Showing posts with label United State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United State. Show all posts

Friday, October 3, 2014

Tens of Millions Now Employed In US At Sweatshops

Photograph taken in a 'sweatshop' c.1890
Photograph taken in a 'sweatshop' c.1890 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sweatshop Defined:  A place where people work long hours for low pay in poor conditions.

B:) A shop or factory in which employees work for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions.


From Wiki

More recently, the anti-globalization movement has arisen in opposition to corporate globalization, a process by which multinational corporations move their operations overseas in order to lower their costs and increase profits. The anti-sweatshop movement has much in common with the anti-globalization movement. Both consider sweatshops harmful, and both have accused many companies (such as the Walt Disney CompanyThe Gap, and Nike) of using sweatshops. Some in these movements charge that neo liberal globalization is similar to the sweating system, arguing that there tends to be a "race to the bottom", as multinationals leap from one low-wage country to another searching for lower production costs, in the same way that sweaters would have steered production to the lowest cost sub-contractor.


Today we see a new format emerging throughout the entire United States. With ObamaCare however, the hours are not long on a single job as corporations downsize how long they will allow workers to actually work during any given week.  The conditions in the work environment may be clean, but the wages are ridiculously low and not in the least bit a living wage.  More and more workers are depending on two, three and even four jobs just to try and scrape by anything that resembles a living and are still barely clinging on.

  McDonald's, Wal Mart, K-Mart, Sears, Burger King, Lowe's, Home Depot, and plenty of other places can now be considered modern day sweatshops as not one of them pay the majority of their workers anywhere close to a living wage.  Most of the workers in these locations are part time, little to no benefits, making barely above minimum wage which comes no where close to a living wage.

A living wage allows for a person to pay their rent or mortgage, car payment, insurance, medical expenses, clothing costs, food, utilities,  furniture expenses, and also allows for entertainment expenses and money left over to put into savings for a rainy day.  For a single person in the US today, the average income, outside of major metropolitan areas is around $45,000 per year and rising in order to be making a living wage.  Again, that is for one person.

Recent complaints in raising the minimum wage to anywhere between $10.00 or $12.00 per hour falls horribly short of coming close to making a living wage.  What difference does it make if you pay a person $25.00 per hour if all you are going to work them is 20 hours a week?  That is only $500.00 per week before taxes.  Rent in most areas throughout the US anymore is going to eat up half of the monthly wages leaving very little left for anyone to try and survive with.

The days of the 40 hour work week are for most, a buried memory, left in the dust of yesteryear.  Businesses are paying less and less of the benefits for employees and paying low wages to boot.  It's a mix that simply does not work.  That makes Wal Mart, Target, Subway, Chick-Fil-A and others the new modern sweatshops and tens of millions of people are stuck in the rut of these new deals.  
It's time for some new thinking about.....well.....every aspect of modern society.

English: Walmart Home Office, the headquarters...
English: Walmart Home Office, the headquarters of Wal-Mart - Bentonville, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Here’s What Inversions Are Costing Us

Seal of the United States Department of the Tr...
Seal of the United States Department of the Treasury (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You don’t get to pick your tax rate. Neither 

should corporations.

That’s why, earlier this week, the Treasury Department took initial steps to prevent U.S. corporations from using a tax maneuver to avoid paying taxes in America. This loophole -- known as an “inversion” -- lets a company avoid taxes by relocating their tax residence overseas while changing very little else about its operations or business.
And it’s costing Americans nearly $20 billion over the next decade -- critical dollars that could grow and expand the middle class.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Undermining The Constitution A HISTORY OF LAWLESS GOVERNMENT (Part 12)

The United States Supreme Court.
The United States Supreme Court. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Thomas James Norton

BY THE SOCIAL SECURITY ACT OF AUGUST, 1933, FOLLOWING THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT OF JUNE, THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE IN CONGRESS STRIPPED THEIR STATES ALMOST ENTIRELY OF POLICE AUTHORITY
It is difficult to tell which of the half score of Socialistic acts of Congress of the Roosevelt Revolution was the most far-reaching in its threat to the Republic. But the competition for evil lies between the Fascist Tennessee Valley Authority of May 18, 1933, and the Social Security Act of August 14, 1935.
When President Roosevelt signed A Bill to Alleviate the Hazards of Old Age, Unemployment, Illness, and Dependency, to Establish a Social Insurance Board in the Department of Labor, to Raise Revenue, and for Other Purposes, he made this comment:
"If the Senate and House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time."
Most complete abandonment of constitutional principle
It will certainly stand apart forever as a complete departure from the Constitution as expounded by its writers,
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notably Madison, afterward President, and James Wilson, later a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; by President Monroe in a celebrated veto message of a bill for "public improvements," the beginning of the most wasteful of all squanderings by Congress of the money of the taxpayers; by President Jackson, who vetoed every appropriation bill not clearly for national, as distinguished from personal, welfare; by Presidents Tyler, Polk, Pierce, Grant, Arthur, and Cleveland.
The "hazards of old age, unemployment, illness and dependency" are subjects (if of any government) for the police power of the States, which has been defined as having to do with "the health, morals, safety, education, and general well-being of the people."
"The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect," wrote Madison in No. 10 of The Federalist; "the great and aggregate interests being referred to the National, the local and particular to the State legislatures."
No police power was granted by the people through the Constitution to Congress.
And "Congress is not empowered," wrote Chief Justice Marshall in 1824 (9 Wheaton 1), "to tax for those purposes which are in the exclusive province of the States."[1]
States cannot abdicate their police power
It was held by the Supreme Court (219 U. S. 270,282) as late as January, 1911, that the police power inhering in the States cannot be surrendered by them.
1. While the Social Security Act gathers money from the employer and the employee, it provides that money so collected shall go into the funds of the United States and that bonds shall be issued against it. Of course, it is the taxpayers who must eventually redeem such bonds.


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There is no stronger principle of American constitutional law than that forbidding the delegation of power. For a decade and a half the Newspaper has told us of powers granted by Congress to the President. It has no powers that it can grant or give away. The reports by the Newspaper were constitutionally nonsensical. Yet they affected the public mind, untaught in the Constitution, to accept as valid the abdication -- not the delegation or grant -- of powers by what came to be known as "a rubber-stamp Congress."
Abdication of constitutional duties by Congress
Congress permitted the President and his nonelected advisers to write bills, as George III sent bills to Parliament against the American Colonies, and Congress passed them. But that was abdication of power by Congress, not delegation or grant.
So, too, the States cannot part with their powers or any portion of them. Their power of police, especially, over the welfare of the people they cannot surrender, as the decision of the Supreme Court just before cited shows. Therefore, the rush of the States, like children in the street to whom a handful of coins has been thrown, to enact compliant legislation in order to get "gifts" of their own money from Washington under A Bill to Alleviate the Hazards of Old Age, Unemployment, Illness, and Dependency, to Establish a Social Insurance Board in the Department of Labor, to Raise Revenue, and for Other Purposes, was an unconstitutional abdication by the States of their obligations to the people. The liberties of the people were grossly transgressed.
On the police power resident in the States, Judge Cooley,


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recognized half a century ago as the leading constitutionalist of his time, had this to say in volume 2 of the 8th edition of Constitutional Limitations, page 1232:
"In the American constitutional system the power to establish the ordinary regulations of police has been left to the individual States, and it cannot be taken from them, either wholly or in part, and exercised under legislation by Congress."
States and Congress join in unconstitutional action
Yet that is exactly what was brought to pass by a usurping Congress and abdicating States when the scheme for social security through Washington was set up.
On the same page Judge Cooley said further:
"Neither can the National Government, through any of its Departments, or offices, assume any supervision of the police regulations of the States."
When, in September, 1787, the Constitutional Convention sent the new Fundamental Law to the States for ratification, only one of them was opposed to it from the start -- or before the start. New York convoked a convention headed by Governor Clinton which was three fourths against the proposed form of government. Some able men in other States were not wholly satisfied with the Constitution. The objections which they expressed in the ratifying conventions resulted in a Bill of Bights in addition to the limitations on power amounting to a Bill of Rights written in the original Instrument. Several delegates to the Constitutional Convention went home without signing the new form of Government. Alexander Hamilton was the only signer for New York.


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Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, one of the ablest men in the Convention, did not sign. Edmund Randolph of Virginia and George Mason of Virginia, the author of The Virginia Bill of Rights, did not sign. Nor did William Houstoun of Georgia.
Most important of original objections to Constitution
The commonest and strongest objection was that the identity and sovereignty of the States were not sufficiently guarded. It was this objection that brought out the Tenth Amendment, to prevent Congress from invading the States.
In the convention in New York the point here under discussion was most strongly urged, namely, that the General Welfare Clause gave to Congress powers without limit. The States would eventually be swallowed by the central Government, which properly could deal only with subjects strictly national and international.
Yet the Housing Act of 1937 declared the policy of Congress to be to provide for the general welfare of the Nation by employing its funds and credit to assist the States to relieve unemployment and to safeguard health, and for other like purposes. In 1945 the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Roberts (none dissenting), held (323 U. S. 329) that legislation constitutional!
Thus the objection which chiefly evoked the Bill of Rights, and especially the Tenth Amendment, went for naught.
And in 1941 the Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Stone (none dissenting), held (312 U. S. 100) that under the Fair Labor Standards Act of Congress of 1938 the Nation can exercise police power in the States! That over-


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ruled a great decision (247 U. S. 251), rendered in 1918, that Congress is prevented by the Tenth Amendment from regulating labor conditions in the States.
The first and most important grant of power
The very first grant of power is this:
"Congress shall have power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."
In the convention in New York it was argued that the power to tax and spend for "the general Welfare of the United States" was a grant without limitation at all. That was answered by James Madison, the reporter of the Constitutional Convention, from whose notes day by day we get most of our knowledge of the course of deliberations. In the history of governments and in general fitness for his task he was second to no other man in the Convention.
Madison, along with Hamilton and Jay, was writing a series of 85 papers explanatory of the Constitution and addressed "to the people of the State of New York" to convince them that their objecting convention should ratify the new form of government. Those papers became known as The Federalist, the most brilliant work on our Constitution. They have been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Objections of States cleared away by Madison
Of the argument in New York, which was made in other States too, that power in Congress for "the general Wel-


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fare" was authority to do its will throughout the land, Madison wrote, evidently in anger:
"No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections than their stooping to such a misconstruction."
By "stooping" Madison plainly meant that they knew better and were unfair in their opposition to the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution.
Then he proceeded to explain the language under the established rules of interpretation. Had no other enumeration of powers been made than for taxing and spending, he said, then there might be some color to the objection that Congress would be without restraint -- though that would be an "awkward way of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases."
"But what color can the objection have," he asked, "when the specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semi-colon?"
Limitation on power of Congress to spend
That is, the grant of power to tax and spend for the "common Defence and general Welfare" is followed in the same sentence by all the other grants -- to borrow money, to regulate commerce, and so on. The first grant of all -- to tax and spend -- is inseparable in the context from all the other grants.
The power to tax and spend was granted to effectuate all of the seventeen succeeding paragraphs of clauses as well as the one in which it appears.
Madison met this question again in the very first Cong-


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ress of the new Government, in which he was a member of the House of Representatives, and where he assembled and formulated twelve of the leading objections to the Constitution that came in from the ratifying conventions in the States for submission as amendments, ten of which were ratified and became known as the Bill of Rights.
First appearance of the "Subsidy"
A bill was introduced by a member from New England to pay a bounty to cod fishermen, to subsidize a private interest, as agriculture and many more private interests have been subsidized by the "New Deal." He spoke at length with great vigor against the bill. Stating that those who wrote the Constitution and those who ratified it conceived it to be not an indefinite Government, but a limited one, "tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms," he added:
"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor. . . . Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."
The consequences of the misapplication by Congress of the money of the taxpayers -- a scourge of mounting debt


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and cumulative deficits -- establish Madison as a major prophet.
Hamilton, as well as Madison, rejected the contention strongly urged against the Constitution, that it left the National Government with unlimited power to do its will, and in No. 83 of The Federalist he said (italics his):
"The plan of the Convention declares that the power of Congress, or, in other words, of the National Legislature, shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excluded all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended."
Article I, Section 8 sets boundaries to constitutional power
There is no power in Congress beyond the boundaries of those eighteen paragraphs of clauses.
Certainly James Madison and Alexander Hamilton should have known what the purpose of the Constitutional Convention was. New York, by ratifying the new form of government, accepted what they said. Other States doubtless ratified on their explanation.
Abraham Baldwin of Georgia, a member of the Constitutional Convention, said in Congress in 1798 that "to provide for the common Defence and general Welfare" had "never been considered as a source of legislative power, as it is only a member introduced to limit the other parts of the sentence." That is, it limits the purposes for which Congress can "lay and collect taxes" and exert its other granted powers.


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The legal scholar of the Convention speaks
But there was another man in the Constitutional Convention, the ablest lawyer, as Madison was the ablest historian -- James Wilson, a scholar from Edinburgh and from one of the Temples in London, who explained the taxing and spending power in a course of lectures to what afterwards became the University of Pennsylvania, as Madison had done. He said in part:
"The National Government was intended to promote the 'general Welfare.' For this reason Congress have power to regulate commerce . . . and to promote the progress of science and of useful arts by securing for a time to authors and inventors an exclusive right to their compositions and discoveries."
In this way he proceeded from the Patent and Copyright Clause to explain all the other clauses in section 8 granting power. He made it very clear that Congress was to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare" by exerting the powers granted to it in the seventeen paragraphs following the first, by which it was authorized "to lay and collect taxes."
Thus, three members of the Constitutional Convention have spoken on this point -- Madison, Baldwin, and Wilson -- and none of them thought that the General Welfare Clause, which has been construed as a limitation on the activities of Congress rather than a grant of power, authorized the Legislative Department to get into anything even remotely resembling a Quixotic adventure "To Alleviate the Hazards of Old Age, Unemployment, Illness, and Dependency, to Establish a Social Security Insurance


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Board in the Department of Labor, to Raise Revenue, and for Other Purposes."
General Welfare brilliantly defined by Jefferson
Although Jefferson was in Paris while the Constitutional Convention was sitting, he was in close communication with Madison and other delegates. He knew the Constitution. In a profoundly able letter to Albert Gallatin in 1817 he discussed the General Welfare Clause on which the Social Security Act was based (italics inserted):
"You will have learned that an act for internal improvement, after passing both Houses, was negatived by the President. The act was founded, avowedly, on the principle that the phrase in the Constitution which authorizes Congress 'to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,' was anextension of the powers specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general welfare; and this, you know, was the Federal doctrine. Whereas our tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the Federalists and the Republicans, that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but was restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have meant that they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation on the purposes for which they may raise money.
"I think the passage and rejection of this bill a fortunate incident. Every State will certainly concede the power; and


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this will be a national confirmation of the grounds of appeal to them, and will settle forever the meaning of this phrase, which, by a mere grammatical quibble, has countenanced the General Government in a claim of universal power. For in the phrase 'to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,' it is a mere question of syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by the first, or are distinct and co-ordinate powers; a question unequivocally decided by the exact definition of powers immediately following."
That early interpretation should have been conclusive
That exposition by Jefferson, applied to a practical case in legislation, is perhaps the most illuminating that has been made.
Six years later, Jefferson returned to the subject (italics inserted):
"I have been blamed for saying that a prevalence of the doctrine of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution. I answer by asking if a single State of the Union would have agreed to the Constitution had it given all powers to the General Government? If the whole opposition to it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every State of being subjected to the other States in matters merely its own? And if there is any reason to believe the States more disposed now than then to acquiesce in this general surrender of all their rights and powers to a consolidated government, one and undivided?"


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Jefferson's reasoning applied to present-day legislation
That is to say, it was inconceivable to Jefferson that the representatives of the people in Congress could ever so far disregard our constitutional history and purpose as to strip their States of local authority by abdicating their police power through such acts as these:
The Agricultural Adjustment Actof May 12, 1933
The Tennessee Valley Authorityof May 18, 1933
The National Industrial Recovery Actof June 16, 1933
The Federal Surplus Commodities Corporationof October, 1933
The Bituminous Coal Actof May, 1935
The National Labor Relations Actof July, 1935
The Social Security Actof August, 1935


Not a State would have ratified the Constitution, Jefferson declared, had it thought such a "revolution" possible.
We have suffered a constitutional revolution without use of amendments in accordance with Article V. That has come about through what Senator Thomas H. Benton of Missouri used to call "latitudinarian construction." That form of construction has been applied to the Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause. No other clause in the Constitution, even with the gross twisting which the ardent "progressists" employ, could be used by them in the framing of a bill for flouting the Tenth Amendment, the great bulwark of the States.


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Did President Cleveland foresee present-day unconstitutionalism?
In 1888, President Cleveland, evidently noticing the tendency of representatives of the States in the Congress of the Union to favor measures for degrading their commonwealths, gave them in his fourth annual message this lesson in constitutional law:
"The preservation of the partitions between the proper subjects of Federal and local care and regulation is of such importance under the Constitution, which is the law of our very existence, that no consideration of expediency or sentiment should tempt us to enter upon doubtful ground.
"We have undertaken to discover and proclaim the richest blessings of a free Government, with the Constitution as our guide. Let us follow the way it points out -- it will not mislead us."
In the next year President Cleveland vetoed a bill appropriating money from the National Treasury for the purchase of seed wheat to relieve the farmers in a drought-stricken area. In that message he defined the meaning of the General Welfare Clause as Madison and the others hereinbefore quoted interpreted it (italics inserted):
"Under the limited and delegated authority conferred by the Constitution upon the General Government the statement of the purposes for which money may be lawfully raised by taxation in any form declares also the limits of the objects for which it may be expended. . . . This 'general welfare of the United States,' as used in the Constitution, can only justify appropriations for national objects and for purposes which have to do with the pros


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perity, the growth, the honor, or the peace and dignity of the Nation."
What would Mr. Cleveland think could he know that the Federal Government now subsidizes the farmer, pensions everybody, and plans to medicate and hospitalize the whole population? And no amendment to the Constitution authorized the change!
Supreme Court ignored history and learning on General Welfare
Notwithstanding all that members of the Constitutional Convention had written in explanation of the General Welfare Clause, which they had drafted with the care that marked every line of the Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States, on May 24, 1937, three months after the President had attacked the Judiciary as inefficient and obstructive and asked Congress to recast it to his liking, in an opinion (301 U. S. 548) by Justice Cardozo, with dissents by Justices Sutherland, Van Devanter, McReynolds, and Butler, used this language:
"It is too late today for the argument to be heard with tolerance that in a crisis so extreme the use of the moneys of the Nation to relieve the unemployed and their dependents is a use for any purpose narrower than the pro-motion of the General Welfare."
That expressed the popular notion of the party in power, that a "crisis," or an "emergency," or an "extraordinary emergency," such as the President[2] was given to declaring
2. The field of the President's authority is very limited. It does not include the States, to say nothing of the external world. In No. 75 of The Federalist Madison pointed that out:
"The execution of the laws and the employment of the common strength, either for this purpose or for the common defence, seems to comprise all the functions of the Executive Magistrate."



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as difficulties unfolded, and as Congress had declared in the National Industrial Recovery Act and its companion pieces, confers on Congress powers which the Constitution did not and which it therefore withheld. The Constitution withheld more powers from Congress than it granted. Besides that precaution, the Tenth Amendment was added to warn Congress not to "grab" power in any circumstances whatsoever, especially against the States.
Two fundamental errors in decision of Supreme Court
In the opinion by Justice Cardozo it is assumed that because Washington could give relief it had the power to do so. It points out that for a given time Washington gave emergency relief to the amount of $2,929,307,366, while the States expended only $689,291,802 and local subdivisions $777,675,366.
But official figures assembled by the United States News for June 18, 1938, showed that for five years the people of the States had paid to the National Government in taxes $20,411,847,208 and received in "benefits" from their own money $18,267,527,000.
They gave to Washington more than 2 billion over what was returned to them. Those figures are absolute disproof of the statement of the Court, that "the fact developed quickly that the States were unable to give the requisite relief."
But even had the States been unable to give relief, that fact would not have conferred power on Congress to take


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over police jurisdiction in the States, which the Constitution had not granted.
Instead of the first American coup d'état, which was executed by the Federal Emergency Relief Act of May 12, 1933, Congress should have repealed the Income Tax Law and the Estate Tax Law, by which it had been draining the States of their resources, and let the States, in close contact with the needy, go ahead and perform their police duties of relief. It chose revolution.
Rapid spread of the evil of subsidies
"Federal aid" to States for relief, for schools, and for what you will has grown worse and worse. In a report by the floor leader of the House of Representatives on January 8,1950, to the Ways and Means Committee it was shown that for the fiscal year ending June 30,1949, the people of the States paid in Federal taxes $41,864,542,295, while they got back in "aid" from their own money $5,551,054,046.
As Just before stated, for the five years ending June 30, 1938, the States paid in Federal taxes $20,411,347,208, or less than one half of what they paid in the last one year. That is what may be described as "going some." The "grants in aid" for the five-year term averaged 3 billion, 653 million, while for the last one year they were 5 billion, 551 million -- and all unconstitutional.
Arkansas, Mississippi, and New Mexico are the only States that got back anything near to half what they had paid.[3]
3. A vigilant reporter for the United Press discovered that the king of the Hoboes was visiting a friend in Pittsburgh and he interviewed His Highness for the edification of the country. The King, who has made several trips around the world, has concluded that modern travel (Cont. on 198)


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The situation is fantastic, for it has often been shown in Congress that there is not a State in the Union that is not in a stronger financial position than the National Government. The States need no "aid" from Washington -- except for political purposes. That's what is going on, reminding of the "bread and circuses" which the politicians provided for the populace of sinking Rome.
Finally, on the decision in the Social Security case, it was based not only on the erroneous assumption of the inability of the States to perform their duties in giving relief, but also on what Justice Cardozo termed "a cyclical depression." To be sure, permanent legislation is not justified by a cyclical depression.
Constitutionality of Social Security Act not for Supreme Court
In the light of the reading of "general Welfare of the United States" which was given by Madison and other members of the Constitutional Convention, and by Jefferson, who was in constant communication with members while the Convention was sitting, and by several Presidents, it was not for the Executive Department, the Legislative Department, or the Judicial Department, or all of them together, to give the words a different meaning.
(3. Cont from 197) is attended by too many risks, and he has therefore concluded to become a lobbyist for "Federal aid" to young men possessed by the urge to wander. He believes that all such young men should have each year a vacation of two weeks at the expense of the Government. "Then they could travel safely and in style," he said.
Is that any more absurd than that the wealthy State of Kansas, which, up to an act for pensions to its sons who served in World War I, had no debt at all, should receive "Federal aid" in 1950 for the benefit of its needy in the amount of $18,000,000? The supervisor of welfare reported that fact in June.
[Kansas does not differ from the other states. Degeneracy is general. To them the Constitution is a dead letter.]


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As in 1895 the Supreme Court, refusing to strike out a limitation in the Constitution on taxation, referred the proponents of the Income Tax Law of 1894 to the Ultimate Power, to the people as the only Constitution makers, to write an amendment if they should deem that expedient, so in the Social Security case the Supreme Court should have held the act of Congress unconstitutional and referred the "planners" and their project to the people for disposition. Then a proposal to let Congress "into a boundless field of power no longer susceptible of any definition" would have brought the answer from those who alone had it.
That course would have been what Justice Brandeis called "procedural regularity," which he said must always be followed in resolving constitutional problems.
Where authority over welfare resides
It is within the police power of the State to protect the farsighted, the frugal, and the temperate from the tax burden of caring for the indifferent, the unthrifty, the profligate, and the handicapped when they become unable to care for themselves. It may require persons not voluntarily carrying insurance in standard companies to do so, if they cannot show resources making insurance unnecessary. And it can compel employers of such persons to make payroll deductions for the payment of insurance premiums through the working years of the employees.
The United States has no constitutional interest in this subject.
This discussion may well be closed by a quotation from a sound decision of the Supreme Court on January 6, 1936, holding the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional


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as not authorized by the General Welfare Clause. Later, on May 24, 1937, the Court, as seen, sustained the Social Security Act as within the General Welfare Clause -- on two erroneous conceptions: (1) that the States could not care for the people in need (which would not confer authority on Congress), and (2) that "a cyclical depression" gave power to Congress to take control forever.
An admirable view of history
In the Agricultural Adjustment case the Court, speaking through Justice Roberts, said:
"Until recently no suggestion of the existence of any such power in the Federal Government has been advanced. The expressions of the Framers of the Constitution, the decisions of this Court interpreting that Instrument, and the writings of great commentators will be searched in vain for any suggestion that there exists in the Clause [General Welfare] under discussion, or elsewhere in the Constitution, the authority whereby every provision and every fair implication of that Instrument may be subverted, the independence of the individual States obliterated, and the United States converted into a central Government exercising uncontrolled police powers in every State of the Union, superseding all local control or regulation of affairs or concerns of the States.
"Hamilton himself, the leading advocate of broad interpretation of the power to tax and appropriate for the general welfare, never suggested that any power granted by the Constitution could be used for the destruction of local self-government in the States, Story countenances no such doctrine. It never seems to have occurred to them, or to those who have agreed with them, that the general


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welfare of the United States (which has aptly been termed "an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States") might be wrecked by obliterating the constitutional members of the Union."
Justices Stone, Brandeis, and Cardozo dissented.

That decision shows the ground we have since abandoned, with Congress "in a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."

Thanks to the great folks over at Barefoot's world website.

http://www.barefootsworld.net/


Friday, September 12, 2014

What is the Real Deal About our Economy

By:  Sue Long

Do you have a problem

· when you call a tech or service department agent and can’t understand what they are saying?

· that your income is not keeping up with rising prices?

· with finding goods that have been made and packaged in America?

· although goods cost much more than in the past they are inferior in quality

and don’t last nearly as long?

The trade pact NAFTA has contributed to all of these things. Indeed, it has led to lower wages, job losses, outsourcing, and even a loss of American sovereignty. Trade pacts such as NAFTA are regional arrangements that are foreign governing bodies that take control over not just trade but also regulations that have nothing to do with trade. For example, the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has only 5 chapters of the 29 that actually deal with trade.

Is there a precedent? The once sovereign nations in Europe joined the EU (European Union), having been sold on the premise that it would be good for their economy. History has proved otherwise. Today the EU rules supreme at the expense of the individual nation’s sovereignty and their economy is in dire condition – near collapse.

For more information, go to www.thenewamerican.com and type "trade pacts" in the search window.

We can prevent further damage to America by preventing more free trade pacts from being passed. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic and Investment Partnership are on the launching pad. Our legislators are being lobbied for them now in anticipation of bringing them up for a vote at the most advantageous time – quite possibly during the upcoming lame duck session.

We need to get a commitment now from our legislators that they will vote against these pacts. You can help by contacting your legislators.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Here is a sample letter:

The TPP and TTIP agreements should be opposed because they are detrimental to our economy and would lead to the eventual economic and political integration of the United States with eleven or more Pacific Rim nations and the European Union (EU). The example of how 28 formerly independent European nations lost their national independence through a series of free trade agreements to the new supranational government, the EU, shows
how this would happen for the United States.

Will you commit to vote NO on all such free trade pacts as TPP & TTIP?

Sign it with your name and address
++++++++++++++++++++

Thank you so much for helping !


The Committee for Constitutional Government
Post Office Box 972, Gloucester, VA 23061

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

American Patriotism, Where Do You Stand?







If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last. . . . A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.

Alexander Hamilton:

The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virture to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.

Richard Henry Lee.

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

(Sounds altogether familiar.)

Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.

In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by power. America has set the example . . . of charters of power granted by liberty. This revolution in the practice of the world, may, with an honest praise, be pronounced the most triumphant epoch of its history, and the most consoling presage of its happiness.

James Madison.

Do you stand with the founding fathers or do you stand with today's socialist's the few dictating the control of the masses where liberty is only a buzz word with no real meaning?   Are you for the new Pledge of Allegiance?

Friday, August 29, 2014

Your Health Is the Result of a Symbiotic Relationship with 100 Trillion Bacteria

Institute of Mental Health 8, Nov 06
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)




By Dr. Mercola
The truth of the old adage that “you are what you eat” is becoming increasingly clear, the more we learn about the microbiome—the colonies of microbes living in your gut, and indeed all over your body.
It is well established that your gut is your second brain providing more input to your brain than the brain provides to it. This is why your gut health is largely reflected in your gut bacteria, including your mental health and emotional well-being.
Your microbiome is essentially a historical accumulative composition of where you’ve been, who your parents are, who you spend intimate time with, what you eat, how you live, whether or not you’re interacting with the earth (gardening, for example), and much more.
As noted by Pat Schloss (a microbiologist with The Human Microbiome Project) in the video above, your microbiome is much like a fingerprint—it’s unique to you. Researcher Jeroen Raes has also suggested we might belong to one of a few “microflora types,” which are similar to blood types.
Your gut microbiome activity influences your immune responses, nervous system functioning, and plays a role in the development of any number of diseases, including obesity, cancer, and multiple sclerosis, just to name a few that I’ll address in this article.

How Intestinal Bacteria Can Induce Food Cravings

The bacteria in your body outnumber your cells by 100 to 1, and different bacteria have different nutritional needs.
According to recent research,1, 2 the nutritional preferences of your gut bacteria can influence your food cravings by releasing chemical signals through the vagus nerve, which connects your gut to your brain. According to one of the study’s co-authors, Carlo Maley, PhD:3
“Bacteria within the gut are manipulative... There is a diversity of interests represented in the microbiome, some aligned with our own dietary goals, and others not...
Our diets have a huge impact on microbial populations in the gut. It’s a whole ecosystem, and it’s evolving on the time scale of minutes.”
It’s already been well-documented that obese individuals have different bacteriadominating their microbiome than leaner individuals.
Research4 also suggests that as much as 20 percent of the substantial weight loss achieved from gastric bypass, a popular weight loss surgery, is due to shifts in the balance of bacteria in your digestive tract. With regards to the featured research,Forbes5 reports:
“‘Microbes have the capacity to manipulate behavior and mood through altering the neural signals in the vagus nerve, changing taste receptors, producing toxins to make us feel bad, and releasing chemical rewards to make us feel good,’ said study co-author Athena Aktipis, PhD.
The good news, the researchers tell us, is that we can influence changes in our gut dwellers through dietary choices.
‘Because microbiota are easily manipulatable by prebiotics, probiotics, antibiotics…and dietary changes, altering our microbiota offers a tractable approach to otherwise intractable problems of obesity and unhealthy eating.’”

Diet Can Rapidly Alter Gut Bacteria

Indeed, another recent study6, 7 highlights the speed with which you can alter the balance of your gut bacteria. Here, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) monitored two people over the course of one year; collecting daily stool samples and correlating the gut bacteria from day to day with diet and other lifestyle factors such as sleep, mood, and exercise.
One of the participants developed diarrhea during a two-week trip to another country, which resulted in significant changes in the balance of gut bacteria.
A case of Salmonella food poisoning struck the other participant, which resulted in a drastic change in gut bacteria. Salmonella bacteria rose from 10 percent to nearly 30 percent, and the colonies of beneficial bacteria were nearly wiped out.
Once the individual recovered, beneficial bacteria quickly rebounded to about 40 percent of the total microbiome, but most of the strains were different from the original strains. According to senior author Eric Alm:8
"On any given day, the amount of one species could change manyfold, but after a year, that species would still be at the same median level. To a large extent, the main factor we found that explained a lot of that variance was the diet.”
The most prominent changes correlated with the individuals’ fiber intake. Greater amounts of fiber affected about 15 percent of the gut bacteria, resulting in greater proliferation of them.

Gut Bacteria May Reveal Colon Cancer, and Might Play a Role in MS

Your microbiome may even reveal your risk for, or presence of, colon cancer. A total of 90 people participated in this study;9, 10 thirty were healthy; 30 had precancerous intestinal polyps; and 30 had been diagnosed with advanced colon or rectal cancer. After assessing the composition of each person’s microbiome, it became apparent that microbiome analysis (using a fecal test) might be a viable way to screen for precancerous polyps and colorectal cancer.
According to their findings, adding microbiome analysis to other known risk factors for precancerous polyps resulted in a 4.5-fold improved prediction for the condition. Adding microbiome analysis to risk factors for invasive colorectal cancer resulted in a five-fold improvement in their ability to predict cancer.
In related news, researchers have also linked certain gut microbes to the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), and/or improvement of the condition. The paper, published in the Journal of Interferon and Cytokine Research,11 describes three immunological factors associated with the gut microbiome that relates to inflammatory responses in MS patients:
  1. T helper cell polarization
  2. T regulatory cell function
  3. B cell activity
Previous research has suggested that altering the gut microbiome by adding bacteria such as Lactobacillus, and/or worm-type organisms like Schistosoma and Trichura, can be helpful in reducing MS symptoms. Apparently, these microorganisms have a beneficial effect on cytokine production throughout the body, thereby reducing systemic inflammation. Cytokines are cellular messengers that regulate inflammatory responses. According to the authors: "Whether future therapeutic approaches to MS will employ commensal-based products depends on nuanced understanding of these underlying mechanisms.”

When It Comes to Inflammation, Your Microbiome Rules

MS certainly is not the only disease caused by chronic inflammation in your body. In fact, most chronic disease has inflammation as an underlying factor. It’s important to realize that your gut is the starting point for inflammation—it’s actually the gatekeeper for your inflammatory response. As suggested above, various gut microorganisms can either trigger or subdue the production of inflammatory cytokines. Most of the signals between your gut and your brain travel along your vagus nerve—about 90 percent of them.12 (Vagus is Latin for “wandering,” aptly named as this long nerve travels from your skull down through your chest and abdomen, branching to multiple organs.13)
Cytokine messengers produced in your gut cruise up to your brain along the “vagus nerve highway.” Once in your brain, the cytokines tell your microglia (the immune cells in your brain) to perform certain functions, such as producing neurochemicals. Besides influencing your hunger and cravings for certain foods, as discussed earlier, these chemical messages can also affect your mitochondria, impacting energy production and apoptosis (cell death). They can also affect the very sensitive feedback system that controls your stress hormones, including cortisol, for better or worse.
So, an inflammatory response can begin in your gut, travel to your brain, which then builds on it and sends signals to the rest of your body in a complex feedback loop. It isn’t important that you understand all of the physiology here, but the take-away is thatyour gut flora significantly affects and controls the health of your entire body.

Your Gut Flora Is Perpetually Under Attack

Your microbiome—and therefore your physical and mental health—are continuously affected by your environment, and by your diet and lifestyle choices. If your gut bacteria are harmed and thrown out of balance (dysbiosis), all sorts of illnesses can result, both acute and chronic. Unfortunately, your fragile internal ecosystem is under nearly constant assault today. Some of the factors posing the gravest dangers to your microbiome are outlined in the following table.
Refined sugar, especially processed high fructose corn syrup(HFCS)Genetically engineered (GE) foods (extremely abundant in processed foods and beverages)Agricultural chemicals, such asherbicides and pesticides.Glyphosate appears to be among the worst
Conventionally-raised meats and other animal products; CAFOanimals are routinely fed low-dose antibiotics and GE livestock feedGlutenAntibiotics (use only if absolutely necessary, and make sure to reseed your gut with fermented foods and/or a good probiotic supplement)
NSAIDS(Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) damage cell membranes and disrupt energy production by mitochondriaProton pump inhibitors (drugs that block the production of acid in your stomach, typically prescribed for GERD, such as Prilosec, Prevacid, and Nexium)Antibacterial soap
Chlorinated and/or fluoridated waterStressPollution

Your Diet Is the Most Effective Way to Alter Your Microbiome

The best way to optimize your gut flora is through your diet. A good place to start is by drastically reducing grains and sugar, and avoiding genetically engineered ingredients, processed foods, pasteurized foods, and chlorinated tap water. Pasteurized foods can harm your good bacteria, and sugar promotes the growth of pathogenic yeast and other fungi. Grains containing gluten are particularly damaging to your microflora and overall health.14, 15 A gut-healthy diet is one rich in whole, unprocessed, unsweetened foods, along with traditionally fermented or cultured foods. Chlorine in your tap water not only kills pathogenic bacteria in the water but also beneficial bacteria in your gut.
Fermented foods are also a key component of the GAPS protocol, a diet designed to heal and seal your gut. Your goal should be to consume one-quarter to one-half cup of fermented veggies with each meal, but you may need to work up to it. Consider starting with just a teaspoon or two a few times a day, and increase as tolerated. If that is too much (perhaps your body is severely compromised), you can even begin by drinking a teaspoon of the brine from the fermented veggies, which is rich in the same beneficial microbes.
You may also want to consider a high-potency probiotic supplement, but realize that there is no substitute for the real food. A previous article in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology16 makes the case that properly controlled fermentation amplifies the specific nutrient and phytochemical content of foods, thereby improving brain health, both physical and mental. According to the authors:
“The consumption of fermented foods may be particularly relevant to the emerging research linking traditional dietary practices and positive mental health. The extent to which traditional dietary items may mitigate inflammation and oxidative stress may be controlled, at least to some degree, by microbiota.”
They go on to say that the microbes associated with fermented foods (for example, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria species) may also influence your brain health via direct and indirect pathways, which paves the way for new scientific investigations in the area of “nutritional psychiatry.”

Your Body Is a Conglomerate of Bacterial Colonies

You’re not only surrounded by bacteria in your environment; in a very real way, you are them. Your body is in fact a complex ecosystem made up of more than 100 trillion microbes that must be properly balanced and cared for if you are to be healthy. Pamela Weintraub skillfully describes the symbiotic relationship between humans and microorganisms in her June 2013 article inExperience Life magazine.17 This system of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and protozoa living on your skin and in your mouth, nose, throat, lungs, gut, and urogenital tract, is unique to you.
It varies from person to person based on factors such as diet, lifestyle, health history, geographic location, and even ancestry. Your microbiome is one of the most complex ecosystems on the planet as for every bacteria you have, there are 10 bacteriophages or viruses. So not only do you have 100 trillion bacteria, you have one quadrillion bacteriophages.
All of these organisms perform a multitude of functions in key biological systems, from supplying critical vitamins to fighting pathogens, modulating weight and metabolism, and much more, and when your microbiome falls out of balance, you can become ill. Your microbiome also helps control how your genes express themselves. So by optimizing your native flora, you are actually controlling your genes! All of this is great news, because while your microbiome may control your health, you can control which bacteria have the upper hand—health-promoting ones, or disease-causing ones—through your diet and lifestyle.