So, do you people out there really believe that its the republicans and the conservatives that want to kill grandma and take her medicare away and make her eat cat food???
Then read this, and keep in mind that barack obama is president and that his mandates are dictating financial policies...
While you hear a lot about the federal income tax, you don't hear much about the Social Security tax. That's odd because for many folks especially the self-employed Social Security tax can be the bigger hit. Here are some little-known truths about how the Social Security tax works and how much it can amount to.
As an employee, your wages are hit with the 12.4% Social Security tax up to the annual wage ceiling. Half the Social Security tax bill (equal to 6.2%) is withheld from your paychecks. The other half is paid by your employer. Unless you understand how the tax works and closely examine your pay stubs, you may be blissfully unaware of how much the Social Security tax actually costs.
The Social Security tax wage ceiling for both 2010 and 2011 is $106,800. If you made that much or more last year, the Social Security tax hit on your 2010 wages was a whopping $13,243 (12.4% x $106,800). Half came out of your paycheck. Your employer paid the other half.
For 2011, the tax hit is less, thanks to a one-year 2 percentage-point reduction in the Social Security tax withholding rate on wages -- from the normal 6.2% to 4.2% (your employer's 6.2% rate is unchanged). For 2012 and beyond, however, Social Security tax withholding on your wages will jump back to the standard 6.2% rate.
While many employees may not realize the magnitude of the Social Security tax, self-employed folks know it all too well. That's because the self-employed must pay the entire 12.4% tax rate out of their own pockets, based on the amount of their net self-employment income. This is one big reason why companies often prefer to treat workers as self-employed independent contractors rather than employees. Companies don't owe any Social Security tax on amounts paid to independent contractors.
For both 2010 and 2011, the Social Security tax self-employment income ceiling is $106,800 (same as the wage ceiling for employees). So if your 2010 self-employment income was $106,800 or more, you paid the Social Security tax maximum of $13,243 last year (12.4% x $106,800 = $13,243).
In 2011, the hit will be less thanks to a one-year 2 percentage-point reduction in the Social Security tax rate on self-employment income -- from the normal 12.4% to 10.4%. For 2012 and beyond, however, the Social Security tax on self-employment income is scheduled to return to the standard 12.4% rate.
To give you an idea of how the Social Security tax can add up over your working life, consider my personal situation. In 35 years behind the grindstone (about half as an employee and the other half self-employed), I've paid $219,000 in Social Security tax. My employers paid another $41,000. That amounts to $260,000 in total. During my time as a self-employed guy, I've had some years where my Social Tax bill exceeded my combined federal and state income tax bills.
Believe me, if I could get the $260,000 back, stop paying the tax, and forego receiving any benefits, I would do it in a heartbeat. In fact, if I could just stop paying the tax in exchange for walking away from any future benefits, I would do that too. Why? Because I have big doubts I will actually receive the promised level of benefits when the time comes.
And thanks to the government's official contention that there has been little to no inflation over the past few years, the Social Security tax ceiling has been stuck at $106,800 since 2009. However, the latest Social Security Administration projection says it will start rising again in 2012 and beyond. The projected ceilings for the next nine years are as follows.
If these numbers pan out, the maximum Social Security tax hit in 2020 would be $19,009 (12.4% x $153,300). That's assuming Congress doesn't increase the tax rate, which could easily happen. There's also a chance the ceiling will be increased beyond what you see here or even entirely removed in an attempt to put the system on a sounder financial footing. If there's no ceiling, you would owe Social Security tax on wages and self-employment income on every dollar you earn.
Another misunderstanding about Social Security: Some people think the government has set up an account with their name on it to hold the money to pay for their future Social Security benefits. After all, that must be where all the Social Security taxes on people's wages and self-employment income go, right? Wrong. There are no individual accounts. In fact, when the Social Security system runs a surplus (which it has in most years until now), the federal government sucks out the excess cash and issues the system an IOU. But the only way those IOUs will ever be paid is through future taxes. Meanwhile, the system is now projected to run out of money (including those nebulous IOUs) in 2036 unless taxes are raised or benefits are cut.
Notice that no one is even speaking about this in the main stream media...lets worry about giving billions to the rest of the world, or lets give billions in subsidies to illegals then to do whats right and take care of our own...
by Bill Bischoff
Friday, May 27, 2011
To restore and uphold the sovereignty and rights of the individual States as guaranteed by the tenth amendment of the United States Constitution, which states, "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."
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Is the Sun Setting on America?
Everything is not about economics. I know we’re taught to believe that everything has something to do with economics. Things don’t matter unless they have something to do with economics. Everything must pass through the economic lens. We view everything through the economic lens. We’re taught to view everything through the economic lens. We’re reared, we’re bred to view things through the economic lens. But not all things are economic. And Russell Kirk, one of the few conservatives in the last century that understood this – I think Ronald Reagan at some level understood this, too. And Kirk wrote this:
“Men read and write only because they are convinced that certain great subjects are worth reading and writing about. Four great themes, it seems to me, have been the inspiration of most important imaginative literature from the dawn of Greek civilization down to our age. The first of these is religion: the description of the relation between divine nature and human nature, as in Hesiod and Dante and Milton. The second is heroism: the nobility of strong and earnest men, as in Homer or Virgil or Mallory. The third is love: the devotion beyond mere appetite, as in classical legend or medieval romance. The fourth is the intricacy of character and class, ranging all the way from Chaucer to Conrad.
“Now, a society which has lost its religious convictions and its society denies itself the first theme. A society which denies the right to greatness and to distinctions among men deprives itself of the second theme.” We’re two for two so far, folks. “A society which takes love for no more than the carnal appetite cannot attach real significance even to the novel of adultery.” Three for three now. And finally, “A society which looks upon men as mere production and consumption units of interchangeable value cannot understand the subtle shadings of personality and rank of a different sort of age.” That’s four for four. “The springs of the imagination thus are dried up. For a time, satire can exist by pointing out the decay of faith and heroism and love and variety; but when even the memory of these themes fade, then satire, too, comes to an end. Then boredom triumphs in life and art.”
Spot on. That is just spot on. Could not be more spot on. And the interesting thing here is, what do you do about it? I mean, the interesting question is what do you do about it? How are you going to fix that? You have teachers that don’t even know who Dante is. Who in the hell reads Dante? Here, here’s a good question for the average reader out there. And I don’t mean to vilify; I don’t mean to impugn. Simply demonstrating – and maybe I’m selling you guys short because you guys are smart......
Finish the title of the work: “Dante’s blank.” And how many stages were there? Can you answer that question, well can you???
We got “Inferno.” But I’m not sure of the stages.....Right???
Hmm. Hmm. I’m not even sure that I’ve read some of it. The point is we don’t read these classics anymore. We’re immune. Why, we read John Grisham and Stephen King now. They're our heroes. And they all deal in adulterated rubbish. It’s all rubbish. We’re obsessed with the decay of great men, like Johnny Cash. We don’t want to hear about how good Johnny Cash was. We want to hear about him popping pills. We don’t want to hear about how great any artist was or any man was. We want to know the dirty underbelly. We want to know who he was screwing on the side. We want to know about his adulterous, illicit affairs. We’re not allowed to have heroes anymore, is the point. A hero is an adulterer who admits it. That’s a hero.
Maybe this is why many people turn and see men like Navy Seals as modern-day heroes.
Like Ilana Mercer was saying the other day, if you’re a big, manly kind of man, and you have all those virtues that once made men great, but there’s no market for those things anymore, you know, we ostracize manly men in society.
There’s not a man on television that knows how to screw in a light bulb these days. We have to have women do it. You watch a television show, the biggest, most badass cops on that Chicago police show, what is the name of that, the one with...
Yeah, yeah, “Chicago Code.” Yeah, Jennifer Beals is the hero.
Do you guys love that show??? Of course you guys do...
Well, sure, you got a chick hero. Watch “CSI,” the women are heroes. They're running the damn show. We’re not allowed to have male heroes. We’ve so feminized our society, Gal Qaeda has brainwashed everyone. Everyone’s equal. We don’t need women in the – women have expanded beyond doing this and that and the other. And women don’t – man, you’ve just taken one of the most beautiful things in human existence, which is the female form, and the feminine spirit, the mothering, maternal instinct, you’ve just taken it, you’ve just pooped on it. You want women to go out there and kill people? Really? Oh, God. Seriously? Where’s the goodness? Where’s the goodness. Where is the good nurturing, the motherly part? Where does that come in? “We don’t need that. We have government programs, you idiot.”
Do you not see the point? In this incessant suicidal drive to make everyone numerically equal, everyone equal in all things, you destroy the beauty that made them different. People don’t – you know what, there are not enough men and women on TV and radio and in print that say things like I just said and I was inspired to say by reading Birzer’s essay, posted at the Imaginative Conservative website. Not enough. Doesn’t happen enough.
You know one of the things that really pisses me off, ladies and gentlemen? And ladies, don’t take this wrong. It pisses me off, it angers me for what I think are all the right reasons. When I hear politicians and talking heads, dunderheads, droning on about our brave men and women in uniform. Pardon me, call me old-fashioned, I don’t care, I don’t want brave women in uniform. I don’t think that there are – I happen to believe that there are certain things I don’t want for my daughters, and picking up a rifle and having them go fight a war is one of them. Being enlisted and wearing a uniform is one other. Now, some of you are, “Chris, Chris, they have every....” Well, look, there is a role. But it’s not being the brave man or woman. It’s being the brave woman because men don`t count anymore.....
“Men read and write only because they are convinced that certain great subjects are worth reading and writing about. Four great themes, it seems to me, have been the inspiration of most important imaginative literature from the dawn of Greek civilization down to our age. The first of these is religion: the description of the relation between divine nature and human nature, as in Hesiod and Dante and Milton. The second is heroism: the nobility of strong and earnest men, as in Homer or Virgil or Mallory. The third is love: the devotion beyond mere appetite, as in classical legend or medieval romance. The fourth is the intricacy of character and class, ranging all the way from Chaucer to Conrad.
“Now, a society which has lost its religious convictions and its society denies itself the first theme. A society which denies the right to greatness and to distinctions among men deprives itself of the second theme.” We’re two for two so far, folks. “A society which takes love for no more than the carnal appetite cannot attach real significance even to the novel of adultery.” Three for three now. And finally, “A society which looks upon men as mere production and consumption units of interchangeable value cannot understand the subtle shadings of personality and rank of a different sort of age.” That’s four for four. “The springs of the imagination thus are dried up. For a time, satire can exist by pointing out the decay of faith and heroism and love and variety; but when even the memory of these themes fade, then satire, too, comes to an end. Then boredom triumphs in life and art.”
Spot on. That is just spot on. Could not be more spot on. And the interesting thing here is, what do you do about it? I mean, the interesting question is what do you do about it? How are you going to fix that? You have teachers that don’t even know who Dante is. Who in the hell reads Dante? Here, here’s a good question for the average reader out there. And I don’t mean to vilify; I don’t mean to impugn. Simply demonstrating – and maybe I’m selling you guys short because you guys are smart......
Finish the title of the work: “Dante’s blank.” And how many stages were there? Can you answer that question, well can you???
We got “Inferno.” But I’m not sure of the stages.....Right???
Hmm. Hmm. I’m not even sure that I’ve read some of it. The point is we don’t read these classics anymore. We’re immune. Why, we read John Grisham and Stephen King now. They're our heroes. And they all deal in adulterated rubbish. It’s all rubbish. We’re obsessed with the decay of great men, like Johnny Cash. We don’t want to hear about how good Johnny Cash was. We want to hear about him popping pills. We don’t want to hear about how great any artist was or any man was. We want to know the dirty underbelly. We want to know who he was screwing on the side. We want to know about his adulterous, illicit affairs. We’re not allowed to have heroes anymore, is the point. A hero is an adulterer who admits it. That’s a hero.
Maybe this is why many people turn and see men like Navy Seals as modern-day heroes.
Like Ilana Mercer was saying the other day, if you’re a big, manly kind of man, and you have all those virtues that once made men great, but there’s no market for those things anymore, you know, we ostracize manly men in society.
There’s not a man on television that knows how to screw in a light bulb these days. We have to have women do it. You watch a television show, the biggest, most badass cops on that Chicago police show, what is the name of that, the one with...
Yeah, yeah, “Chicago Code.” Yeah, Jennifer Beals is the hero.
Do you guys love that show??? Of course you guys do...
Well, sure, you got a chick hero. Watch “CSI,” the women are heroes. They're running the damn show. We’re not allowed to have male heroes. We’ve so feminized our society, Gal Qaeda has brainwashed everyone. Everyone’s equal. We don’t need women in the – women have expanded beyond doing this and that and the other. And women don’t – man, you’ve just taken one of the most beautiful things in human existence, which is the female form, and the feminine spirit, the mothering, maternal instinct, you’ve just taken it, you’ve just pooped on it. You want women to go out there and kill people? Really? Oh, God. Seriously? Where’s the goodness? Where’s the goodness. Where is the good nurturing, the motherly part? Where does that come in? “We don’t need that. We have government programs, you idiot.”
Do you not see the point? In this incessant suicidal drive to make everyone numerically equal, everyone equal in all things, you destroy the beauty that made them different. People don’t – you know what, there are not enough men and women on TV and radio and in print that say things like I just said and I was inspired to say by reading Birzer’s essay, posted at the Imaginative Conservative website. Not enough. Doesn’t happen enough.
You know one of the things that really pisses me off, ladies and gentlemen? And ladies, don’t take this wrong. It pisses me off, it angers me for what I think are all the right reasons. When I hear politicians and talking heads, dunderheads, droning on about our brave men and women in uniform. Pardon me, call me old-fashioned, I don’t care, I don’t want brave women in uniform. I don’t think that there are – I happen to believe that there are certain things I don’t want for my daughters, and picking up a rifle and having them go fight a war is one of them. Being enlisted and wearing a uniform is one other. Now, some of you are, “Chris, Chris, they have every....” Well, look, there is a role. But it’s not being the brave man or woman. It’s being the brave woman because men don`t count anymore.....
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Obama Finally Visits U.S.-Mexico Border
The president is leading the progressive charge in forcing environmental conscientiousness upon the masses. He has made it his presidential mission to implement "green energy" and "clean jobs" into the American economy, market signals be damned. Obama believes that the accomplishment of such a wildly noble, unquestioningly beneficial goal must be solely the duty of the federal government, but if he were to examine past governmental efforts to intervene in environmental affairs, he might notice that those experiments did far more harm than good. President Obama laid out his plan for (amnesty) comprehensive immigration reform today in El Paso, Texas, saying (illegal immigrants make good democrat voters) immigrants are the way to expand the middle class, make America more competitive on a global level and said immigration reform is an economic imperative, which it is considering illegal immigration costs Arizona and California over $12 billion per year.
The President did what was expected by lumping all immigrants together and failed to distinguish the difference between the two, in fact, Obama went out of his way to make sure Americans believed their was no difference as he referenced immigrants from different countries coming to America and seeing Lady Liberty.
It was a reminder of a simple idea, as old as America itself.
E pluribus, unum. Out of many, one.
We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants - a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America's precepts. That's why millions of people, ancestors to most of us, braved hardship and great risk to come here - so they could be free to work and worship and live their lives in peace. The Asian immigrants who made their way to California's Angel Island. The Germans and Scandinavians who settled across the Midwest. The waves of the Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish immigrants who leaned against the railing to catch that first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.
President Obama said the fence was now "basically complete." This declaration is completely false. The fence along the southern border in total equals 670 miles. The entire southern border is 2000 miles long, which is nowhere near, "basically complete." On top of a meager border fence, the February 2011, Government Accountability Office report shows "1120 southwest border miles have not yet achieved operational control." Also, according to Sheriffs working and living on the U.S.-Mexico border, Obama's assertion that his administration has done it's part to enforce the border is laughable.
Well, over the past two years we have answered those concerns. Under Secretary Napolitano's leadership, we have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible. They wanted more agents on the border. Well, we now have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history. The Border Patrol has 20,000 agents more than twice as many as there were in 2004, a build up that began under President Bush and that we have continued.
They wanted a fence. Well, that fence is now basically complete.
So, we have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement.
Obama took credit for confiscating 64 percent more weapons than ever before. Well, that's what happens when the federal government sends thousands of guns into Mexico in the first place through Operation Fast and Furious under the Obama Justice Department and ATF, of course it becomes easier to confiscate more guns when you put more into an area to begin with.
Obama also called again for the passing of the DREAM Act which failed in the Senate during the previous lame duck session. As a refresher, the DREAM Act if passed would allow children of illegal immigrants to gain citizenship if they go to college or join the military. Or as Obama put it, "Stop punishing children for their parents' mistakes."
Obama asked both sides to avoid playing politics with the issue in order to get to the next election, which was ironic considering the odds of completing immigration reform in the short time remaining during his first term are slim, making his speech today look solely like a political move.
That's one reason it's been so difficult to reform our broken immigration system. When an issue is this complex and raises such strong feelings, it's easier for politicians to defer the problem until after the next election. And there's always a next election. So we've seen a lot blame and politics and ugly rhetoric. We've seen good faith efforts - from leaders of both parties - fall prey to the usual Washington games.
On another note, Obama asked the audience if he needed to build a moat on the border to make republicans happy. There is already a moat on the border Mr. President, it's called the Rio Grande. This was the first visit by Obama to the U.S.-Mexico border despite being invited numerous times by local officials in border states to do so.
The President did what was expected by lumping all immigrants together and failed to distinguish the difference between the two, in fact, Obama went out of his way to make sure Americans believed their was no difference as he referenced immigrants from different countries coming to America and seeing Lady Liberty.
It was a reminder of a simple idea, as old as America itself.
E pluribus, unum. Out of many, one.
We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants - a nation that welcomes those willing to embrace America's precepts. That's why millions of people, ancestors to most of us, braved hardship and great risk to come here - so they could be free to work and worship and live their lives in peace. The Asian immigrants who made their way to California's Angel Island. The Germans and Scandinavians who settled across the Midwest. The waves of the Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Jewish immigrants who leaned against the railing to catch that first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.
President Obama said the fence was now "basically complete." This declaration is completely false. The fence along the southern border in total equals 670 miles. The entire southern border is 2000 miles long, which is nowhere near, "basically complete." On top of a meager border fence, the February 2011, Government Accountability Office report shows "1120 southwest border miles have not yet achieved operational control." Also, according to Sheriffs working and living on the U.S.-Mexico border, Obama's assertion that his administration has done it's part to enforce the border is laughable.
Well, over the past two years we have answered those concerns. Under Secretary Napolitano's leadership, we have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible. They wanted more agents on the border. Well, we now have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history. The Border Patrol has 20,000 agents more than twice as many as there were in 2004, a build up that began under President Bush and that we have continued.
They wanted a fence. Well, that fence is now basically complete.
So, we have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement.
Obama took credit for confiscating 64 percent more weapons than ever before. Well, that's what happens when the federal government sends thousands of guns into Mexico in the first place through Operation Fast and Furious under the Obama Justice Department and ATF, of course it becomes easier to confiscate more guns when you put more into an area to begin with.
Obama also called again for the passing of the DREAM Act which failed in the Senate during the previous lame duck session. As a refresher, the DREAM Act if passed would allow children of illegal immigrants to gain citizenship if they go to college or join the military. Or as Obama put it, "Stop punishing children for their parents' mistakes."
Obama asked both sides to avoid playing politics with the issue in order to get to the next election, which was ironic considering the odds of completing immigration reform in the short time remaining during his first term are slim, making his speech today look solely like a political move.
That's one reason it's been so difficult to reform our broken immigration system. When an issue is this complex and raises such strong feelings, it's easier for politicians to defer the problem until after the next election. And there's always a next election. So we've seen a lot blame and politics and ugly rhetoric. We've seen good faith efforts - from leaders of both parties - fall prey to the usual Washington games.
On another note, Obama asked the audience if he needed to build a moat on the border to make republicans happy. There is already a moat on the border Mr. President, it's called the Rio Grande. This was the first visit by Obama to the U.S.-Mexico border despite being invited numerous times by local officials in border states to do so.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Unemployment is Up. Worse News: Economists Unaffected
There is an old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day, well that phrase does NOT seem to apply to our mighty, central, economic planner overlords in Washington DC. We know this because they are always, shocked or surprised by the “unexpected rise” in first time unemployment benefit claims like they are today; as 474,000 souls trudged off to the unemployment line last week in defiance of Obama and company’s best laid plans.
So, I keep wondering when the economic and social engineers in Mordor on the Potomac are going to create a better economist? With all of their magical powers it would seem to me that Congress, the Commerce Department and the White House should be able to conjure up stable, predictable, job growth every week, alas, our Wizards of Work seem to be able to do only one thing consistently: spend Other People’s Money.
I am also kept wondering when will the beauty of simple economics as a fix dawn on the American shoeple? Here is a simple, 4 step plan to grow the economy:
1.Stop printing more money and start recalling what you have printed
2.Stop hiring federal workers and start firing most of those you have hired
3.Stop running health care systems and start repealing health care acts (all of them)
4.End all our wars, invasions and occupations and bring the army home to honorable discharges.
The only problem with my plan is it WILL create massive unemployment…. for economists.
A special shout out to my friend Mike Church...
So, I keep wondering when the economic and social engineers in Mordor on the Potomac are going to create a better economist? With all of their magical powers it would seem to me that Congress, the Commerce Department and the White House should be able to conjure up stable, predictable, job growth every week, alas, our Wizards of Work seem to be able to do only one thing consistently: spend Other People’s Money.
I am also kept wondering when will the beauty of simple economics as a fix dawn on the American shoeple? Here is a simple, 4 step plan to grow the economy:
1.Stop printing more money and start recalling what you have printed
2.Stop hiring federal workers and start firing most of those you have hired
3.Stop running health care systems and start repealing health care acts (all of them)
4.End all our wars, invasions and occupations and bring the army home to honorable discharges.
The only problem with my plan is it WILL create massive unemployment…. for economists.
A special shout out to my friend Mike Church...
Saturday, April 16, 2011
No More Statism
Not surprisingly, liberals are calling for tax hikes on the rich as their way to pay for the ever-burgeoning costs of the welfare-warfare state.
Conservatives pretend to oppose tax hikes. Their preferred method of funding the welfare-warfare state is through the Federal Reserve, whose job is to provide the money and credit needed to fund excess federal spending without the need to raise income taxes.
That's what passes for philosophical debate between liberals and conservatives. The fight isn't over the legitimacy of the welfare-warfare state way of life. They both agree on that. The fight is over how to fund it (and, of course, which side gets to run it).
The controversy perfectly reflects how different we libertarians are from statists. We libertarians don't argue over whether the welfare-warfare state should be funded by income taxation or inflation. Our position is: Immediately repeal all welfare-state programs (beginning with the crown jewels of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), repeal all interventionist and regulatory programs (beginning with the drug war), and dismantle the U.S. government's military empire, close the bases, and discharge the troops into the private sector.
Oh, and abolish the IRS and the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid taxes, and the Federal Reserve.
In other words, leave people free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, leave people free to do whatever they want with their own money, leave people free to make whatever choices they want in life so long as their conduct is peaceful, and depend on a well-armed, self-trained citizen soldiery that would be ready to voluntarily come to the defense of our country in the extremely unlikely event of an invasion.
With major exceptions like slavery and tariffs and many minor exceptions, the libertarian position was the position of America’s Founding Fathers. They abhorred the statist philosophy that has now held our nation in its grip for many decades.
With the exception of President Lincoln’s unconstitutional imposition of an income tax to fund his war against the seceding states, the United States had no income taxation or IRS from the nation’s founding in 1787 to the early part of the 20th century. Americans were free to keep everything they earned.
When the federal government didn’t tax income, lots of poor people became wealthy. Even more entered the ranks of the middle class.
For most of that entire time, there was no central bank, paper money, or legal-tender laws. (Again, Lincoln’s tenure was a big exception.) Americans used gold and silver coins as their official money, which is what the Constitution required. When government was unable to debase the currency, the result was the greatest buildup of productive capital that people had ever seen.
The massive buildup of capital, in turn, made workers more productive. More productivity meant higher revenues. Higher revenues brought higher wages for the workers.
For the first time in history, masses of poor people were breaking free of the chains of poverty, which is precisely why thousands of penniless immigrants were fleeing the European and Asian lands of statism to come to a land of no welfare-warfare state. (Did I mention that America had no immigration controls during most of that period as well?)
Our American ancestors also detested militarism, standing armies, conscription, and empires. After all, they had rebelled against an empire, together with the ever-burgeoning taxes, debt, and inflation needed to fund it. Many of them had immigrated to America to escape conscription and perpetual war.
Charity was entirely voluntary for more than 100 years. By and large, Americans were a religious people. The thought of using the power of Caesar to interfere with the exercise of God’s great gift of free will was anathema to our ancestors. People had the moral right to decide what to do with their own money, they firmly believed. That’s what freedom of choice is all about. They would never have tolerated mandatory government-enforced “charity” in the form of such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, grants, and subsidies.
Today, the federal government is mired in ever-increasing spending, debt, taxes, and inflation. How can that surprise anyone? Americans have abandoned the founding principles of their nation in favor of the statism from which our American ancestors rebelled or fled.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidies, grants, income taxation, IRS, the drug war, the DEA, the Federal Reserve, a thousand foreign military bases, the CIA, the NSA, the TSA, occupations of foreign countries, undeclared wars of aggression, standby conscription, kidnapping, torture, Gitmo, secret prison camps, invasions of privacy, unreasonable searches and seizures, torture, and assassination.
It’s all part and parcel of the statism that now afflicts our land. That’s the root of America’s economic and social woes. There is only one way to restore freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony to our land, and it lies not in figuring out how to fund the welfare-warfare state way of life. It lies in rejecting the welfare-warfare state way of life in favor of the libertarian principles that guided the founding of our nation — no income tax, no IRS, no Federal Reserve, no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or other welfare, no drug war, no militarism, no empire.
In other words, the key to our nation’s future well-being lies with no more statism.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Conservatives pretend to oppose tax hikes. Their preferred method of funding the welfare-warfare state is through the Federal Reserve, whose job is to provide the money and credit needed to fund excess federal spending without the need to raise income taxes.
That's what passes for philosophical debate between liberals and conservatives. The fight isn't over the legitimacy of the welfare-warfare state way of life. They both agree on that. The fight is over how to fund it (and, of course, which side gets to run it).
The controversy perfectly reflects how different we libertarians are from statists. We libertarians don't argue over whether the welfare-warfare state should be funded by income taxation or inflation. Our position is: Immediately repeal all welfare-state programs (beginning with the crown jewels of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), repeal all interventionist and regulatory programs (beginning with the drug war), and dismantle the U.S. government's military empire, close the bases, and discharge the troops into the private sector.
Oh, and abolish the IRS and the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid taxes, and the Federal Reserve.
In other words, leave people free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, leave people free to do whatever they want with their own money, leave people free to make whatever choices they want in life so long as their conduct is peaceful, and depend on a well-armed, self-trained citizen soldiery that would be ready to voluntarily come to the defense of our country in the extremely unlikely event of an invasion.
With major exceptions like slavery and tariffs and many minor exceptions, the libertarian position was the position of America’s Founding Fathers. They abhorred the statist philosophy that has now held our nation in its grip for many decades.
With the exception of President Lincoln’s unconstitutional imposition of an income tax to fund his war against the seceding states, the United States had no income taxation or IRS from the nation’s founding in 1787 to the early part of the 20th century. Americans were free to keep everything they earned.
When the federal government didn’t tax income, lots of poor people became wealthy. Even more entered the ranks of the middle class.
For most of that entire time, there was no central bank, paper money, or legal-tender laws. (Again, Lincoln’s tenure was a big exception.) Americans used gold and silver coins as their official money, which is what the Constitution required. When government was unable to debase the currency, the result was the greatest buildup of productive capital that people had ever seen.
The massive buildup of capital, in turn, made workers more productive. More productivity meant higher revenues. Higher revenues brought higher wages for the workers.
For the first time in history, masses of poor people were breaking free of the chains of poverty, which is precisely why thousands of penniless immigrants were fleeing the European and Asian lands of statism to come to a land of no welfare-warfare state. (Did I mention that America had no immigration controls during most of that period as well?)
Our American ancestors also detested militarism, standing armies, conscription, and empires. After all, they had rebelled against an empire, together with the ever-burgeoning taxes, debt, and inflation needed to fund it. Many of them had immigrated to America to escape conscription and perpetual war.
Charity was entirely voluntary for more than 100 years. By and large, Americans were a religious people. The thought of using the power of Caesar to interfere with the exercise of God’s great gift of free will was anathema to our ancestors. People had the moral right to decide what to do with their own money, they firmly believed. That’s what freedom of choice is all about. They would never have tolerated mandatory government-enforced “charity” in the form of such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, grants, and subsidies.
Today, the federal government is mired in ever-increasing spending, debt, taxes, and inflation. How can that surprise anyone? Americans have abandoned the founding principles of their nation in favor of the statism from which our American ancestors rebelled or fled.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidies, grants, income taxation, IRS, the drug war, the DEA, the Federal Reserve, a thousand foreign military bases, the CIA, the NSA, the TSA, occupations of foreign countries, undeclared wars of aggression, standby conscription, kidnapping, torture, Gitmo, secret prison camps, invasions of privacy, unreasonable searches and seizures, torture, and assassination.
It’s all part and parcel of the statism that now afflicts our land. That’s the root of America’s economic and social woes. There is only one way to restore freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony to our land, and it lies not in figuring out how to fund the welfare-warfare state way of life. It lies in rejecting the welfare-warfare state way of life in favor of the libertarian principles that guided the founding of our nation — no income tax, no IRS, no Federal Reserve, no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or other welfare, no drug war, no militarism, no empire.
In other words, the key to our nation’s future well-being lies with no more statism.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Friday, March 25, 2011
Tom Woods: The Phony Arguments for Presidential War Powers
By: Thomas E. Woods Jr.
(WIRE REPORT) - A U.S. president has attacked another country, so it’s time for the scam artists to pull out their fake constitutional arguments in support of our dear leader. Not all of them are doing so, to be sure – in fact, it’s been rather a hoot to hear supporters of the Iraq war suddenly caterwauling about the Constitution’s restraints on the power of the president to initiate hostilities abroad. But I’m told that radio host Mark Levin criticized Ron Paul on his program the other day on the precise grounds that the congressman didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to war powers and the Constitution.
That means it’s time to lay out all the common claims, both constitutional and historical, advanced on behalf of presidential war powers, and refute them one by one.
“The president has the power to initiate hostilities without consulting Congress.”
Ever since the Korean War, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution – which refers to the president as the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” – has been interpreted this way.
But what the framers actually meant by that clause was that once war has been declared, it was the President’s responsibility as commander-in-chief to direct the war. Alexander Hamilton spoke in such terms when he said that the president, although lacking the power to declare war, would have “the direction of war when authorized or begun.” The president acting alone was authorized only to repel sudden attacks (hence the decision to withhold from him only the power to “declare” war, not to “make” war, which was thought to be a necessary emergency power in case of foreign attack).
The Framers assigned to Congress what David Gray Adler has called “senior status in a partnership with the president for the purpose of conducting foreign policy.” Congress possesses the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” “to raise and support Armies,” to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” to “provide for the common Defense,” and even “to declare War.” Congress shares with the president the power to make treaties and to appoint ambassadors. As for the president himself, he is assigned only two powers relating to foreign affairs: he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and he has the power to receive ambassadors.
At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates expressly disclaimed any intention to model the American executive exactly after the British monarchy. James Wilson, for example, remarked that the powers of the British king did not constitute “a proper guide in defining the executive powers. Some of these prerogatives were of a Legislative nature. Among others that of war & peace.” Edmund Randolph likewise contended that the delegates had “no motive to be governed by the British Government as our prototype.”
To repose such foreign-policy authority in the legislative rather than the executive branch of government was a deliberate and dramatic break with the British model of government with which they were most familiar, as well as with that of other nations, where the executive branch (in effect, the monarch) possessed all such rights, including the exclusive right to declare war. The Framers of the Constitution believed that history testified to the executive’s penchant for war. As James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.” Madison even proposed excluding the president from the negotiation of peace treaties, on the grounds that he might obstruct a settlement out of a desire to derive “power and importance from a state of war.”
At the Constitutional Convention, Pierce Butler “was for vesting the power in the President, who will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the nation will support it.” Butler’s motion did not receive so much as a second.
James Wilson assured the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.”
In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton explained that the president’s authority “would be nominally the same with that of the King of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the Legislature.”
According to John Bassett Moore, the great authority on international law who (among other credentials) occupied the first professorship of international law at Columbia University, “There can hardly be room for doubt that the framers of the constitution, when they vested in Congress the power to declare war, never imagined that they were leaving it to the executive to use the military and naval forces of the United States all over the world for the purpose of actually coercing other nations, occupying their territory, and killing their soldiers and citizens, all according to his own notions of the fitness of things, as long as he refrained from calling his action war or persisted in calling it peace.”
In conformity with this understanding, George Washington’s operations on his own authority against the Indians were confined to defensive measures, conscious as he was that the approval of Congress would be necessary for anything further. “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress,” he said, “therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.”
“John Adams made war on France without consulting Congress.”
Supporters of a broad executive war power have sometimes appealed to the Quasi War with France, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, as an example of unilateral warmaking on the part of the president. Francis Wormuth, an authority on war powers and the Constitution, describes that contention as “altogether false.” John Adams “took absolutely no independent action. Congress passed a series of acts that amounted, so the Supreme Court said, to a declaration of imperfect war; and Adams complied with these statutes.” (Wormuth’s reference to the Supreme Court recalls a decision rendered in the wake of the Quasi War, in which the Court ruled that Congress could either declare war or approve hostilities by means of statutes that authorized an undeclared war. The Quasi War was an example of the latter case.)
An incident that occurred during the Quasi War throws further light on the true extent of presidential war powers. Congress authorized the president to seize vessels sailing to French ports. But President Adams, acting on his own authority and without the sanction of Congress, instructed American ships to capture vessels sailing either to or from French ports. Captain George Little, acting under the authority of Adams’ order, seized a Danish ship sailing from a French port. When Little was sued for damages, the case made its way to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Captain Little could indeed be sued for damages in the case. “In short,” writes war powers expert Louis Fisher in summary, “congressional policy announced in a statute necessarily prevails over inconsistent presidential orders and military actions. Presidential orders, even those issued as Commander in Chief, are subject to restrictions imposed by Congress.”
“Jefferson acted unilaterally against the Barbary pirates.”
Another incident frequently cited on behalf of a general presidential power to deploy American forces and commence hostilities involves Jefferson’s policy toward the Barbary states, which demanded protection money from governments whose ships sailed the Mediterranean. Immediately prior to Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, Congress passed naval legislation that, among other things, provided for six frigates that “shall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct.” It was to this instruction and authority that Jefferson appealed when he ordered American ships to the Mediterranean. In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to “protect our commerce & chastise their insolence – by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them.”
In late 1801, the pasha of Tripoli did declare war on the U.S. Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense”; Congress alone could authorize “measures of offense also.” Thus Jefferson told Congress: “I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.”
Jefferson consistently deferred to Congress in his dealings with the Barbary pirates. “Recent studies by the Justice Department and statements made during congressional debate,” Louis Fisher writes, “imply that Jefferson took military measures against the Barbary powers without seeking the approval or authority of Congress. In fact, in at least ten statutes, Congress explicitly authorized military action by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Congress passed legislation in 1802 to authorize the President to equip armed vessels to protect commerce and seamen in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and adjoining seas. The statute authorized American ships to seize vessels belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed to those who brought the vessels into port. Additional legislation in 1804 gave explicit support for ‘warlike operations against the regency of Tripoli, or any other of the Barbary powers.’”
Consider also Jefferson’s statement to Congress in late 1805 regarding a boundary dispute with Spain over Louisiana and Florida. According to Jefferson, Spain appeared to have an “intention to advance on our possessions until they shall be repressed by an opposing force. Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force…. But the course to be pursued will require the command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or to deny. To them I communicate every fact material for their information and the documents necessary to enable them to judge for themselves. To their wisdom, then, I look for the course I am to pursue, and will pursue with sincere zeal that which they shall approve.”
“Presidents have sent men into battle hundreds of times without getting congressional authorization.”
This argument, like so much propaganda, originated with the U.S. government itself. At the time of the Korean War, a number of congressmen contended that “history will show that on more than 100 occasions in the life of this Republic the President as Commander in Chief has ordered the fleet or the troops to do certain things which involved the risk of war” without the consent of Congress. In 1966, in defense of the Vietnam War, the State Department adopted a similar line: “Since the Constitution was adopted there have been at least 125 instances in which the President has ordered the armed forces to take action or maintain positions abroad without obtaining prior congressional authorization, starting with the ‘undeclared war’ with France (1798-1800).”
We have already seen that the war with France in no way lends support to those who favor broad presidential war powers. As for the rest, the great presidential scholar Edward S. Corwin pointed out that this lengthy list of alleged precedents consisted mainly of “fights with pirates, landings of small naval contingents on barbarous or semi-barbarous coasts, the dispatch of small bodies of troops to chase bandits or cattle rustlers across the Mexican border, and the like.”
To support their position, therefore, the neoconservatives and their left-liberal clones are counting chases of cattle rustlers as examples of presidential warmaking, and as precedents for sending millions of Americans into war with foreign governments on the other side of the globe.
“The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives the president the power to commit troops anywhere he likes for 90 days.”
Which is why it’s manifestly unconstitutional. I’ve written on this elsewhere.
“If the United Nations authorizes military action, the president does not need to consult Congress.”
The UN Charter itself notes that the Security Council’s commitment of member nations’ troops must be authorized by these nations’ “respective constitutional processes.” The Congressional Research Service’s Louis Fisher explains further: “Assured by Truman that he understood and respected the war prerogatives of Congress, the Senate ratified the UN Charter. Article 43 provided that all UN members shall make available to the Security Council, in accordance with special agreements, armed forces and other assistance. Each nation would ratify those agreements ‘in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.’ It then became the obligation of Congress to pass legislation to define the constitutional processes of the United States. Section 6 of the UN Participation Act of 1945 states with singular clarity that the special agreements ‘shall be subject to the approval of the Congress by appropriate Act or joint resolution.’ The procedure was specific and clear. Both branches knew what the Constitution required. The President would first have to obtain the approval of Congress.”
The UN Participation Act’s provisions regarding military action and the president have often been misread, thanks to a qualification in Article 6. But that qualification simply means that once the president has obtained congressional approval for a special agreement with the UN Security Council to make American forces available to the UN, he does not need congressional approval a second time to implement that agreement.
Fisher elaborates on the UN Participation Act of 1945 here. (See especially pp. 1249-1250.)
The remaining claims, somewhat more technical in nature, have been put forth most memorably by John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general under George W. Bush. These are paraphrases of Yoo’s positions. They are replied to in much more detail in Who Killed the Constitution? by the present author and Kevin Gutzman.
“In the eighteenth century, a ‘declaration of war’ was a merely rhetorical and communicative act – a ‘courtesy to the enemy’ – and did not involve the initiation or authorization of hostilities. Thus in granting Congress the power to declare war, the Constitution had merely given it the power to communicate to an enemy people (as well as to neutrals and to the country’s own citizens that a state of war existed; the president, on the other hand, retained the power actually to bring the United States into war by commencing military action.”
This is partly correct. In the eighteenth century a “declaration of war” could indeed have this lesser meaning. But a review of eighteenth-century usage reveals that to “declare war” could also mean actually to begin a war.
Consider also that as the Constitution was being debated, Federalists sought to reassure skeptical anti-Federalists that the president’s powers were not so expansive after all. For one thing, the Federalists said, the president lacked the power to declare war. In order for their argument to carry any weight, “declare war” must have been taken to mean the power to initiate hostilities – for no anti-Federalist would have been appeased by “Sure, the president can take the country to war on his own initiative, but the power to draft declaratory statements will rest with Congress!”
If Yoo’s argument were correct, we should expect to see presidents in the years immediately following ratification of the Constitution taking bold military action without concerning themselves much about the will of Congress, which according to Yoo had only the power to issue declaratory statements. But as we have seen in the examples of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, the opposite was in fact the case; these early presidents were careful to defer to Congress.
“Congress may have some power over major wars, but lesser uses of force are reserved to the president alone.”
The evidence from the early republic contradicts this claim. Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase summed up the reigning doctrine in 1800: “Congress is empowered to declare a general war, or congress may wage a limited war; limited in place, in objects and in time.” The 1804 case of Little v. Barreme involved a ship commander who, during the Quasi War with France in the late 1790s, had seized a ship that he thought was illegally trading with France. The commander was following a directive from President John Adams in seizing this ship, which had been coming from France. But Congress had authorized President Adams only to seize ships going to France; in short, the president’s directive ventured beyond what congress had called for in this limited war. In a unanimous decision, the Court declared that the commander was liable for damages even though he had acted in accordance with a presidential directive. No such presidential directive could override the authority of congress, said the Court.
“The Vesting Clause grants the president a wide array of unspecified powers pertaining to foreign affairs.”
You won’t hear this argument in many casual discussions of presidential war powers, but since Yoo cited it in a draft memorandum he wrote for the Department of Defense in early 2002, it’s worth a brief reply. (Again, a lengthier reply can be found in Who Killed the Constitution?)
The Vesting Clause can be found in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution; “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” According to this view, the Vesting Clause bestows on the president a host of unspecified powers in addition to the specific ones listed in the rest of Article II. The Framers of the Constitution, they say, thereby showed that they wanted the president to exercise all powers that would have been recognized in the eighteenth century as being fundamentally executive in nature, even if those powers are not actually mentioned in the Constitution. Congress, on the other hand, is assigned no such open-ended authority but is instead limited by the Constitution to all “legislative Powers herein granted,” a reference to the specific list of powers that then follows. The conclusion: the president may rightly exercise all powers relating to foreign affairs (since such powers are by their nature executive) except those specifically assigned to Congress.
Unfortunately for Yoo, he will not find any support for his views on executive power and the Vesting Clause in the state constitutions drawn up after 1776, in the Federalist, or in the state ratification debates. Nowhere in the state constitutions do we see any indication of an intent to vest the executive with an array of unspecified powers beyond those that were expressly mentioned. In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton argued that the American president would be much weaker than the British king, and cited the specific list of powers the Constitution grants the president. That argument would have been absurd and dishonest if the Vesting Clause had given the president an additional reservoir of powers beyond those Hamilton catalogued. Curtis Bradley and Martin Flaherty, writing in the Michigan Law Review, conclude that “in the thousands of pages recording these debates the argument that the Vesting Clause grants the president a general foreign affairs power simply does not appear.”
In short, there is no constitutional support for the presidential war powers claimed by mainstream left and right. That’s why they usually wind up claiming that the congressional power to declare war is “obsolete.” They can’t deny its existence, so they deny the document in which it is contained. And that means they lose the argument.
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is the New York Times bestselling author of 11 books. A senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Woods holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
(WIRE REPORT) - A U.S. president has attacked another country, so it’s time for the scam artists to pull out their fake constitutional arguments in support of our dear leader. Not all of them are doing so, to be sure – in fact, it’s been rather a hoot to hear supporters of the Iraq war suddenly caterwauling about the Constitution’s restraints on the power of the president to initiate hostilities abroad. But I’m told that radio host Mark Levin criticized Ron Paul on his program the other day on the precise grounds that the congressman didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to war powers and the Constitution.
That means it’s time to lay out all the common claims, both constitutional and historical, advanced on behalf of presidential war powers, and refute them one by one.
“The president has the power to initiate hostilities without consulting Congress.”
Ever since the Korean War, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution – which refers to the president as the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” – has been interpreted this way.
But what the framers actually meant by that clause was that once war has been declared, it was the President’s responsibility as commander-in-chief to direct the war. Alexander Hamilton spoke in such terms when he said that the president, although lacking the power to declare war, would have “the direction of war when authorized or begun.” The president acting alone was authorized only to repel sudden attacks (hence the decision to withhold from him only the power to “declare” war, not to “make” war, which was thought to be a necessary emergency power in case of foreign attack).
The Framers assigned to Congress what David Gray Adler has called “senior status in a partnership with the president for the purpose of conducting foreign policy.” Congress possesses the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” “to raise and support Armies,” to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” to “provide for the common Defense,” and even “to declare War.” Congress shares with the president the power to make treaties and to appoint ambassadors. As for the president himself, he is assigned only two powers relating to foreign affairs: he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and he has the power to receive ambassadors.
At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates expressly disclaimed any intention to model the American executive exactly after the British monarchy. James Wilson, for example, remarked that the powers of the British king did not constitute “a proper guide in defining the executive powers. Some of these prerogatives were of a Legislative nature. Among others that of war & peace.” Edmund Randolph likewise contended that the delegates had “no motive to be governed by the British Government as our prototype.”
To repose such foreign-policy authority in the legislative rather than the executive branch of government was a deliberate and dramatic break with the British model of government with which they were most familiar, as well as with that of other nations, where the executive branch (in effect, the monarch) possessed all such rights, including the exclusive right to declare war. The Framers of the Constitution believed that history testified to the executive’s penchant for war. As James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.” Madison even proposed excluding the president from the negotiation of peace treaties, on the grounds that he might obstruct a settlement out of a desire to derive “power and importance from a state of war.”
At the Constitutional Convention, Pierce Butler “was for vesting the power in the President, who will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the nation will support it.” Butler’s motion did not receive so much as a second.
James Wilson assured the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.”
In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton explained that the president’s authority “would be nominally the same with that of the King of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which by the constitution under consideration would appertain to the Legislature.”
According to John Bassett Moore, the great authority on international law who (among other credentials) occupied the first professorship of international law at Columbia University, “There can hardly be room for doubt that the framers of the constitution, when they vested in Congress the power to declare war, never imagined that they were leaving it to the executive to use the military and naval forces of the United States all over the world for the purpose of actually coercing other nations, occupying their territory, and killing their soldiers and citizens, all according to his own notions of the fitness of things, as long as he refrained from calling his action war or persisted in calling it peace.”
In conformity with this understanding, George Washington’s operations on his own authority against the Indians were confined to defensive measures, conscious as he was that the approval of Congress would be necessary for anything further. “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress,” he said, “therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.”
“John Adams made war on France without consulting Congress.”
Supporters of a broad executive war power have sometimes appealed to the Quasi War with France, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, as an example of unilateral warmaking on the part of the president. Francis Wormuth, an authority on war powers and the Constitution, describes that contention as “altogether false.” John Adams “took absolutely no independent action. Congress passed a series of acts that amounted, so the Supreme Court said, to a declaration of imperfect war; and Adams complied with these statutes.” (Wormuth’s reference to the Supreme Court recalls a decision rendered in the wake of the Quasi War, in which the Court ruled that Congress could either declare war or approve hostilities by means of statutes that authorized an undeclared war. The Quasi War was an example of the latter case.)
An incident that occurred during the Quasi War throws further light on the true extent of presidential war powers. Congress authorized the president to seize vessels sailing to French ports. But President Adams, acting on his own authority and without the sanction of Congress, instructed American ships to capture vessels sailing either to or from French ports. Captain George Little, acting under the authority of Adams’ order, seized a Danish ship sailing from a French port. When Little was sued for damages, the case made its way to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Captain Little could indeed be sued for damages in the case. “In short,” writes war powers expert Louis Fisher in summary, “congressional policy announced in a statute necessarily prevails over inconsistent presidential orders and military actions. Presidential orders, even those issued as Commander in Chief, are subject to restrictions imposed by Congress.”
“Jefferson acted unilaterally against the Barbary pirates.”
Another incident frequently cited on behalf of a general presidential power to deploy American forces and commence hostilities involves Jefferson’s policy toward the Barbary states, which demanded protection money from governments whose ships sailed the Mediterranean. Immediately prior to Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, Congress passed naval legislation that, among other things, provided for six frigates that “shall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct.” It was to this instruction and authority that Jefferson appealed when he ordered American ships to the Mediterranean. In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to “protect our commerce & chastise their insolence – by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them.”
In late 1801, the pasha of Tripoli did declare war on the U.S. Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense”; Congress alone could authorize “measures of offense also.” Thus Jefferson told Congress: “I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.”
Jefferson consistently deferred to Congress in his dealings with the Barbary pirates. “Recent studies by the Justice Department and statements made during congressional debate,” Louis Fisher writes, “imply that Jefferson took military measures against the Barbary powers without seeking the approval or authority of Congress. In fact, in at least ten statutes, Congress explicitly authorized military action by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Congress passed legislation in 1802 to authorize the President to equip armed vessels to protect commerce and seamen in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and adjoining seas. The statute authorized American ships to seize vessels belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed to those who brought the vessels into port. Additional legislation in 1804 gave explicit support for ‘warlike operations against the regency of Tripoli, or any other of the Barbary powers.’”
Consider also Jefferson’s statement to Congress in late 1805 regarding a boundary dispute with Spain over Louisiana and Florida. According to Jefferson, Spain appeared to have an “intention to advance on our possessions until they shall be repressed by an opposing force. Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force…. But the course to be pursued will require the command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or to deny. To them I communicate every fact material for their information and the documents necessary to enable them to judge for themselves. To their wisdom, then, I look for the course I am to pursue, and will pursue with sincere zeal that which they shall approve.”
“Presidents have sent men into battle hundreds of times without getting congressional authorization.”
This argument, like so much propaganda, originated with the U.S. government itself. At the time of the Korean War, a number of congressmen contended that “history will show that on more than 100 occasions in the life of this Republic the President as Commander in Chief has ordered the fleet or the troops to do certain things which involved the risk of war” without the consent of Congress. In 1966, in defense of the Vietnam War, the State Department adopted a similar line: “Since the Constitution was adopted there have been at least 125 instances in which the President has ordered the armed forces to take action or maintain positions abroad without obtaining prior congressional authorization, starting with the ‘undeclared war’ with France (1798-1800).”
We have already seen that the war with France in no way lends support to those who favor broad presidential war powers. As for the rest, the great presidential scholar Edward S. Corwin pointed out that this lengthy list of alleged precedents consisted mainly of “fights with pirates, landings of small naval contingents on barbarous or semi-barbarous coasts, the dispatch of small bodies of troops to chase bandits or cattle rustlers across the Mexican border, and the like.”
To support their position, therefore, the neoconservatives and their left-liberal clones are counting chases of cattle rustlers as examples of presidential warmaking, and as precedents for sending millions of Americans into war with foreign governments on the other side of the globe.
“The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives the president the power to commit troops anywhere he likes for 90 days.”
Which is why it’s manifestly unconstitutional. I’ve written on this elsewhere.
“If the United Nations authorizes military action, the president does not need to consult Congress.”
The UN Charter itself notes that the Security Council’s commitment of member nations’ troops must be authorized by these nations’ “respective constitutional processes.” The Congressional Research Service’s Louis Fisher explains further: “Assured by Truman that he understood and respected the war prerogatives of Congress, the Senate ratified the UN Charter. Article 43 provided that all UN members shall make available to the Security Council, in accordance with special agreements, armed forces and other assistance. Each nation would ratify those agreements ‘in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.’ It then became the obligation of Congress to pass legislation to define the constitutional processes of the United States. Section 6 of the UN Participation Act of 1945 states with singular clarity that the special agreements ‘shall be subject to the approval of the Congress by appropriate Act or joint resolution.’ The procedure was specific and clear. Both branches knew what the Constitution required. The President would first have to obtain the approval of Congress.”
The UN Participation Act’s provisions regarding military action and the president have often been misread, thanks to a qualification in Article 6. But that qualification simply means that once the president has obtained congressional approval for a special agreement with the UN Security Council to make American forces available to the UN, he does not need congressional approval a second time to implement that agreement.
Fisher elaborates on the UN Participation Act of 1945 here. (See especially pp. 1249-1250.)
The remaining claims, somewhat more technical in nature, have been put forth most memorably by John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general under George W. Bush. These are paraphrases of Yoo’s positions. They are replied to in much more detail in Who Killed the Constitution? by the present author and Kevin Gutzman.
“In the eighteenth century, a ‘declaration of war’ was a merely rhetorical and communicative act – a ‘courtesy to the enemy’ – and did not involve the initiation or authorization of hostilities. Thus in granting Congress the power to declare war, the Constitution had merely given it the power to communicate to an enemy people (as well as to neutrals and to the country’s own citizens that a state of war existed; the president, on the other hand, retained the power actually to bring the United States into war by commencing military action.”
This is partly correct. In the eighteenth century a “declaration of war” could indeed have this lesser meaning. But a review of eighteenth-century usage reveals that to “declare war” could also mean actually to begin a war.
Consider also that as the Constitution was being debated, Federalists sought to reassure skeptical anti-Federalists that the president’s powers were not so expansive after all. For one thing, the Federalists said, the president lacked the power to declare war. In order for their argument to carry any weight, “declare war” must have been taken to mean the power to initiate hostilities – for no anti-Federalist would have been appeased by “Sure, the president can take the country to war on his own initiative, but the power to draft declaratory statements will rest with Congress!”
If Yoo’s argument were correct, we should expect to see presidents in the years immediately following ratification of the Constitution taking bold military action without concerning themselves much about the will of Congress, which according to Yoo had only the power to issue declaratory statements. But as we have seen in the examples of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, the opposite was in fact the case; these early presidents were careful to defer to Congress.
“Congress may have some power over major wars, but lesser uses of force are reserved to the president alone.”
The evidence from the early republic contradicts this claim. Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase summed up the reigning doctrine in 1800: “Congress is empowered to declare a general war, or congress may wage a limited war; limited in place, in objects and in time.” The 1804 case of Little v. Barreme involved a ship commander who, during the Quasi War with France in the late 1790s, had seized a ship that he thought was illegally trading with France. The commander was following a directive from President John Adams in seizing this ship, which had been coming from France. But Congress had authorized President Adams only to seize ships going to France; in short, the president’s directive ventured beyond what congress had called for in this limited war. In a unanimous decision, the Court declared that the commander was liable for damages even though he had acted in accordance with a presidential directive. No such presidential directive could override the authority of congress, said the Court.
“The Vesting Clause grants the president a wide array of unspecified powers pertaining to foreign affairs.”
You won’t hear this argument in many casual discussions of presidential war powers, but since Yoo cited it in a draft memorandum he wrote for the Department of Defense in early 2002, it’s worth a brief reply. (Again, a lengthier reply can be found in Who Killed the Constitution?)
The Vesting Clause can be found in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution; “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” According to this view, the Vesting Clause bestows on the president a host of unspecified powers in addition to the specific ones listed in the rest of Article II. The Framers of the Constitution, they say, thereby showed that they wanted the president to exercise all powers that would have been recognized in the eighteenth century as being fundamentally executive in nature, even if those powers are not actually mentioned in the Constitution. Congress, on the other hand, is assigned no such open-ended authority but is instead limited by the Constitution to all “legislative Powers herein granted,” a reference to the specific list of powers that then follows. The conclusion: the president may rightly exercise all powers relating to foreign affairs (since such powers are by their nature executive) except those specifically assigned to Congress.
Unfortunately for Yoo, he will not find any support for his views on executive power and the Vesting Clause in the state constitutions drawn up after 1776, in the Federalist, or in the state ratification debates. Nowhere in the state constitutions do we see any indication of an intent to vest the executive with an array of unspecified powers beyond those that were expressly mentioned. In Federalist #69, Alexander Hamilton argued that the American president would be much weaker than the British king, and cited the specific list of powers the Constitution grants the president. That argument would have been absurd and dishonest if the Vesting Clause had given the president an additional reservoir of powers beyond those Hamilton catalogued. Curtis Bradley and Martin Flaherty, writing in the Michigan Law Review, conclude that “in the thousands of pages recording these debates the argument that the Vesting Clause grants the president a general foreign affairs power simply does not appear.”
In short, there is no constitutional support for the presidential war powers claimed by mainstream left and right. That’s why they usually wind up claiming that the congressional power to declare war is “obsolete.” They can’t deny its existence, so they deny the document in which it is contained. And that means they lose the argument.
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is the New York Times bestselling author of 11 books. A senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Woods holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Bill On Texas Secession Presented To TX Legislature
AUSTIN -- The Texas Nationalist Movement will host a rally at the state capitol Saturday urging lawmakers to put the matter of Texas independence before the state's voters in a non-binding plebiscite.
The resolution, drawn up as a concurrent resolution of the Legislature, spells out actions by the federal government which have intruded on the sovereignty of the State of Texas and calls for the plebiscite to be included on the ballot of the next scheduled election for state constitutional amendments. That date is Nov. 8 of this year.
The rally is scheduled from 1-4 p.m. Saturday on the south steps of the State Capitol in Austin. The legislative sponsor of the rally is State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler).
"The elected representatives of the people of Texas need to know what the voters think," TNM president Daniel Miller said. "That is the purpose of this resolution, simply to give our legislators a sense of what the people of Texas think about the actions they are taking in defense of state sovereignty."
Article 1 Section 1 of the Texas Constitution reads:
"Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the pres...ervation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the States."
Article 1 Section 2 of the Texas Constitution reads:
"All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their benefit. The faith of the people of Texas stands pledged to the preservation of a republican form of government, and, subject to this limitation only, they have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient."
Miller said that state officials and lawmakers have done well in attempting to defend the state's sovereignty from federal intrusion, and that this plebescite could help further the goal of reining in federal over-reach.
"The elections last November showed that a lot of people, not only in Texas but across the United States, believe that our federal government is out of control," Miller said. "Even though the power in Congress changed hands, however, Washington continues to try and bully Texas and other states with rules and regulations never voted on by any elected representatives of the people and in clear violation of the Tenth Amendment, which guarantees state sovereignty."
"Simply allowing the people of Texas to vote on this issue in a non-binding way would send a very loud, very clear message to Washington that Texas won't be pushed any farther."
The resolution spells out that the vote would be "non-binding and for advisory purposes only," and that results would be reported not only to state officials, but also to members of Congress and the President.
"We in the Texas Nationalist Movement believe that independence is necessary for the economic and cultural survival of the people of Texas," Miller said. "Even so, there is nothing more any of us would like to see than the United States government steer away from its current path of self-implosion and return to the original intent and purpose of government as defined by the U.S. Constitution."
Visit the Texas Nationalist official website:
http://www.texasnationalist.com/index.php/news/featured/1240-line-in-the-sand-rally
Personally, I cheer Texas on and can only hope that a majority of the states will follow their lead!
The resolution, drawn up as a concurrent resolution of the Legislature, spells out actions by the federal government which have intruded on the sovereignty of the State of Texas and calls for the plebiscite to be included on the ballot of the next scheduled election for state constitutional amendments. That date is Nov. 8 of this year.
The rally is scheduled from 1-4 p.m. Saturday on the south steps of the State Capitol in Austin. The legislative sponsor of the rally is State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler).
"The elected representatives of the people of Texas need to know what the voters think," TNM president Daniel Miller said. "That is the purpose of this resolution, simply to give our legislators a sense of what the people of Texas think about the actions they are taking in defense of state sovereignty."
Article 1 Section 1 of the Texas Constitution reads:
"Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the pres...ervation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the States."
Article 1 Section 2 of the Texas Constitution reads:
"All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their benefit. The faith of the people of Texas stands pledged to the preservation of a republican form of government, and, subject to this limitation only, they have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient."
Miller said that state officials and lawmakers have done well in attempting to defend the state's sovereignty from federal intrusion, and that this plebescite could help further the goal of reining in federal over-reach.
"The elections last November showed that a lot of people, not only in Texas but across the United States, believe that our federal government is out of control," Miller said. "Even though the power in Congress changed hands, however, Washington continues to try and bully Texas and other states with rules and regulations never voted on by any elected representatives of the people and in clear violation of the Tenth Amendment, which guarantees state sovereignty."
"Simply allowing the people of Texas to vote on this issue in a non-binding way would send a very loud, very clear message to Washington that Texas won't be pushed any farther."
The resolution spells out that the vote would be "non-binding and for advisory purposes only," and that results would be reported not only to state officials, but also to members of Congress and the President.
"We in the Texas Nationalist Movement believe that independence is necessary for the economic and cultural survival of the people of Texas," Miller said. "Even so, there is nothing more any of us would like to see than the United States government steer away from its current path of self-implosion and return to the original intent and purpose of government as defined by the U.S. Constitution."
Visit the Texas Nationalist official website:
http://www.texasnationalist.com/index.php/news/featured/1240-line-in-the-sand-rally
Personally, I cheer Texas on and can only hope that a majority of the states will follow their lead!
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