Federal Funding: The Root Of The Evil
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite… The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people” ~James Madison, Federalist Paper #45
Giving Your Own Food Back To You
Ammon Bundy mentioned in his recent video that the federal bureaucracies, like the BLM, among many others, get their funding from the federal government who get it from the people living in the 50 states and then turn around and use the money to force the states to do what the feds want.
It would be like a farmer sending his farm produced food to the city and the city officials give back part of the food to the farmer who made it, but with conditions. If the farmer didn’t comply with the city officials’ conditions, then he didn’t get his food back.
I am a personal witness to this nonsensical, upside down, Alice in Wonderland logic.
Holding An Economic Gun To Our Head
The federal government had told the states, including my state, Utah, that they needed to enact various social welfare policies and regulations, imposed on them by the feds or they would lose federal funding for those social programs.
I was totally opposed to the program and attended the state legislative committee who was debating the issue. The law requires that they permit citizen input on issues before the committee. So, before the committee took a vote, they are required to ask if anybody in the room had anything to say. Normally, nobody did.
But, I raised my hand, to their surprise. They gave me the floor to speak.
I told them that the feds were threatening to cut spending to these programs if they didn’t pass the legislation making it a state mandate. They would lose many millions of dollars in federal funding. I told them that the proposed legislation was flawed on many grounds, including constitutional grounds and that the feds had no right to force states to pass this legislation with an economic gun to their head.
I said that the money that the feds were hanging over our heads, originally came from the states and was our money.
One of the committee members asked the chairperson if what I said was correct, that money from the feds was in jeopardy, and the chair said I was correct.
“We can’t afford to lose that federal funding so we have no choice but to pass the legislation. I move that we proceed with the vote and that the vote be in the affirmative.” said the legislator who had asked the question.
The program was passed out of committee to protect the federal funding given to Utah. None of the constitutional issues or other issues I raised were discussed or debated. The only thing that mattered was the money. The federal money that gave jobs and benefits to the state, had to be protected at all costs.
The legislation was eventually passed by the full house and senate, at the committee’s recommendation, preserving the millions of federal dollars being given back to the state of Utah. The constitutional and other issues were not discussed. The governor signed it into law and the feds kept their end of the deal, continuing to send millions to Utah to support the new law.
A Parent To Child Relationship
Federal agencies like the BLM, the Dept of Education, the Dept of Health and Welfare, and many more, use their vast federal resources as leverage, leverage to get what they want with the states.
It reminds me of a parent child relationship, where the parent are the many federal bureaucracies who, because of their superior federal status and money, are able to coerce their children, the states, into what they want them to do.
This parental superiority is reflected in many things at the federal level, including the wrong idea that somehow the “supremacy clause” of the constitution gives them special and protected status, a status that exceeds that of their children, i.e., the states and their people.
We saw this federal superiority attitude manifested in the Bundy et al trials in which the federal prosecutors claimed that impeding a federal official in his duties or in any way threatening a federal employee was far more serious than impeding a comparable state or local official in carrying out their duties.
Everything Comes From The Land
Federal funding, power and control come from, to a large extent, the federal policy of retaining control of the vast resources found in the western states. The BLM, a federal agency set up to manage the 700 million plus acres of federal land, is not about to watch their power and control diminish.
This subject is directly related to the comments of Ammon Bundy in referring to the heavy-handed behavior of federal agents towards his family, as confirmed by leaked videos and the Wooten whistleblower report, that revealed an attitude of demeaning and even causing physical harm to ranching families who dare stand in their way.
The federal government, who was supposed to be restrained by the 10th amendment and states’ rights, has gone in the opposite direction, bolstered by federal taxes and hanging on to the majority of the land that makes up the western states and then using their power, to get their way with the states and the ranching families who live on or use the land that once belonged to the people and who get beneficial use from it.
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” ~Thomas Jefferson
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Debate in Virginia Ratifying Convention
1788 Elliot 3:89, 430–36, 439–42
[6 June]
George Mason:
Among the enumerated powers, Congress are to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, and to pay the debts, and to provide for the general welfare and common defence; and by that clause (so often called the sweeping clause) they are to make all laws necessary to execute those laws. Now, suppose oppressions {442} should arise under this government, and any writer should dare to stand forth, and expose to the community at large the abuses of those powers; could not Congress, under the idea of providing for the general welfare, and under their own construction, say that this was destroying the general peace, encouraging sedition, and poisoning the minds of the people? And could they not, in order to provide against this, lay a dangerous restriction On the press? Might they not even bring the trial of this restriction within the ten miles square, when there is no prohibition against it? Might they not thus destroy the trial by jury?
June 14, 1788
Patrick Henry:
Mr. Chairman, it is now confessed that this is a national government. There is not a single federal feature in it. It has been alleged, within these walls, during the debates, to be national and federal, as it suited the arguments of gentlemen.
But now, when we have heard the definition of it, it is purely national.
Saturday, Jun 8, 1776 Congress debating a declaration of independence.
That the question was not whether, by a declaration of independence, we should make ourselves what we are not; but whether we should declare a fact which already exists:
That, as to the people or Parliament of England, we had always been independent of them, their restraints on our trade deriving efficacy from our acquiescence only, and not from any rights they possessed of imposing them; and that, so far, our connection had been federal only, and was now dissolved by the commencement of hostilities:
That, as to the king, we had been bound to him by allegiance, but that this bond was now dissolved by his assent to the late act of Parliament, by which he declares us out of his protection, and by his levying war on us a fact which had long ago proved us out of his protection, it being a certain position in law, that allegiance and protection are reciprocal, the one ceasing when the other is withdrawn:
Thank you Loren…Hopefully we can talk soon in person.