The Heritage Foundation - Leadership for America

December 4, 2008 Chet Pilcher, Asheville, NC writes:

In lieu of becoming irate over this new Socialistic Administration, why don’t we just give in. Instead of letting them pick and choose what welfare, bailouts and handouts in general, let’s let them do it all. Everytime you get a request for a donation of time or cash, just tell the caller or write over the request, “Send to Obama” and send it back. Let the government do it all, ha!

December 4, 2008 Doug Frazier writes:

Morning…
These excerpts are from an article written in 1994 and published on the Cato Institute web site.
It has poignant commentary on the bailout mania and the events of our day. In contrast to jokes and entertainment, it is well sourced, and weighted heavily with thoughts much stronger than I am capable of producing on my own….

It does however tell me that I am not crazy to think that Congress is straying far outside the boundries deliniated by the Constitution. The trustees of our tax funds are simply prohibited by the bounds of their fiduciary responsibility, defined by our Constitution, from “bailing out” a failing business.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-216.html

“As written and originally understood, the Constitution limits the federal government primarily by enumerating its powers, which the Tenth Amendment confirms by declaring that those powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people. For a century and a half, the Supreme Court enforced those restraints. But with the New Deal and Roosevelt’s “Court-packing” scheme, the Court retreated from its traditional role, enabling Congress to indulge an ever-expanding array of powers. Today, under the Court’s boundless reading of the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress power to regulate commerce among the states, the doctrine of enumerated powers is all but dead. Yet that doctrine was meant by the Framers to be the centerpiece of the Constitution, the principal restraint on federal power.

* * *

“For the first century and more of the nation’s existence, the principle of limited national government remained largely intact, as demonstrated by the interpretation of the Constitution by early Congresses and executives. Although it may be hard for modern readers to understand–or believe–much time in Congress during those years was taken up with debates over whether the national government was constitutionally empowered to address certain admittedly pressing problems, or whether such problems had instead to be addressed, if at all, by state governments or private individuals.
Thus, a 1794 proposal appropriating $15,000 for the relief of French refugees of an insurrection in Santo Domin go had to be withdrawn after it drew the comment from Madison that he could not “undertake to lay his finger on that article of the Federal Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”(8) A similar bill was defeated two years later on the same ground.(9) The debate over Congress’s power to establish a national bank is well known.(10) And as late as 1887, President Grover Cleveland vetoed a seed-distribution bill, saying, “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”(11)
There is thus little room for doubt on the question of whether the Constitution was intended to create a federal government of limited powers. And, in fact, there are few who would dispute that. Nonetheless, the federal government’s powers have grown in ways that the Framers never intended–in fact, they have grown in ways that the Framers quite explicitly intended to prevent.(12) Although there are many aspects to that growth, the single most important source of governmental expansion has been the Commerce Clause.”

Footnotes from the same article….
“(8) Annals of Congress 4 (1794): 179. For a general discus sion of early Congresses and their view of governmental powers, see Roger Pilon, “Freedom, Responsibility, and the Constitution: On Recovering Our Founding Principles” Notre Dame Law Review 68 (1993): 507.
(9) Annals of Congress 6 (1796): 1727.
(10) See McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316 (1819).
(11) Congressional Record 18 (1887): 1895.

December 5, 2008 DC Universe Online PS3 E3 2008 Trailer writes:

[...] Tankosphere Today: Dec. 4, 2008 » The Foundry [...]

December 5, 2008 Kevin E. vonMoses, Glendale,AZ writes:

Shake your finger and point to the Constitution all you like… The voters continue to return these thieves and mountebanks to office like sheep going to the shearing. There are only three things you can do with a Sheep, two which you can do over and over again… And the Sheep never know the difference!

One e-mail I received thought that Congressmen and Senators should be required to wear racing suits akin to those in NASCAR with the logos of their Sponsors prominently displayed… When was the last time YOU were represented by Congress?

December 30, 2008 Chet Pilcher, Asheville, NC writes:

Think about it! No industry and no company has ever profited and flourished with a union workforce. Unions convince their members that they are worth more or are more important than they really are. Ultimately their demands cannot be met or will not be met and union strife prevails, with strikes, Oblomovism, feather bedding, and deliberate slowdowns. Management is faced with the decision for a massive reduction in force, relocating ( Used to be out of the rust belt, but now means out of the country), or bankruptcy. This pattern has been repeated over and over and over again with untold losses of thousands of jobs. A union card is a temporary work permit. But as a nation, we just never learn. The unholy marriage of the powerful unions and this new Socialst administration now seeks to unionize the local merchants and service agencies. I long ago left a highly unionized community and never want to return. That community was strangled and is literally dying. That fate may soon be faced by us all!