Monday I wrote that the fight about the budget ought to be about ending Federal programs that are not within the limitations of the Constitution, not about 'over spending'.
This week, with the Congress racing to find a compromise to keep from shutting down the government, calls are being made to defund things like Planned Parenthood.
This is partisanship at its worst. Certainly Planned Parenthood ought not be Constitutional, and if an Originalist could prove it is, then some law or another ought to be changed or written so that positive rights are wrong.
Michael Reagan, on Fox News on Tuesday of this week, said that it was always politic in the past to keep social issues out of the fiscal conversation that takes place in public. Fiscal discussions and social-issue discussions should be separated.
Fine, keep them separated. But don't be partisan about the social-issue discussions. Not all Tea Party thinkers, not all Republicans, not all conservatives, not all independents think Planned Parenthood should be defunded.
But it is like the woman I wrote about Monday who seemed to be saying the government should act un-Constitutionally by allowing the EPA to regulate, where some members of Congress are of the belief that the actions of the EPA usurp those of the legislative branch.
Does the existence of Planned Parenthood as a government subsidized entity defeat the originalism the Founders would have expected of the limited powers they wrote into the Constitution?
Congressman Paul Ryan, R.-Wisconsin, announced this week a budget that will cut spending by $4 trillion over the next decade.On "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace", Ryan said, "We need to engage with the American people on a fact-based budget, on stopping politicians from making empty promises to people and talk to the country about what is necessary to fix these problems." He continued, "But if we keep kicking the can down the road and keep making more empty promises to people, then we'll have the European kind of pain and austerity."
Perhaps Ryan is simply trying to keep social issues out of the fiscal conversation. But he is obliged to bring in those social issues, which is he is doing to some extent. In his own words, he told Wallace this: "If you're 55 or older, you won't see changes. You won't have to reorient your lives around these things."
Why is that, Congressman? Are you going to address the Constitutional issues that allowed these social issues to become funded in the first place? Or will a more leftist Congress at some future time be able to re-fund them?
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Showing posts with label EPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EPA. Show all posts
Friday, April 8, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Legislative Arguments vs Red Herrings
The blurb under the title of this blog reads: "The Original Intent of the Framers was neither Conservative nor Republican. Rather, it was about Individual Sovereignty."
"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..."[1]
But it doesn't seem to be individual sovereignty the Tea Party is calling for with its well-intentioned desire for large spending cuts. While larger cuts rather than smaller ones are better, with the eventual intent of once again balancing the budget, the specific cuts that are made are what are important. I have heard few specific suggestions or desires in this regard, with the exception of Obama-care.
House Tea Party members renewed their support for cuts of $60 billion, in a press conference by Eric Cantor. The Democrats and Republicans seem to be meeting somewhere near $33 billion in cuts. Tea Partiers are calling for heads to roll in 2012 if the larger number isn't met.
But it is a number that seems to have been pulled from thin air. Why $60 billion and not $600 billion? Perhaps it is only because the smaller number seems do-able. But it does nothing to help restore individual sovereignty.
The fight ought to be about ending Federal programs that are not within the limitations of the Constitution, not about 'over spending'. If we actually had enough money and could balance the budget without cutting spending, would the Tea Party movement have two legs to stand on?
What about stopping funding for things like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? As I write this, "a congressional panel will hold a hearing on legislation — the “Energy Tax Prevention Act” – to stop.....the constitutional crisis created by EPA’s attempt to dictate climate policy to the nation. EPA can neither make climate policy nor amend the CAA without flouting the separation of powers."[2]
How much money was spent to create these 18,000 pages of legislation? By the EPA's own estimates, the direct costs of implementation alone will be $65 billion--but how much did it cost to research, then author, this massive take-over of the American economy? The EPA acknowledges that its climate policy leads to “absurd results” that are contrary to congressional intent, with operating permits required of millions of non-industrial facilities such as office buildings, stores, restaurants, etc.
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) are sponsoring the Act. On a newscast I saw, after Upton was interviewed speaking about how the EPA has no Constitutional authority to do what it now proposes, a citizen opponent of the Act was blaming Upton for causing massive damage in the future, to the environment--by stopping the un-Constitutional actions of the EPA, if they are indeed found to be illegal.
Did this citizen have a desire to allow the EPA to act un-Constitutionally? If she did not, the network pieced together their news with arguments that had nothing to do with each other; or her argument was a red-herring.
We can ask why opponents use red-herring arguments; but a better question would be to ask why the networks pit such wrongful arguments against each other? Could the network in question not find someone who didn't have a red-herring to throw, someone who could speak to the question of Constitutionality?
Congressmen and Senators do the same kind of arguing. "The basic idea is to 'win' an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic."[3] Was it the intent of the network to lead the attention away from Upton's concern; or is it the general thinking of the opposition not to address the Congressmen's concerns, to lead the attention away from the fundamental questions on their own?
Red-herring arguments seem to be typical of the Tea Party, as much as they are typical of most of Congress, and of State's legislatures. 'Spending cuts' that don't address the issue of why a particular budget item is wrong from the perspective of an American's individual sovereignty, is not going to win many converts. Sure, we can all support the cuts. But can we all support the particular reasons for the particular cuts?
It would be to the benefit of the Tea Party advocates who actually understand what individual sovereignty is about, to advocate particular cuts based on the illegality of what is being funded.
[1] Kelly L. Ross in a review of 'American Sphinx, The Character of Thomas Jefferson', by Joseph J. Ellis
[2] Andrew Brietbart Presents Big Government
[3] The Nizkor Project
© Curtis Edward Clark 2011
Visit the Atheist-AA Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/atheist-aa
"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..."[1]
But it doesn't seem to be individual sovereignty the Tea Party is calling for with its well-intentioned desire for large spending cuts. While larger cuts rather than smaller ones are better, with the eventual intent of once again balancing the budget, the specific cuts that are made are what are important. I have heard few specific suggestions or desires in this regard, with the exception of Obama-care.
House Tea Party members renewed their support for cuts of $60 billion, in a press conference by Eric Cantor. The Democrats and Republicans seem to be meeting somewhere near $33 billion in cuts. Tea Partiers are calling for heads to roll in 2012 if the larger number isn't met.
But it is a number that seems to have been pulled from thin air. Why $60 billion and not $600 billion? Perhaps it is only because the smaller number seems do-able. But it does nothing to help restore individual sovereignty.
The fight ought to be about ending Federal programs that are not within the limitations of the Constitution, not about 'over spending'. If we actually had enough money and could balance the budget without cutting spending, would the Tea Party movement have two legs to stand on?
What about stopping funding for things like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)? As I write this, "a congressional panel will hold a hearing on legislation — the “Energy Tax Prevention Act” – to stop.....the constitutional crisis created by EPA’s attempt to dictate climate policy to the nation. EPA can neither make climate policy nor amend the CAA without flouting the separation of powers."[2]
How much money was spent to create these 18,000 pages of legislation? By the EPA's own estimates, the direct costs of implementation alone will be $65 billion--but how much did it cost to research, then author, this massive take-over of the American economy? The EPA acknowledges that its climate policy leads to “absurd results” that are contrary to congressional intent, with operating permits required of millions of non-industrial facilities such as office buildings, stores, restaurants, etc.
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) are sponsoring the Act. On a newscast I saw, after Upton was interviewed speaking about how the EPA has no Constitutional authority to do what it now proposes, a citizen opponent of the Act was blaming Upton for causing massive damage in the future, to the environment--by stopping the un-Constitutional actions of the EPA, if they are indeed found to be illegal.
Did this citizen have a desire to allow the EPA to act un-Constitutionally? If she did not, the network pieced together their news with arguments that had nothing to do with each other; or her argument was a red-herring.
We can ask why opponents use red-herring arguments; but a better question would be to ask why the networks pit such wrongful arguments against each other? Could the network in question not find someone who didn't have a red-herring to throw, someone who could speak to the question of Constitutionality?
Congressmen and Senators do the same kind of arguing. "The basic idea is to 'win' an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic."[3] Was it the intent of the network to lead the attention away from Upton's concern; or is it the general thinking of the opposition not to address the Congressmen's concerns, to lead the attention away from the fundamental questions on their own?
Red-herring arguments seem to be typical of the Tea Party, as much as they are typical of most of Congress, and of State's legislatures. 'Spending cuts' that don't address the issue of why a particular budget item is wrong from the perspective of an American's individual sovereignty, is not going to win many converts. Sure, we can all support the cuts. But can we all support the particular reasons for the particular cuts?
It would be to the benefit of the Tea Party advocates who actually understand what individual sovereignty is about, to advocate particular cuts based on the illegality of what is being funded.
[1] Kelly L. Ross in a review of 'American Sphinx, The Character of Thomas Jefferson', by Joseph J. Ellis
[2] Andrew Brietbart Presents Big Government
[3] The Nizkor Project
© Curtis Edward Clark 2011
Visit the Atheist-AA Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/atheist-aa
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