Theemis #3
AS GOES THE BALANCE OF POWER - SO GOES THE NATION. The founding Fathers knew about despotism first hand at the hand of King George and the British Parliament. They also knew that in order to avoid that fate in this new land there would have to be a balance of power among those who strive to control others or the power hungry, who from the beginning of recorded time managed to wrest freedom away from the individual, would manipulate the American experience and turn it into another text book case of a revolution gone sour. To avoid this result they developed a cross hatch of power sharing measures to prevent any one individual or group from obtaining a position of domination from which they could not be removed.
The first concept was one of a Federalist nation with a small "r" republican form of government in which the states would share power with the federal government. All powers not specifically granted to this new federal government was, in our Bill of Rights, specifically reserved to the states and the individuals therein. The second concept was that of balancing power between three coequal branches of government. The legislative branches of Congress were created to make the law, the Courts to interpret the law and the Executive to execute the laws only as created and interpreted by the Congress and the Courts.
So what has happened to this design created within our Constitution and Bill of Rights to create a perpetually free American Community of people? The whittling away of the balance of power has certainly been going on for years. Franklin Roosevelt attempted to pack the Supreme Court of the United States by increasing the number of justices, fill the new seats with his cronies, and render the Supreme Court a puppet in the hands of the Executive Branch. Often the reductions in the balance of power have been in the name of good causes, such as the Commerce Clause being expanded beyond recognition for the purpose of putting an end to the evils of segregation and the deprivation of civil rights to segments of our society. But the problem has been that once the evils, many actual and many perceived, were dealt with legislatively on the federal level under the Commerce Clause, the precedent had been set and the ideal of a republican form of government sharing power between the federal government and state governments was fatally ruptured.
The Statists, recognizing that the Constitutional guarantees could now be treated as subjective as opposed to objective guarantees set their sights on that other troublesome balance between the supposed coequal branches of government. Socialist author, George Orwell, wrote in "Animal Farm", his short satire about a farm taken from the farmer and run by the animals as a commune, that "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others". That appears to be the core belief of those who would continue to diminish the authority of the Congress and the Courts and enhance that of the Executive.
Now lets take a look at what has happened in this great Country in the last eighteen months. What has been the impact of the Health Care bill on the balance of power? As an incidental matter, to those who don't care about individual freedoms and the meaning of the Constitution, and having nothing to do with Health Care other than making a sham attempt to demonstrate that the plan will cost less than a trillion dollars, the student loan program was taken away from individual private banks and put in the hand of the federal government. If you want a student loan you no longer see your local banker you see your locally appointed government official. But that of course, to those who put no value on keeping power out of the hands of politicians, is just incidental. States capitals have been replaced by Washington, far away from most of us, as the place where decisions regarding health care will be made. What most people fail to realize is that the thousands of pages that constitute the Health Care bill represents only a fraction of the rules and regulations YET TO BE WRITTEN AND IMPLEMENTED by agencies appointed by the Executive Branch. In other words the law is not complete as written. Hundreds upon Hundreds of questions that the most astute readers of the law have posed cannot yet be answered because the regulations have not been written and the Congress has taken itself out of the regulation phase of this bill and handed it over to the Executive. This Congress has made a fallacy of the concept of Separation of Powers by groveling at the feet of the Executive and writing itself out of the decision making process to its peril and to the peril of all Americans. So as the use and abuse of the Commerce Clause created a precedent to write and enforce laws by the folks in Washington, that were never intended to be within Washington's power but specifically left to States and local communities, the act of Congress in handing over the real meat of the Health Care bill to the Executive Branch will create a precedent speeding up the process of creating a Royal Executive.
What about the demotion of our Court system. Just look at what has taken place as a result of the BP disaster. The idea created by this administration that no crisis should be wasted was never truer. This is not only a disaster for our ecology and economy, it has also been a disaster for our system of government. A test. Which coequal branch of government is responsible for overseeing the determination of liability for both negligent and intentional wrongdoings? Which coequal branch of government is responsible for overseeing the determination of the damages to be paid by individuals and businesses who cause loss to others as the result of their negligent or intentional acts. If you guessed that it is the Courts you used to be right.
Apparently we don't need the Courts for this purpose anymore since we now have an Executive Branch that will replace the Courts in determining liability, figuring out how much should be paid by the wrongdoer, and who should get how much. And who will hand out the money? It will not be judges with lifetime appointments to prevent them from being swayed by political considerations it will be the politicians themselves who have proven that every move that they make is swayed by political considerations. Political appointees will determine who has been naughty and who has been nice and hand out the Twenty Billion Dollars in candy as they determine. Congratulations United States of America, a financial Star Chamber has been created by your elected officials.
This Country is faced with a political class that is successfully diminishing the authority of the States, local communities, the individual, Congress and the Supreme Court. Liberals who have traditionally been concerned that States Rights is a code word for violation of civil rights will not have to worry any longer because there will be no states rights left. Conservatives who have traditionally been concerned about activist judges will not have to worry any longer because the judges will have nothing left to act upon.