Short of seceding from the union, are there steps the states can take to counter an abusive federal government?
For example, suppose a big state, such as Texas, declared itself a “tax sanctuary” — that no Texan will be required to pay an income tax of, say, more than 15 percent to the federal government.It would cite the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments for legal justification.
The Fifth Amendment states that “Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”
This is known as the “Takings Clause.”
The Fourteenth Amendment states that the government must not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.“
This is known as the “Equal Protection of the Laws” clause.
The progressive income taxes violates both these Amendments.
If some Americans are taxed at a higher rate than others, they are being denied equal treatment under the law — a fundamental principal of common law and justice.
I should not pay a bigger fine for running a red light if I’m richer.
If the government is taking my money to give to someone else, clearly my property is being taken without just compensation . . . and not even for public use. So this is a violation of the “Takings Clause.”
So there is plenty of legal justification for Texas to simply declare (by passing a state law) that no Texan will be required to pay an income tax of more than 15 percent to the federal government.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution establishes the dual sovereignty doctrine. It 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.”
According to the Tenth Amendment, most of what the federal government is doing today is unconstitutional.
If the federal government actually followed the Tenth Amendment, it would be about one-third the size it is now.
The Constitution set up a federal government to do certain very specific things –”establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
Clearly, the federal government has no Constitutional authority to take money from one American to give to someone else.
The Sixteenth Amendment states that,
“Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
But the federal government does not have the authority to tax some people at a 30 percent rate and others at a 10 percent rate (for the purpose of wealth redistribution) because that violates both the Fifth Amendment’s “takings” clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” clause.
The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly upheld the “dual sovereignty” doctrine of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment.
Most recently, in the ObamaCare case, the court ruled that the states are under no obligation to comply with the ObamaCare law. That is, the states are under no obligation to use money from the state treasury to set up the ObamaCare “exchanges” or to expand “Medicaid.”
Thus, much of the financing mechanism for ObamaCare is gone if the states simply refuse to provide the funds and refuse to set up the exchanges.
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both argued that the states have the right simply to refuse to go along with unconstitutional federal laws and decrees. After all, it was the states who created the federal government in the first place.
At North Carolina’s ratifying convention, James Iredell told the delegates that when “Congress passes a law consistent with the Constitution, it is to be binding on the people. If Congress, under pretense of executing one power, should, in fact, usurp another, they will violate the Constitution.”
In other words, the states would have the right to ignore any law Congress might pass that violates the Constitution.
So let’s say Texas declares that no Texan will pay more than a 15 percent rate on income to the federal government and that no Texan will be subject to arrest by federal authorities for refusing to pay more than this.
What practically could the federal government do in response?
Well, the federal government could try to come into Texas to arrest the non-compliant Texan.
The state of Texas would then provide legal defense for the Texas taxpayer while the case worked its way through the courts, which could take years.
The state of Texas can just use the courts to tie up the federal government for years in litigation.
This would be taking a page from the ACLU’s playbook.
The ACLU has achieved a lot for the Left by threatening litigation and tying up the government in litigation.
Texas could take this approach with every abusive federal law, such as the Obama Administration’s plans to deny Americans their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, or all the unconstitutional regulations coming from the EPA.
In fact, the state of Texas could declare every federal regulation illegal that was not explicitly passed into law by Congress.
The federal agencies have issued hundreds of thousands of regulations that carry the force of law. You will pay fines and can go to jail for failing to comply with these regulations. But these regulations should carry no weight whatsoever because they were not actually passed into law by Congress.
Congress is the lawmaking body, not the Executive Branch.
And Congress has no Constitutional authority to transfer the lawmaking power from Congress.
So the state of Texas (or any state) could go through every federal regulation and declare it will no longer comply with these regulations.
What could the federal government do if Texas did that?
And what if this trend caught on in other solidly Red states? — such as Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Nebraska, Kentucky, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho.
That’s a pretty sizeable chunk of territory that we might call the “Free United States of America” — in contrast to the “Enslaved United States of America.”
What could the federal government really do if this happened?
We would not actually secede from the union. These states would just refuse to comply with unconstitutional laws and regulations. They would continue to comply with Constitutional laws. We would want, for example, to continue to pay for national defense because that’s authorized by the Constitution.
The states can go through the federal budget and determine what they will pay for (the Constitutional items) — and NOT pay for (the unconstitutional items).
We will be happy to pay for all Constitutional federal functions of government.
Another area for the states to put their foot down is to say “no more seizing of private and state lands by the federal government.”
The states are perfectly capable of identifying places of true scenic beauty to protect.
What’s been happening is that the federal government has abused its eminent domain power to simply seize as much American land as it can for itself.
The federal government now owns 84.5 percent of Nevada, 69.1 percent of Alaska, 57.4 percent of Utah, 53.1 percent of Oregon, 50.2 percent of Idaho, 48.1 percent of Arizona, 55.3 percent of California, etc. — in other words, most of the Western United States.
The Obama Administration has mapped out a plan to seize millions more acres of valuable Western lands, putting many ranchers out of business.
The Red States need to say not only no more lands will be seized the federal government, but should begin taking lands back from the federal government.
Who is the federal government to say what Texas or Alaska can and can’t do with their own land — including their oil?
Kick the federal government out of the state.
And it really doesn’t matter what the Supreme Court rules because most of these federal laws and regulations are unconstitutional, no matter what liberals on the Supreme Court say.
The Supreme Court is not the supreme authority of the land. The Constitution is. If the Supreme Court ruled that it’s okay to kill all red-headed children, that would not make it Constitutional to do so.
There’s no mention of the Supreme Court in the Constitution as the supreme authority in the land. That did not happen until 1958, when in Cooper v. Aaron the Court declared that its rulings have exactly the same weight as the text of the Constitution itself.
But that’s a self-evident absurdity.
The Constitution very clearly states that the courts operate under the laws established by Congress. And Congress operates under the Constitution.
It’s then clear from the ratification debates on the Constitution that the states are supposed to be the final arbiters on what is Constitutional, or not. In fact, that was the entire promise in the ratification debates, or the Constitution never would have been ratified. The states were assured over and over again, that they would be the judge of the Constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress.
If the federal law is Constitutional, the states would and should be pleased to abide by the law. We all agree that sensible laws and rules are needed for the proper functioning of a civil society.
But under the American system, most of the governing is supposed to be handled by state and local governments.
Instead, the federal government that is the big usurper and primary lawbreaker America. It’s come more to resemble organized crime than a real government.
We have a rogue President, a rogue federal bureaucracy, and a largely rogue Supreme Court — a court that actually found an unalienable right to an abortion in the text of the Constitution — where no such right exists — thus nullifying abortion laws in all 50 states.
So if the Supreme Court can nullify laws in all 50 states, the states can counter by nullifying unconstitutional federal laws. We then have a stand-off — which is what happens when the government attempts to impose its will on an unwilling people. We’re supposed to be governed in America by the “consent of the governed.”
Since we do need courts, the “Free United States” can set up its own Supreme Court — a competing court made up of Constitutionalists.
Again, what could the federal government really do about this?
The feds could theoretically take military action.
But that’s not likely to happen unless the states actually secede from the union. But the states would not be doing that. We are not talking about attacking Fort Sumter here.
The states would just be enforcing their Constitutional rights — vigorously, on every front and in every way.
It would not be a Declaration of Independence, we would be issuing a Declaration of Non-Compliance – non-compliance with unconstitutional laws and regulations.
The Supreme Court has already given the states the roadmap for how to do this with its ObamaCare ruling — declaring that the states are under no obligation to comply with ObamaCare.
Its time for the Red States to reassert their Constitutional authority in every area — to take authority back from the federal government.
And it would good to formalize the Red State complaint against the federal government with a formal Declaration of Non-Compliance — following the same pattern of argument as America’s Declaration of Independence of 1776.
America’s Declaration of Independence made its case by cataloging a long list of abusive behavior by the British government. It’s well worth reading this list, because so many of these complaints apply to our own federal government today:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world . . .
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance . . .
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation . . .
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever . . .
A strong case can be made that much of this is happening now — only more so. The federal government has vastly over-stepped its constitutional authority in many areas — “has erected a multitude of New Offices [no envisioned by the Constitution], and sent hither swarms of Officers [bureacrats] to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
Isn’t this happening today?
Let’s take ObamaCare as just one example.
ObamaCare sets up a Soviet-style health care bureaucracy that will destroy freedom in America and wreck our health care system if its allowed to take root and spread like a cancer into every area of American life. ObamaCare . . .
Requires the hiring of 16,000 brand new IRS agents to enforce the 2,700-page law.
Establishes 159 brand new government agencies to administer the program;
Includes 21 new taxes and tax increases.
Barack Obama promised in his 2008 campaign for the Presidency that he would “fundamentally transform” the American system (his words) — including our Constitutional structure of government.
The engine that’s driving this fundamental transformation of our society is”ObamaCare.”
Communists and socialists have always known that the fastest and surest way to move a country to socialism is through socializing medicine — that is, by putting a country’s health care system under government control.
Vladimir Lenin, the founder and architect of the Soviet Communist state, said “Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.”
Lenin and the Communists knew that once you control people’s access to health care and medical treatment, you control their lives. The Left here in America is well aware of this also.
When radio host Paul W. Smith asked liberal Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) why it will take the government until 2014 to fully set up the ObamaCare system, Dingell said this:
“It takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”
Source: News Talk WJR Radio with Paul W. Smith 3/23/2010
Does this sound like the America established by our nation’s Founding Fathers and described in the Constitution of the United States?
Is this really the purpose of our federal government — “to control the people“?
The Constitution says the primary purpose of government is to “secure the blessings of liberty” and to provide for the “common defense” – not to “control the people.“
Under our Constitution, people are supposed to be free to do whatever they want, so long as they are not harming someone else.
That’s called freedom.
America’s Declaration of Independence says the purpose of government is to secure our “unalienable rights” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
ObamaCare is about none of this. ObamaCare is about the opposite of what described by our nation’s founding documents.
No wonder Cuba’s Communist dictator Fidel Castro hailed the passage of ObamaCare as “a miracle.”
In other words, when Barack Obama told us in 2008 that he was out to “fundamentally transform” America, he meant it. And he’s doing it primarily through ObamaCare — but also via the EPA, Executive Orders, and his administrative control of the vast federal bureaucracy.
His bureaucrats and regulators are issuing an avalanche of regulations on their own every week that carry the force of law — complete with criminal penalties and sanctions. All this is unconstitutional.
It’s time for the Red States to Declare Independence from all this — or rather Declare their Non-Compliance with a long catalogue of federal abuses by the federal government, very similar to America’s original Declaration of Independence of 1776.
This is not a proposal to go to war or to secede. It’s a proposal simply to refuse to comply with all federal laws and regulations that are clearly unconstitutional.
What could Obama and the Left do if the Red States actually did that?
Not much.
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