Point 1. The only way to reduce the cost of medical care is to increase the supply, reduce the demand, or a combination of both. The single-payer plan that the government is sprinting toward will have exactly the opposite effect on both sides. It will reduce supply and increase demand. Therefore, the real economic price for everything medical will be higher than it is today, but since pricing will be capped, shortages will result, and government-imposed rationing will be required.

- Supply: How many more people are going to want to spend years of hard work and study, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to become doctors, when they know the government will limit their earning potential but not limit their potential liability? If they become doctors and ever make one mistake over the course of an entire career, They could be ruined and all that work and cost will have been wasted. Answer: There will be fewer doctors and nurses. Also, when limits are imposed on what hospitals, clinics, doctors and nurses and drug companies can charge, shortages will result, as they always do when artificial price ceilings are imposed.

- Demand: Who goes to see a doctor more frequently: Someone who knows they’ll have to write a check each time, or someone who can see the doctor for free? Of course, the person who must pay for doctor visits will critically evaluate the need against the cost. Once in Canada I literally saw someone take her 8-year-old daughter to an emergency room in Vancouver in the middle of the night because the girl had a minor case of the sniffles. No exaggeration. She knew it wasn’t a serious health problem; she simply wanted to get some antihistamine, and the drug stores were closed. She knew she wouldn’t have to pay for the hospital visit, because her health coverage was all government-provided. I’ll repeat that. She went to the ER to treat a runny nose, and thought it was the most natural thing in the world. She wondered why I was flabbergasted. Hopefully there weren’t any people there at the time needing limbs re-attached or bones reset.

Point 2: The newest technology is always expensive. If you want latest model of iPod/Kindel/HDTV, etc., you’ll pay dearly for it, but if you’re economizing, you’ll settle for an older model. New technology is a luxury. But this is not the case with health care. A newly-developed medical procedure is a necessity the instant it is invented, if it’s a procedure you need. Therefore, the best, most advanced medical system in the world (still the USA for now) is always going to be the most expensive. Get used to it. So in any system that results in health care costs being capped, the development of new technologies will be less common. Why would any company spend millions on R&D if they cannot sell the technology for more than it cost to invent?

Point 3: People often say that because medical care is necessary to save lives, and because of the Hippocratic Oath, doctors should be altruistic and treat people without expecting to receive high salaries in return for their skills. Why doesn’t that apply to everyone? For example, I would argue that truck drivers also provide life-saving services to the society. In fact, I’ll assert that if beginning tomorrow there were no truck drivers to deliver basic goods and food, citizens would begin dying sooner and in greater numbers than if there were suddenly no doctors. But no one expects truckers to donate their time and work. Rather, in an ideal world, people should be paid according to a combination of how much value their work brings to society as a whole, and how rare and difficult to obtain their skills are. Therefore, doctors and other health care professionals rightly earn very high salaries. In my opinion, far more than much-more-highly-paid movie actors earn theirs. Of course the market determines the proper compensation for any job, and I’m not advocating the government regulate incomes. But if it were to do so, why should health care providers, who provide the most immediately vital services, be the ones to recieve less?

Discuss in the forums at http://www.statesovereignty.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=160

“Based on a thoroughly rejected reading of the 10th 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” — the resolutions claim the federal government, in usurping powers and issuing mandates to the states, is in violation of the U.S. Constitution. They call for Congress and the president to cease and desist in those (mostly unspecified) violations. …”

The article is based upon a belief that a formal education in educational law is required in order to understand the single simple sentence that comprises the Tenth Amendment, It is a belief that summarly marginalizes any lay person who can read the Bill of Rights as well as any other person.  But it does not take a law degree to understand that the tenth Amendment limits internal domestic governmance by the Federal Government, and the claim tha is does is an attempt to attenuate a vitally importane element of the Bill of Rights.  The right to self government is absolute, even if generations of educated lawyers claim otherwise.

“The claims of these resolutions are indefensible on constitutional grounds. “They rest on completely untenable interpretations of the Constitution’s text, structure and history, and they proceed as though the Civil War had been won by the Confederacy,’ e-mails Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School. “These resolutions — not to put too fine a point on it — are off the wall.’”

This argument makes the claim that a purely military victory in 1964 was the definitive event in rendering the Tenth Amendment irrelevant.  It does not acknowledge the possibility that the prevailing side in that was may havee been on the correct side of the slavery issue but the wrong side of the right of states to self-government.  There is a reason that state sovereignty has continued to arise as an issue from time to time over the past 140 years - because it has been wrongly interpreted during that time by the courts.  The ultimate authority on the Constitution is not, as the Scene article asserts, the Supreme Court.  A reading of the Nineth Amendment settles that - The Federal Government, including its Judiciary, derive their power from the Constitution, but the Constitution itself derives its power from The People, who retain it.  The Federal Courts may  have mis-served the people on the issue of sovereignty, but The People by law have, and will have, the last word.

See the full Cleveland Scene Article here.

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Is Secession Crazy?

by Jack Hunter

excerpt: 

If the Founding Fathers had lost the American Revolution to Great Britain, would the colonial’s quest to secede from England have been decided forever, all because of a military loss? The idea that the U.S. could still be an outpost of the British Empire is one that many today would find as laughable as some find secession.

Click here for the full article.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Tulsa, OK, April 25, 2009 - In response to Governor Henry’s veto of HJR 1003, legislation that reaffirmed the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution, Senator Brogdon called on the Governor to refrain from any further erosion of the people’s Constitutional rights.

“At the end of the workweek, when everyone else had left the Capitol, Brad Henry used his veto power to reject the Constitution he swore to uphold,” said Brogdon. “With the stroke of the pen, the Governor decided to let President Obama and Congress continue to erode our Constitutional rights.”

“This is not an isolated case,” said Brogdon. He then referred to Governor Henry’s veto on legislation that would have banned embryonic stem cell research. “In less than one week’s time, Brad Henry has vetoed life and liberty.”

“This is not about left vs. right or liberal vs. conservative,” continued Brogdon. “This is about right and wrong. And according to the vast majority of Oklahomans, these Brad Henry vetoes are just plain wrong.”

Brogdon added, “Governor Henry must stop implementing Obama’s policies and start listening to the people who he is sworn to represent.”

Randy Brogdon is the State Senator for District 34 which covers Northeastern Tulsa County and portions of Rogers County. He and his wife of 37 years, Donna, currently reside in Owasso, OK. For more information about Randy Brogdon, please visit www.RandyBrogdon.com.

By Rex Stanfield

On Wednesday, April 15^th, 2009 I used a personal holiday from my night job to attend the tea party protest in Atlanta, Georgia.  For this, I drove 2 hours each way from my home in northern Alabama.  In the following days many reports differ about how many attended in Atlanta and similar gatherings nationwide, and even how many there were.  They ranged from 1,000 attendees in Atlanta to 30,000.  Some news media claimed the events were attended by angry whites eager to restart the Civil War, dissolve the government, and revert American society to anarchy and chaos.  You may be watching all this and wondering, “It this something I can agree with?”;  you may be thinking of  getting out to the next tea party in your city but you’re not sure what you’d be getting yourself into; You may have never thought of attending a political rally in your life because you’re seen the chaos and rioting that has often characterized such events since the radical 60’s.   I decided to help cut through the static by giving a candid, first-hand account from the largest of the gatherings this past week.  Here are questions you may have.  If you have others, please contact me at this site or by email at rex.stanfield@statesovereignty.org, and I will answer if I can. 

Arriving more than 2 & 1/2 hours before the tea party

How many were there?

With both the tea party and a Braves game happening downtown on the same night, so I decided to leave my car at a MARTA station outside the city and take the train in.  As I walked the one block from the Georgia State station, I saw several people parking their cars nearby and making the way across the street to the Georgia Capital Building.  For an event that officially began at 7 PM, we were early arrivals at around 4:20.  On arrival at the capitol steps, I estimate 200-200 people already gathered.  The streets were open for traffic, so the folk were gathering across the street on the sidewalk in front of the Central Presbyterian Church between Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Mitchell Street.  By 5 pm Washington Street was closed and the crowd took over from traffic.  As the evening commute progressed I was unable to see the end of the sea of people, but the circling television helicopters gave some indication of the crowd with the size of the large circles they made above us.  The choppers disappeared behind nearby buildings while photographing the crowd, and that indicated to me that more than one city block was becoming engaged in the gathering.  Certainly the intersections of Washington at both MLK and Mitchell were closed, and I saw the tops of signs and flagpoles in the street toward Trinity Ave and the rail viaduct beyond MLK.  I later heard reports that the crowd surrounded the church grounds on all sides, down the block and along Central Ave behind the church where no on could have come close to seeing the stage.  When speeches called for the crowd to shout in unison, for example “Are we getting the kind of government we want?” the resounding “NO!” from the assembled crowd resonated along the concrete caverns for a second afterward.  Word came from the that during the event that , unofficially, around 15,000 people were estimated to be in attendance and that ours was vying with Sacramento for the largest tea party in the country.  But,  that some in the news media had been reporting a turnout of less than 1,000.  By the following day when more official estimates emerged, the number had grown to 20,000.  Major League Baseball report that 19,204 attended the Braves game a few blocks away just across the cloverleaf.  So apparently, the tea party was a larger event than the game.

Who was there? 

I talked to several people and without exception everyone I asked said that this was the first time they have ever attended a protest or done anything remotely political.  If any political activists were there, they were not conspicuous.  Indeed, most seemed somewhat apprehensive about engaging in activism.  Those I spoke with indicated that, like myself, they have been politically aware their entire lives, but never politically active. Their involvement with politics has been limited to quietly paying attention and voting.  But now they see that this is the time for action since the activism of others has led to a degradation of the country they love. 

 

Again, some of the informational static in the media have attempted to portray the gatherings as purely an Archie Bunker Rebellion of old angry white men.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  More conspicuous than any other demographic, I saw families, moms and dads with children from toddlers to teenagers.  I would guess at more women than men, but it would be only a guess.  Most attendees appeared to be white, but not all, by far.  Caucasians are, after all, a majority of the population.  People of African-American, Latino, and Asian descent were also in evidence, but in what numbers is it impossible to know, since visually determining any person’s ethnicity can be far from accurate.

 Even idealology differed among the participants, with the sole unifying characteristic being that the present government is moving the country in the wrong direction.  Some supported the fair tax, some called for a flat tax, some like myself talked up state sovereignty, some were protesting bailouts rewarding failure, some were angry at prominent Congressional Democrats, some at President Obama, and some decried tax evasion by public officials.   Some even called for secession; I saw one confederate flag – this is the Deep South, after all, and others around me looked on it with disgust.   A person does not have to be in ideological lock-step with the crowd in order to participate in the tea party.  So, when you hear on the news that the protests were all about this or that, know that the media outlet saying it is attempting to portray it as what they want you to think it was rather than simply report it.  If you attend a tea party protest, it is about what you as a participant say it is about, not what the media tells others it was about.  Listen to the participants themselves, not the media.

Who organized the gathering?

 Speaker Pelosi declared the following day that the tea parties were funded and organized by big-money right-wing organizations and corporations, and it was repeated by most media outlets.  CNN told us that it was organized by Fox News, talk radio, and the Republican Party.  Nothing could be farther from the real truth.  In fact, both Fox and the RNC appeared to be taken by surprise.  Fox News is set apart from the other media outlets only in that it covered the rallies in a transparent way without placing its own coloring scrim over the events.

 

The greatest testament to the true grass-roots characteristic of the protest is the  simple fact is that almost everyone was holding was holding a hand-made poster.  The fairtax.org organization handed manufactured Fair Tax signs among the crowd to some who hadn’t brought their own signs. Apart from that, all the signs appear to have been made at home using construction paper and felt markers. 

Families attending the tea party

It is expected to go to the Senate Judiciary Committee.  “There, it will encounter opposition from Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, the commission’s ranking Democrat.” ”aley said he thinks the resolution would be dangerous because it could send a signal to Washington that the state isn’t interested in stimulus funding despite the recession and an estimated $800 million state budget gap. “We don’t want that kind of thing being fired off to Washington right now,” Haley said. “I have no idea what benefit that resolution could possibly confer on Kansas.”

Senator Haley’s argument fails to take into account that the money belongs to the people to begin with, and the people are entitled to it, notwithstanding any strings the Federal Government may attempt to attach.  this is the entire point of the 9th and 10th Amendments.  Politicians who show a willingness to andicate the right of the people to self-goverenment in exchange for money must be opposed.  I encourage Kansans to contact your state senators and urge them to support this sovereignty resolution.

See the full article

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The Necessity for Action
by State Rep. Samuel E Rohrer, PA-128th District

The danger of being number 10 is that no one really knows who you are. George Washington was our first president; but how many can name number 10 off the top of their head? And Sir Edmund Hillary was the first person to climb Everest, but does anyone know who the tenth person was to reach the summit?

And then consider our amendments to the United States Constitution: most of us know the 1st Amendment verbatim, but do you know what the Tenth Amendment says?

“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.”

Sometimes thought of as an afterthought, to “sweep up” anything the Founders may have forgotten, the 10th Amendment today is taking on monumental importance as increasing federal intrusion into state affairs threatens to completely destroy the balance between state and federal power.

In the Federalist Papers, authors Jay, Madison, and Hamilton labored to convince a monarch-shy colonial population that they needed a strong government to preserve a free, cohesive nation. The authors took pains to outline how the Constitutional structure of the government would prohibit the federal government from becoming big enough to overwhelm the powers of both the states and the democratic process.

The 10th Amendment was foundational to this system of checks and balances, constitutionally restricting the federal government to covering issues related to commerce, national defense, the postal system, and the like.

“Power begets power,” though, as the saying goes, and the federal government slowly began expanding its powers. One of the most effective and insidious ways that the federal government has taken over control of state affairs is by first passing a mandate and then offering federal money to states with significant strings attached.

Whether the issue is welfare, Real ID, No Child Left Behind, or health insurance programs, tantalizing packages have been dangled in front of state governors and legislators, promising to stop the budget gap or expand a politically successful program. States have taken the money and over time, the requirements and restrictions on those state funds have slowly but surely changed the direction of state policy.

Instead of developing programs to fit the needs of state citizens and altering them to best use the state resources, programs are instead clumsily built around the federal funding requirements, so the state does not lose a single available dollar. This significant paradigm shift should be a wake-up call to every citizen not only in Pennsylvania, but also across the nation.

Therefore, because the Supreme Court allowed the federal government to offer funds on conditions, states have subjected themselves to Washington. This submission completely distorts the checks and balances inherent in our Constitution, and enshrined in the 10th Amendment.

In order to raise awareness of this improper delegation of power, I have joined with representatives, senators, Democrats, and Republicans from over 30 states and introduced a resolution into the Pennsylvania General Assembly that reaffirms Pennsylvania’s constitutional powers under the 10th Amendment.

This 10th Amendment Resolution (House Resolution 95) is little more than a restatement of the last amendment to the Bill of Rights, reminding state legislatures that the federal government must no longer be allowed to commandeer our rightful authority.

As difficult as it is to believe someone could oppose a resolution as plain as reaffirming a basic tenet of our Constitution, sadly, opposition is too often the case in our state legislatures. This issue, however, is gaining traction among American citizens who are unwilling to sit back while Washington blatantly ignores their voices.

Supporting the 10th Amendment Resolution is a grassroots effort if ever there was one. I encourage you to spread the word and contact your family, friends and relatives, in and out of Pennsylvania, and encourage them to speak up. This issue will not go away—and it gives a voice to those who have grown frustrated and disillusioned with our federal government.

The 10th Amendment Resolution simply yet powerfully affirms our belief in the constitutional structure of our government. Join me today in that affirmation.

Rep. Rohrer will be holding the “10th Amendment Rally for the State of Independence” on Monday, March 16 at noon in the Rotunda of the State Capitol. Please make plans to join him there. Visit http://www.samrohrer.com for more information.

Samuel E. Rohrer is a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (R-Berks). To contact him, visit his website at http://www.samrohrer.com.

State Sovereignty Movement Hits Partisan Roadblock

 

Efforts in more than half of the state legislatures to assert state sovereignty under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution and prevent unwanted impositions by the federal government are now running into serious partisan opposition. Most of these bills have been introduced and are supported by Republican legislators and Democrats are doing everything they can to block them and make sure that their states comply with federal mandates issued by a national Congress dominated by their party. They seem more concerned with profiting from their control of the federal government than in protecting the rights of their citizens and being fiscally responsible.
In the last week three states with Democrat dominated legislatures have rejected state sovereignty resolutions. The Arkansas state sovereignty resolution was defeated in committee along straight partisan lines with a 10-8 vote. In Washington the Democratic chairman of the committee on Government and Tribal Affairs killed the bill by refusing to put it on the agenda. In New Hamphire, Representative Daniel Itse’s radically worded sovereignty resolution was one of the first entered and one of the most widely supported. Yet last week, with hundreds protesting in the snow and freezing temperatures outside the New Hampshire state house, it was defeated in a 216-150 vote along party lines. The enthusiasm of the citizens of New Hampshire (shown in the video at right) for their Constitutional rights was not enough to wake up Democratic legislators and convince them to vote against unfunded mandates and federal attacks on citizen rights.
In addition to these three states where sovereignty has been blocked, two states (Ohio, Florida) are long shots for passage of sovereignty because they are trying to do it through petitioning their state legislatures. That still leaves 23 states with resolutions in some stage of development or consideration. Of those states, 12 have at least one house of their state legislatures dominated by Democrats, including Oklahoma which has been one of the leaders in the movement. The current trend suggests that none of these states will be able to pass a sovereignty resolution until the composition of their legislatures changes, though there might be a slim hope for Oklahoma and Louisiana where some of the Democrats are more conservative.
That means we’re down to 11 states with a reasonable chance of affirming state sovereignty this legislative session. They include Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming. Of these, South Carolina, and Texas are the farthest along towards passage and Virginia is probably on the fence, based on the past history of Republicans in their legislature.
It has become clear that there is a coordinated Democrat campaign to oppose the sovereignty movement on a nationwide basis in the state legislatures. Although sovereignty remains on the agenda in more than 20 states, with partisan opposition passage in more than a dozen states is very unlikely. If that many states do pass sovereignty measures it will be mostly symbolic, because with barely a quarter of the states on board, it isn’t a big enough accomplishment to send a message which the federal government cannot ignore.
With the economic crisis worsening, federal spending out of control, and the Obama administration targeting gun rights and raising taxes, popular opposition to overreaching government is growing stronger and stronger. Sadly, the power of the ascendant Democrats both at the national level and in so many state legislatures is too great to challenge effectively through legislating state sovereignty or with a few governors taking a stand against excessive spending. It is becoming increasingly clear that if we are to restore government which serves the best interests of citizens and protects their rights, the people will have to demand change from the grassroots on a nationwide basis with a movement so strong that it cannot be ignored or suppressed by the dominant political establishment in the states or in DC.
It is time to put an end to the politics of partisan greed and the ongoing erosion of our rights by whatever means are necessary. If that cannot be accomplished on the grounds of state sovereignty and by state governments it must be done by individuals in the streets of the nation, in the corridors of power, and at the gates of the enemy. As the economic crisis intensifies and the enemies of liberty use it as a pretext to expand their power, we can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and hope for the best any longer.

 

Dave Nalle has worked as a magazine editor, a freelance writer, a capitol hill staffer, a game designer and taught college history for many years. He now designs fonts for a living and lives with his family in a small town just outside Austin where he is ex-president of the local Lions Club. He is on the board of the Republican Liberty Caucus and Politics Editor of Blogcritics Magazine. You can find his writings about fonts, art and graphic design at The Scriptorium. He also runs a conspiracy debunking site at IdiotWars.com.

• Legally binds state agriculture departments to enforcing federal guidelines effectively taking away the states power to do anything other than being food police for the federal dept.
• Effectively criminalizes organic farming but doesn’t actually use the word organic.
• Effects anyone growing food even if they are not selling it but consuming it.
• Effects anyone producing meat of any kind including wild game. 
• Legislation is so broad based that every aspect of growing or producing food can be made illegal.  There are no specifics which is bizarre considering how long the legislation is.  
• Section 103 is almost entirely about the administrative aspect of the legislation.  It will allow the appointing of officials from the factory farming corporations and lobbyists and classify them as experts and allow them to determine and interpret the legislation.  Who do you think they are going to side with?  
• Section 206 defines what will be considered a food production facility and what will be enforced up all food production facilities.  The wording is so broad based that a backyard gardener could be fined and more.
• Section 207 requires that the state’s agriculture dept act as the food police and enforce the federal requirements.  This takes away the states power and is in violation of the 10th amendment.

Yes, you read right.  This would make organic farming illegal, and it would outlaw backyard gardening.  In addition, this would be yet another violation by the Federal Government of the 9th and10th Amendment guarrantees of self-government and state sovereignty.

Link to the story at the Campaign for Liberty site

The link to the bill in the article has expired, but you can read a copy of the bill by duplicating the search. Go to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and enter “HR 875” in the search box, and click the “Bill number” radio button, then perform the search.

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Written by Larry Greenley     Wednesday, 04 March 2009 23:59 
Link to original story

 The past couple days have brought a real mixed bag of results for the Tenth Amendment Movement, also known as the State Sovereignty Movement.

First, the good news. Earlier today (March 4) the Oklahoma Senate passed a Tenth Amendment resolution (SJR10) by a vote of 25 to 17. Since the Oklahoma House had already passed its Tenth Amendment resolution (HJR1003) on February 18, Oklahoma has the distinction of being the first state where both houses have passed a Tenth Amendment resolution affirming its sovereignty over those powers not granted to the federal government by the Constitution. South Dakota became the second state where at least one legislative body has passed a Tenth Amendment bill when its House passed HCR1013 by 51 to 18 on March 3. The other piece of good news came from Idaho where the House State Affairs Committee voted to introduce a Tenth Amendment resolution by a vote of 13 to 4 on March 4.

Now for the bad news. Today New Hampshire’s Tenth Amendment bill, HCR6, based on Thomas Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolves of 1798, was voted down by 150-216 on March 4. Unfortunately, opponents of HCR6 were able to portray it as a secessionist measure and thereby discredit it. Fortunately, however, New Hampshire’s HCR6 was unique in being particularly susceptible to a secessionist interpretation. The rest of the state Tenth Amendment resolutions are almost identical and very clearly only affirm the proper balance between the states and the federal government within the union as prescribed by the Constitution. The other bad news came from Arkansas where a House committee voted down a Tenth Amendment resolution by a vote of 8-10 on March 4. The committee vote was strictly along party lines with the Republicans all favoring the resolution and the Democrats all opposing it.

Click here for a state-by-state status review of Tenth Amendment resolutions. There are now at least 18 states that have introduced Tenth Amendment resolutions, including Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. Pennsylvania and several other states are also considering such resolutions.

Click here to conveniently email your state legislators in support of Tenth Amendment resolutions similar to those already being considered in over 20 other states. You’ll be supplied with a blank message to your state legislators. Just use the state-by-state status review mentioned above to learn whether your state has already introduced a Tenth Amendment resolution or whether you need to urge your state reps to go ahead and introduce such a resolution. Armed with this knowledge, you can compose an appropriate email to send.

The overriding good news about the Tenth Amendment Movement is that so many citizens and state legislators in so many states are taking some first steps toward restoring the proper balance of power between the states and the federal government as prescribed by the Constitution. Although these Tenth Amendment resolutions are not legally binding, they are steppingstones toward further legislation that would be legally binding. If we are to restore our constitutional Republic, the starting point must be renewed respect for and adherence to the Constitution. Viewed in that light the Tenth Amendment Movement is very good news indeed.

Discuss in the forums at: http://www.statesovereignty.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12&p=33#p33