The Case for Liberty and an Article V Convention – Part II

It should be obvious to anyone by now, that with few exceptions our representatives in the Senate and House of Representatives have little interest in good stewardship of the nation as a whole, nor do they exhibit any interest in limiting their own power or that of the other two branches of Federal Government. Quite the contrary, they seem only interested in what will benefit them, the maintenance and growth of their power, the power of their respective parties, and the growth of their personal balance sheets and those of their friends’. For these reasons it is incumbent on the State Houses to exercise their Article V responsibility to reign in the excesses exhibited in Washington.

The Declaration of Independence contains a list of grievances against the King of England. They will not be reproduced here yet the list of governmental overreach in these United States is similar, large, and growing exponentially.

Beyond overreach, by its self-centered approach to public policy the federal government continues at an increasing pace to put our nation in peril by its failure to pursue sound agricultural, economic, energy, and foreign policies.

Its Justice Department has given up all interest in equal application of the law, and has instead sought to reward its friends and punish its enemies. Likewise this administration has used all of its agencies in the same manner and Congress has been unable or unwilling to stop them.

Richard M. Nixon was impeached in 1974 for Obstruction of Justice, Abuse of Power, and Contempt of Congress. He subsequently resigned his office. In June of 2012 President Obama’s Attorney General was held in Contempt of Congress for failure to produce documents related to the supply of weapons to criminals in Mexico in an operation called Fast & Furious. President Obama covered up this failure to produce documents with a dubious claim of Executive Privilege. To this date, no documents have been produced and Congress has failed to take further action. This is the same Justice Department that has declined to prosecute top Obama bundler Jon Corzine for bilking of almost a billion dollars of clients money and has declared big bankers “too big to jail”.

At the same time the Department of Justice through the Fish and Wildlife Service raided Gibson Guitar (whose CEO is a Republican donor) and confiscated raw materials without ever formally charging them with a crime. Eventually the DOJ extorted $350,000.00 from the company, still without any due process of law under the Constitution or return of raw materials.

The recent IRS targeting case is another example in a long, long list of political bullying by Administration agencies. Russell George, the IRS’ own inspector general, went to DOJ with clear evidence of illegal access and dissemination of taxpayer information, and Justice has refused to prosecute or even investigate the case.

Egregious as the abuse of power is, there are much larger problems facing the citizens of the United States. One of the most dangerous is the practice of laundering trillions and trillions of made up dollars through the US banking system. For the moment it has not sparked hyper-inflation, primarily because the banks borrow the dollars and loan them back to the treasury through bond purchases. So far, it has kept interest rates low, and stocks high. For the most part, this fiat currency has stayed out of the general economy. Big banks and large corporations have nowhere to put their money due to the vast uncertainty about future rules and regulations. Rather than invest, hire and expand, they have been buying back their stock, and speculating on commodities like food, farm land, and oil.

When those trillions finally make their way out into the economy at large, they will drastically lower the value of existing dollars, making prices higher, forcing interest rates to rise and devastating the poor and middle class. When food is unaffordable people take to the streets. We have seen it happen in Greece, Italy and all across the Middle East in recent years. The entire United States is following the footsteps of the City of Detroit.

The passage of the Dodd-Frank Act ushered in a new era of unaccountable bureaucracy heretofore unheard of in the history of the United States of America. Now that Harry Reid has been successful in subjugating the Senate Republicans to his unquestioned will, we citizens of these United States will be forever beholden to the will of an unelected unaccountable Czar of Consumer Banking and his fifteen minions. This Act effectively nationalizes the entire US banking system in the same way Obama-care nationalizes the health care system.

In addition to confirming the new Czar of Consumer Banking, the deal worked out in the Senate effectively gave President Obama a pass on the unconstitutional appointment of members of the National Labor Relations Board.

The erosion of the US Constitution has accelerated since the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, and has reached the point where the Constitution is inconsequential in limiting the power of the federal government to intrude into our lives. The original intent of the founders was that if any tax were to be imposed on income it would be of the flat-tax variety, apportioned equally among the States. The US tax code now has become a means of rewarding friends, punishing enemies, and manipulating behavior. The Federal Government was never intended to have that kind of power. States were to be sovereign and State Governments paramount in legislating for the citizens. The Federal Government was only intended to be a facilitator of those very few (eighteen enumerated powers) things that could be better accomplished by the States acting in concert rather than individually.

Congress will never limit its own power. The drafters of the Constitution foresaw the possibility that the Federal Government would eventually exceed its authority and become tyrannical. Seeking to avoid a future shooting revolution, they included in Article V the ability for the States to convene a convention for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution. The time has come for the States to exercise that power.

Part III of this series will offer suggestions for possible amendments to reign in our Federal Government and return the Nation to one based on individual liberty and responsibility.