I have been able to gather, about 35 states have some type of 10th Amendment bill or resolution in various stages of adoption. That's the good news.

The bad news is the federal government takes a very dim view of any assertion of individual or states rights. We can fully expect them to impose sanctions on any state that resists federal mandates, probably starting with not handing back a portion of the money they took from the people in those states in the first place.

But there is also more good news. We're going to have an election this fall, and we can ask the candidates if they support the Constitution, and specifically the 10th Amendment, before we vote for them, and if they'll stick to their guns when the feds get nasty. And if they don't or won't, we can vote for someone that does and will.

And that's good news for a lot of Libertarian candidates.

First and Tenth....

Car companies have designed and manufactured a lot of different styles of cars over the years. Some I thought were really sharp. Some I thought were too ugly to drive down the street. Back in my younger days, when I paid more attention to such things, and thought it mattered more, AMC seemed to have the corner on the ugly car market. The Pacer and Gremlin come to mind.

Last week a buddy of mine was showing me a new car that he had just purchased. It was some kind of an electric and gas combination, really tiny, and certainly not very attractive, in my mind, anyway. But I guess he liked it, just like the people that bought Pacers and Gremlins liked Pacers and Gremlins.

I kind of had the same feelings about my old buddy Stinky Wilmont's girlfriend, Rowena. An awful, spiteful woman, mean-spirited and bossy, and just a touch on the plain side. Still, Stinky thought the world and all of her, and I guess that was what mattered.

The saving grace in these instances was that I didn't have to buy a Pacer or a Gremlin if I didn't want to. I didn't even have to ride in one if I didn't want to, and to the best of my memory, I never did. Neither did I have to date Rowena, or even hang out with Stinky when Rowena was around. It seemed like a pretty workable solution, to me, anyway.

I'm thinking that maybe when the Founding Fathers put our Constitution together, a few of them may have had a buddy like Stinky, who had a girlfriend like Rowena. After they decided and listed specifically what duties the federal government would have, and what specifically it would be allowed to do, they tacked on the 10th Amendment, which states " 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."

Again, sounds like a pretty workable solution to me. The government takes care of its enumerated duties, and we get to decide how to handle the rest of our business. While our founders may not have been able to foresee every issue that might arise, they seemed to realize that a central government probably wouldn't always be able to come up programs that suited everyone in the country.

Not that it hasn't tried. Currently, the federal government is working feverishly, amid occasional setbacks, to come up with a health care plan that will work for everyone in the country. We all know that it's not going to be able to come up with such a plan, and it wouldn't be a big deal, if, like AMC and its ugly cars, the American people could take it or leave it. But again, we all know that's not going to happen. That's not how the government works.

Somewhere along the line, the federal government decided that it was no longer going to honor the 10th Amendment, and then somewhere along the line most of the states and people decided that was okay, and pretty soon the federal government began to believe that it has the authority to dictate any solution to any problem it thinks we might have.

Fortunately, there is a growing movement among many people and states to reaffirm their 10th Amendment protections. Regarding the feds growing involvement in education, health care, gun rights, and the exploding debt that accompanies an ever growing government, people are looking for ways to simply say "thanks, but no thanks".

I saw a t-shirt one time that read "Life is too short to dance with ugly women". I don't know about that, but it is too short to drive ugly cars.

And it's way too short to let the government run it.