http://www.towleroad.com/2011/09/warrenwarfare.html

1.) Lizzy says, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own.”

Now this is fairly obvious but Lizzy immediately introduces from this premise that people who have gotten rich in this country (at least the ones who did it without sucking off the teat of the Federal Government that Lizzy wants to grow) have gotten rich because the Federal Government, through the tax dollars of the citizenry, created the environment where wealth could be generated.

Now, we can concede this, after a fashion. The whole idea that the US Constitution provides the dynamic where social order can exist and so where wealth can be pursued is something admitted to by all. However, all because Government has a role in sustaining order doesn’t mean that government gets to steal from those who produce and generate wealth.

2.) Lizzy says, “You moved your goods on the roads that the rest of us paid for.”

One would like to ask Lizzy if those who are moving their goods didn’t also pay for the roads that their goods are being shipped upon? One also wants to ask Lizzy if the consumers that helped pay for those roads aren’t likewise advantaged by the ability to receive goods shipped as the producers are advantaged by being able to ship their goods? In other words, it is not as if all those who paid for the roads are not at the same time advantaged by the roads they are paid for, and that quite apart from providing justification to gouge those who create and generate wealth.

Second, on this score, Lizzy seems to extrapolate easily from those things governments should do with money raised in taxation (build roads) to those things that governments shouldn’t do with money stolen in taxation. The US Constitution clearly enumerates and delegates what the Federal government can and cannot do. Lizzy wants to take examples from what the Federal Government can do and apply it to what the Federal Government cannot do.

3.)Lizzy says, “You (the rich) hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.”

If ever anyone was taken advantage of in a business deal it has been US businesses who have been put in the position of having to hire workers who are graduates of Government indoctrination centers (government schools). The US educational system dumbs down intentionally its students and so provides a sub-standard worker for American businesses to hire.

Second, once again, the rich have also paid to educate (for good or for ill) the workers they eventually hired. It is not as if “the rich” are getting off without contributing to the cause.

Third, where in the US Constitution does it enumerate and delegate that the role of the Federal Government is to educate youth?

4.) Lizzy then talks about police forces and fire departments that the citizenry paid for that the wealthy use to protect themselves and their property.

First, Lizzy is running for a Federal office. This is important because it is the States who provide monies for State needs such as police and fire-fighters and not the Feds. Why should Lizzy be making a point justifying Federal taxation by appealing to State functions?

5.) Lizzy talks about “social contract” and “paying forward.”

First, the only social contract that is valid in this country is the US Constitution and the US Constitution is a document that is dedicated to constraining the delimiting the size and scope of the US Government. This is important to note because Lizzy wants to use abstract ideas like “social contract” and “paying it forward,” as excuses to enlarge the already Leviathan State.

Secondly, “pay it forward” to whom? Is Lizzy seriously suggesting that by paying exorbitant tax rates that the produces who generate and create wealth are doing their duty by “paying it forward.”

Third, what Lizzy leaves unsaid is that by “paying it forward” to the State what is happening at the same time is that the family is de-capitalized and so is unable to pay forward an inheritance to the generation that comes behind. What Lizzy apparently desires is that the Wealthy capitalize the State in their paying it forward at the expense of capitalizing their own family. What is required is that some strangers has it paid forwarded while the heirs are left unpaid forwarded.

Lizzy is offering classical Socialism. The State is to be prioritized and the State is to be the determiner of where charity is assigned.

However, Scott Brown how Lizzy Warren is running against is only marginally better.

Can anything good come out of New England?

Clem,

Thank you for your phone call. Since you desire to carry on our correspondence by phone, and not by e-mail I wanted to let you know that you can contact me at ***-***-****. I have your phone number on your business card you gave me so I will take advantage of contacting you when I want to toss some ideas around.

I want to clear up my actions as to why I have posted these exchanges publicly. I have posted these publicly because like many Americans I am completely exasperated with our political process. All attempts, by historic Americans like myself, to be taken seriously by their elected officials are completely pleonastic as revealed in the phoniness of form letters received back or as revealed in the patronizing that occurs when one phones the respective Congress offices. I realize that this is not your fault and that my publicly posting these exchanges likely means that I forfeit whatever input I may have had with you, but frankly I am at the point, as a citizen of this great country, of being exasperated beyond my ability to articulate with what our Federal Government and its representatives are doing.

You mentioned that you thought that the second Sowell article,

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/274020/pyrrhic-victory-thomas-sowell#

did not contend, as I believe, that Dr. Sowell had reversed himself on his initial support on the debt ceiling bill as put forth at this link,

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell072911.php3

I promised I would go back and re-examine the article and I have. Allow me to pull snippets from the second Sowell article that reveal that Dr. Sowell did indeed reverse himself on his support of the Bill that Congressman Walberg egregiously supported.

First, Dr. Sowell starts by titling the article, “Pyrrhic Victory.”

Now we both realize that a Pyrrhic victory is by definition, a victory that is won by incurring terrible losses. Should we believe that Dr. Sowell in his first article was advocating supporting something he knew ahead of time would be a victory that is won by incurring terrible losses only to turn around in the subsequent column and lament the Pyrrhic victory, and that without having changed his mind? To think so stretches credulity.

Second, the subtitle of Sowell’s article is,

“The budget deal turns out to have been a defeat for Republicans.”

Notice that Dr. Sowell uses the phrase, “turns out,” which clearly suggests that it turned out differently than he had hoped unless one believes that Dr. Sowell would have been supporting, in his first column, a bill that he knew beforehand would be a “defeat for Republicans.” Why would Dr. Sowell have supported a bill that he knew beforehand would be a defeat for Republicans? Clearly, this concession on the part of Dr. Sowell’s that “the budget deal turns out to have been a defeat for Republicans,” is an admission that his initial support for the bill that the Republicans supported was errant.

As the article unfolds we read,

“To a remarkable extent, he (Obama) has succeeded, with the help of his friends in the media and the Republicans’ failure to articulate their case.”

Here we see Dr. Sowell faulting Republicans (including Congressman Walberg?), once again. Are we to believe that Sowell, in his first column was supporting the Republicans’ failure to articulate their case or is this yet another example of Sowell conceding that his support in his previous column was a mistake in light of the Republican failure to articulate their case? We need to ask here if Dr. Sowell would have supported the Republican position if he knew in advance that the Republicans would fail to articulate their case.

Sowell closes with these two paragraphs

“Since neither side can afford to be blamed for a disaster like that, this virtually guarantees that the Republicans will have to either go along with whatever new spending and taxing the Democrats demand or risk losing the 2012 election by sharing the blame for another financial disaster.

In short, the Republicans have now been maneuvered into being held responsible for the spending orgy that Democrats alone had the votes to create. Republicans have been had — and so has the country. The recent, short-lived budget deal turns out to be not even a Pyrrhic victory for the Republicans. It has the earmarks of a Pyrrhic defeat.”

These last two paragraphs seals that my reading of Sowell is correct and that Sowell really is giving a mea culpa for his earlier support for the Republican deal that Congressman Walberg supported. I don’t know how any other reading of Sowell’s article except my reading could be considered a fair reading of Dr. Sowell’s words.

Sowell is lamenting that the Republicans were maneuvered into this Politburo Super Congress with the consequence that they are now going to either go along “with whatever new spending and taxing the Democrats demand or risk losing the 2012 election by sharing the blame for another financial disaster.” Now, again Clem, we have to ask ourselves if Dr. Sowell would have been supporting the Republican deal, as he did in the first column under question, if he had knew in advance that this maneuvering, that he laments in this column, was going to be the result of the first deal he now regrets supporting. Again, it stretches credulity to read this column as anything but a regret for earlier support of the Republicans voting to raise the debt ceiling.

Now that I’ve revisited the article under question as I promised, I’m open to your phoning me with your insistence of how I am misreading Dr. Sowell. In the end, Republican support for the deal that was passed was a colossal mistake as Dr. Sowell makes clear in his article. I can only hope that Congressman Walberg will reverse himself just as Dr. Sowell has.

Thank you for your continued collegiality.

Bret L. McAtee
Pastor — Charlotte Christian Reformed Church

Ryan Boeskool
Legislative Aide — Rep. Tim Walberg

Dear Ryan,

Below find a article written by a Constitutional Scholar and a gentleman who served in the Reagan administration. This pertains to our brief discussion on the potential problems with the constitutionality of the recent legislative action in connection with the creation of a Supreme US Congressional structure in order to consider budgetary issues.

Cheers,

Bret L. McAtee
Pastor — Charlotte Christian Reformed Church

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/the_budget_control_act_of_2011_violates_constitutional_order.html

Bret,

The basic response from academia appears to be thus:

http://justenrichment.com/2011/08/04/the-constitutionality-of-the-super-congress/

“The Super Congress doesn’t have the power to do anything absent Congressional approval. Your representative government created the Super Congress, and your representative government will vote its proposals up or down.”

The most compelling reasons for the constitutionality of the act from this legal review are as follows:

The Constitutionality of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (Established by the Recent Debt Ceiling Act)

1. Article I, § 5 of the Constitution provides that “Each House may determine the Rules of its proceedings.” This is the basis for how a wide variety of Congressional decisions are delegated in the first instance to committees, and how some matters are delegated to joint committees. And the Act makes clear that, “The provisions of this title are enacted by Congress … as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively, and as such they shall be considered as part of the rules of each House, respectively, or of that House to which they specifically apply.”

3. Of course, the rules made by the Houses at one point may be changed later, and the Act acknowledges this: “The provisions of this title are enacted by Congress … with full recognition of the constitutional right of either House to change such rules (so far as relating to such House) at any time, in the same manner, and to the same extent as in the case of any other rule of such House.” It might be politically difficult to go back on the fast-track system created by the Act — just as it’s politically difficult to cut back on the filibuster in the Senate, another example of an important feature of our political system that’s created by a Rule of one of the Houses — and I think the authors of the Act wanted that to be politically difficult. But that doesn’t make the rule change unconstitutional.

Thoughts?

Ryan

Ryan Boeskool
Legislative Aide — Rep. Tim Walberg

Ryan,

Thank you for responding.

I apologize if I ever communicated that I thought that counter-arguments were not possible regarding the unconstitutionality of the Super-Congress arrangement. Clearly there are counter arguments. There are always counter arguments, and sometimes those very feeble counter arguments win the day such in the Roe vs. Wade case or the ridiculous rulings on the Commerce clause or the rulings that have given us the doctrine of incorporation.

The problem with this quote you provided,

“The Super Congress doesn’t have the power to do anything absent Congressional approval. Your representative government created the Super Congress, and your representative government will vote its proposals up or down.”

is that the Super Congress obviates the ability of local Congressman to offer amendments and of US Senators to filibuster legislation. Such a Super Congress makes the rest of the Congress, excepting party leadership, largely superfluous window-dressing. Now I quite agree that “each House may determine the Rules of its proceedings,” but I do not agree that Congress can un-Congress itself in favor of a Politburo Congress. Such a action is unconstitutional.

On another related issue to Rep. Walbergs recent Coffee gathering is this article by Thomas Sowell.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/274020/pyrrhic-victory-thomas-sowell#

You will, no doubt, remember that Rep. Walberg put great stock in parading that Thomas Sowell agreed with him on his woeful debt ceiling vote. Well, as the above article reveals, Sowell has reversed himself on the wisdom of that vote.

Has Rep. Walberg reversed himself likewise on his vote for this woeful legislation or does he now think that Dr. Sowell is wrong?

Thank you again for the conversation.

Bret L. McAtee
Pastor — Charlotte Christian Reformed Church