545 People

545  PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them...

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget.  The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress  does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.   In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.  They have no legal authority.  They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.   I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash.  The  politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault.  They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.   No normal  human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating  deficits.  The president can only propose a budget.  He cannot force the Congress to accept  it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.   Who is the speaker of the House?  Nancy Pelosi.  She is the leader of the majority party.  She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want.  If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can  not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of  incompetence and irresponsibility.  I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.  When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in  the red.

If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ ,  it's because they want them in IRAQ .

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.  Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the  economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they  alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the  power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

The Census is Getting Personal

Supreme Court Decision in Hertz Case a Small Victory For Federalism

Supreme Court Decision in Hertz Case a Small Victory For Federalism: "

A unanimous Supreme Court this morning, in Hertz Corp. v. Friend, No. 08-1107 (U.S. Feb. 23, 2010), held that a corporation’s “principal place of business” under the federal diversity-jurisdiction statute and the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA)

refers to the place where the corporation’s high level officers direct, control, and coordinate the corporation’s activities. Lower federal courts have often metaphorically called that place the corporation’s “nerve center.” … We believe that the “nerve center” will typically be found at a corporation’s headquarters.

At first blush, while Justice Breyer’s opinion is of great practical interest to commercial litigators, it would seem to be little more than a routine dispute over the construction of a federal statute governing the jurisdiction of the federal courts. But buried within is a small victory for horizontal federalism or what I have long referred to as “federalism’s edge,” i.e., protecting the balance of federalism from being upset by a single state’s efforts to assert jurisdiction over the nation as a whole. Stay with me for just a bit of background and you’ll see why.

The Hertz case reached the Supreme Court because the Ninth Circuit had refused to apply the “nerve center” test used by other federal courts. The plaintiff brought an employment class action composed of California citizens under California law in California state court. Hertz, which is headquartered in New Jersey, took advantage of a federal statute that has existed in one form or another since 1789 that permits “diversity” cases to be removed from state court to federal court. To simplify, diversity jurisdiction, which derives from the explicit language of Article III of the Constitution, gives the federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits between citizens of one state and citizens of another state. The idea is that federal courts are a more neutral forum and less likely to be biased against out-of-staters. The statute does not, however, allow a defendant to remove a case from the courts of the state in which the defendant is a citizen, the theory being that a defendant won’t be harmed by local prejudices in its own home state.

(I’ll leave aside here the ways in which this statutory scheme was altered by the 2005 enactment of CAFA, governing nationwide class actions, as the Court’s decision didn’t turn on its jurisdictional idiosyncracies; the case also involved some procedural issues under CAFA).

A simple enough legal issue where human beings are involved, but as such things often do, the diversity rules get complicated to apply when one of the “citizens” involved is a corporation. The Constitution is silent on the issue, but Congress by statute has provided that a corporation is to be treated as a citizen of the state it’s incorporated in (often Delaware) and the state where it has its “principal place of business.”

What’s a “principal place of business”? Well, courts in New York, Chicago and elsewhere had used the “nerve center” definition defined by the respected District Judge Edward Weinfeld in the 1950s, but the Ninth Circuit instead used a different rule - they let the plaintiff treat Hertz as having its principal place of business in California because that’s where it had the most retail car rental locations and employees. You see the problem: California’s the most populous state, so almost any company with operations distributed evenly across the country could be treated as a California corporation and denied recourse to federal court, even if the company was very obviously headquartered and identified with some other state.

The Supreme Court saw it too, and didn’t buy it; the Court unanimously endorsed the “nerve center” rule, mainly because it was easier to apply in practice, but also mentioning how California’s population could skew the question.

Some knee-jerk observers of battles over federal and state court jurisdiction tend to regard anything that expands federal jurisdiction as an affront to federalism, and concededly an employment class action composed solely of California residents is in the usual case less of a threat to expansion of California law over the nation than the kinds of nationwide class actions CAFA was aimed at. But then, the Hertz rule doesn’t prevent California state law from being applied by the federal courts. What it does is simply put California back on the same footing as other states in balancing the interests of out-of-state corporations sued by its residents. That balance of power among the states in applying the law within their borders to national enterprises is, too, part of the delicate balance of federalism.

"

We Have Not Forgotten Dan…

Dan Coats: A Tale of Leadership, Courage, and Achievement from Lawyers Guns Money on Vimeo.

Byah Gone!

It’s had to restrain the tears. Now the real battle starts to ensure we get an honest person in that seat… And our new adversary appears to be the GOP, RNC, and RSCC…

 

Article from Indy Star: http://www.indystar.com/

Indiana GOP Pushing Back on Dan Coats

Indiana GOP Pushing Back on Dan Coats: "

This is an interesting article in the Politico today about the push back the Indiana GOP is giving the NRSC for anointing former Senator Dan Coats as the presumptive GOP nominee against Evan Bayh.

Folks in Indiana aren’t pleased, inside or outside the party.

One day after Coats announced his interest in the race, a Huntington, Indiana, Tea Party group circulated an e-mail with the subject line, “NO to RNC/Coats for force feeding us this crap sandwich,” while Emery McClendon, a Tea Party organizer, has distributed an e-mail to activists declaring that the push for a Coats candidacy “is the Republican Party’s way of slapping we the people in the face…”

….

For Indiana Republican Party leaders, who are aware of fierce anti-establishment backlash from grassroots conservatives in states like Florida and Kentucky over NRSC involvement in contested primaries, the early warning flares from grassroots conservatives have not gone unnoticed.

After Knochel’s e-mail to Bopp last week, state party officials on the message chain traded e-mails expressing concern over the grassroots unrest, according to copies of the emails provided to POLITICO.

“They view it as Washington insiders disregarding the ‘voice of the people,’” Pete Miller, a state committee member, wrote in one note.

For my part, I decided last night I’m going to go with State Senator Marlin Stutzman. He need new, young, conservatives in Washington — fresh faces, fresh voices, and fresh ideas based on time tested principles. Marlin Stutzman fits the bill. I’m going to send him some money today.

"

8 Feb 2010 – Meeting Minutes

MINUTES

February 8, 2010

The Constitutional Patriots met for their regular scheduled meeting on Monday, February 8, 2010 at the Life Center Auditorium. Johanna Campbell opened the meeting by welcoming everyone and gave information on upcoming meetings in February, March and April with the planned agenda for each. She asked the audience to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Lora Haiflich then offered the prayer.

Johanna then introduced the guest speaker Dave Armstrong who spoke on "The Fair Tax". He said he had been studying the tax structure for four years. He discussed how and why the tea parties started - "we want our country back and Enough is Enough". Fair tax means you pay taxes only on what you purchase. The bills HR-25 and S-296 have been in committee since 1999 but need support to move them along. You can go to www.Fairtaxindiana.net and read the 36 page bill in its entirety. The main points of the fair tax are:

1. Americans take home their whole paychecks.

2. No federal sales tax up to the poverty level means progressivity like today's tax system.

3. No tax on used goods.

4. Retail prices no longer hide corporate taxes or their compliance costs.

5. The income tax exports our jobs rather than our products. Fair tax will return jobs.

6. This tax neither raises or lowers taxes so consumer costs remain stable.

7. This tax does not make criminals out of honest taxpayers.

Mr. Armstrong then answered several questions from the audience. The meeting adjourned at 8:45pm.

A Word from our Sponsors

 

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters."

--Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

Well it is Official…

Dan Coates has announced his official candidacy. He will enter the Republican primary race to run against Evan Byah.  Now do you think that Dan Coates just arbitrarily decided to run? Not Hardly. Coates said in his radio interview that he was “answering the call”. However, something tells me the originator of that “call” was the RNC rather than his own convictions. 

For those of us who are sick of career politicians Dan Coates has “zero” appeal to us. And it tells me that the GOP has learned absolutely nothing form the past 15 months. NY 23, New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts!?! In the words of a favorite philosopher, Hey GOP, “Is there anybody in there?”

Currently the GOP Primary field is; Behney, Stutzman, Bates Jr., Hoesttler, Haney, Weaver and finally Mr. Coates. Yep, that is right Dan Coates makes seven. Of course I can understand the surprise if you have heard about the other gentlemen… even though the majority of them have been campaigning for several months. It seems that none of these men had the luxury of being able announce their candidacy to one of Indiana’s largest radio markets… that also happens to be a part time employer of a particular county’s GOP chair… just pure coincidence, I am sure.

So what exactly are we to make of this? The GOP is obviously worried that none of these primary candidates have the “political credibility” to stand against Byah, a constituent ignoring, politician who sells his vote to the highest bidder. So out of concern (for us, I am sure) they offer up “Byah-Lite” a K-street lobbyist who lives in North Carolina. Smooth move GOP…

Have they learned nothing? Are they even watching? Hey Boys! Get this; the people of Indiana are tired of career politicians! We want honest people in Government. Now I realize when you set the bar high it drastically limits the field you have to select from… perhaps that’s the real issue here.

GOP, if you want to really impress people start by offering the citizens of Indiana, a CITIZEN of Indiana as a candidate! This is exactly why you have lost people like me… It’s all about power, not about the people. Well I hate to be a drag, but our Constitution “still” says that “We the People” elect our representatives, and (get this) it says that they are accountable to us.

So go ahead GOP, consult your “strategists”, follow your “electability” metrics, spend your money (if you have any) and tilt the media to your candidate. I and thousands of others will see you on primary day. And we do not care how much money you spend trying to convince us that “Evan Byah-lite” is what we need. We will see about that… for now the issue is not decided.

 

Michael Yancey