How Relevant is the Constitution in State, County, and City Elections?

By Dr. Harold Pease

With elections signs all around it might be well to be reminded that it is unrealistic to expect national candidates to follow the Constitution when we did not insist that they did so in state, county and city offices. After all, many simply move up to higher office. Some may even view the Constitution as irrelevant at these levels.

Several years ago in California at a public debate for county supervisor the public was invited to offer questions in writing. I did so and watched the monitor of the debate, with a puzzled look on his face sideline my question in preference to others. I presumed it was because it had something to do with the Constitution, which, unfortunately, is considered by many an irrelevant topic at the city, county, or even state level. You are supposed to ask what “goodies” from taxpayer funding are you going to give me and is it more than your opponent?

So what does the Constitution have to do with local or state issues? Everything!! First, it is the only document that every single elected public servant swears to uphold. So the Founders must have thought it relevant at every level.

Second, candidates at lower levels successfully rise to higher levels because of the name recognition obtained at lower levels and eventually become members of the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, often without ever having read the Constitution they are specifically under oath to protect. When I worked as a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate some years ago, I was certain at least 50% had never read it at any level of government. Today I would be surprised if those who had read it exceeded 10%. But no one asks candidates, even while campaigning at the highest levels, when they last read it.

So again, why does this matter? Historically, the two enemies of freedom are: 1) it is the nature of all governments to pull decision making power upward to the seat of government and, 2) the more apathetic and indifferent the population becomes the greater the tendency of the people to push decision making power upwards to the seat of government. When these two forces work together it always leads to the central government eventually having most of the power. The Constitution is full of “handcuffs” to keep decision-making power from getting to the top thus maximizing it with the individual. The Founders overriding philosophy of government, if it could be penned into one sentence, was, “never elevate to a higher level that which can be resolved at a lesser level.”

Even a casual look at the Constitution reveals the separation of powers on the federal level into three distinct branches the legislative, executive, and judicial—each with a specific list. For Congress it was a list of the four types of law they could make (Art. I, Sec. 8), for the president it was the types of executive functions he could execute (Art. II, Sec. 2-3), and for the Supreme Court the types of cases it could adjudicate (Art. III, Sec. 2). The lists exist to both restrict them and to prohibit the concentration of power into one branch. The only type of federal government authorized by the Founders was decidedly a limited one. States, counties, and cities have all the powers not listed, as per Amendment 10.

When these limitations are not understood and protected at lower levels of government, the federal government is constantly tempted to steal authority from the states or counties as per its confiscating environmental, health, and education issues, which are constitutionally 100% non federal government issues. States, counties, and cities should use the Tenth Amendment to tell the federal government to “butt out.” “You have no constitutional authority.” When Congress passed, and the President signed into law, the National Defense Authorization Act, December 31, 2012, both states and counties should have written Congress and the President. “You do not have the right to void Amendments 4, 5, 6, and 8, of The Bill of Rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus for our citizens. The military shall not arrest any of our citizens.”

It comes to this. Sixty years ago it may not have made much difference if a county supervisor/commissioner, or city councilman, swore allegiance to a Constitution that he had not fully studied, or worse, even read. The federal government had not yet absorbed his area of jurisdiction. Now it has! There is hardly an area where the federal government does not have its tentacles embedded, from school lunches to cross gender bathrooms. Over thirty years ago a city councilman complained to me that a third of what he voted on was already mandated because sometime in the past the council had accepted the “free money” which now obligated him. School districts are notorious for having done the same thing.

City, county, and state leaders, you are our buffer from the federal government taking from you your areas of jurisdiction. They have done so for many years because you were complacent in it, or ignorant of the Constitution. Consequently you have lost a large portion of our liberty. Today your understanding of the document must be known BEFORE we place you in power.

This election let us find leaders with Constitutional fire in their bellies to undo the precedents that their predecessors created. All issues on the city and county level are directly or indirectly constitutional issues. We now expect leaders to know, and abide by, the document that they swear to uphold.

 

But, if we Refuse Transgender Bathrooms we lose Federal Funding

By Harold Pease, Ph. D

As reported, every school district in the country received a May 12, 2016 letter allowing transgender students in public schools to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen (not their actual) gender identity. Those not complying are threatened with lawsuits and loss of federal aid.

This federal pressure to be obedient to federal whim, or in this case a radical reinterpretation of old law, is not new. In the seventies President Richard Nixon had speed limits on freeways reduced to 55 miles per hour, lasting over a decade, because of an alleged energy shortage. After a time a Wyoming governor reposted freeway speed in his state to 65. The governor was right, speed regulation on freeways was not a delegated power listed in Article I, Section 8 nor had such power been added to the federal government by way of an amendment to the Constitution. The federal government threatened loss all federal funds for new construction and/or highway repair for non-complying states. Wyoming returned to 55 mph.

About the same time a new directive, similar to the present Obama transgender directive, required institutions of higher learning receiving federal funds to have open gender housing should students demand it. Brigham Young University (BYU) refused on the basis that as a religious institution male/female dorm separation for singles was a fundamental religious principle. The federal government threatened the University with the loss of all federal funds should it not comply. BYU still refused. Coed dorms is also not a federal power as per the enumeration clauses, again in Section 8, and are therefore totally a state power as per Amendment 10. Actually the word education is not in the Constitution so there exists no federal constitutional authority. The federal government cut off all federal funds to the “rebel” university.

The difference between Wyoming and BYU was that the university had never accepted a dime from the federal government, thus the federal government had nothing to cut off. It had no power to blackmail the institution into compliance. It could, and did, fume and bluster threats but it made no difference. Finding no way to punish the institution itself, it went after the poor students unable to attend without a government guaranteed loan by cutting them off; in time that too was dropped. Enrollment remained untouched as demand always exceeded availability.

Sometime in the late 80’s I was appointed to a special county commission to assess how Kern County of California could deal with all the edicts emanating from the federal government and still be free. It was a strange question. I remained mostly silent as others wrestled in complete frustration with the question, getting nowhere. There seemed to be no solution. Then I asked, “How much slavery have you purchased?” The question was greeted with universal stares and silence, so I asked again. “How much slavery have you purchased?” When you line up for the “free” government money you give the giver power over you because he can cut it off after you have made yourself dependent upon it. “So how much money have you taken because that is what will be cut off should you wish to really run your own county?” “Well, not as much as adjoining Los Angeles County,” came the reply. I had made my point. We were freer than LA County.

The federal government has no constitutional authority to fund anything not enumerated in the Constitution, but it has for decades with nary a complaint from the recipients of the “free” money who lined up like hogs at a feeding trough to receive.   Our governors, county commissioners, city councilmen and school administrators have lined up knees bent, palms outreached and open, tongues drooling for the scraps from the table because the “free” money was easier to get than raising local taxes and telling the federal government no.

This without a thought to the “drug” dependency they created for their governments down the road, not noticed until the government asks them for compliance on something that they know is not reasonable or right. Most still will bow their heads in shame but remain in servitude hoping that the next edict will not be so demanding. But they have lost their ability to be independent of their new master—the federal government—that has far more power over them than that imposed by the tiny list of delegated powers in the Constitution. The will of the people they serve is now very much secondary.

In my own profession I have never seen an administrator turn down the “free” money that he used to make himself look better with federal funds because it allowed him to show new buildings or programs as evidence of his excellence. The federal controls that came with it were a small price to pay for the “shiny stuff,” he reasoned. Again, the word education is not in the Constitution but almost every aspect of education is today influenced at the federal level.

My point!! BYU had the right solution to the problem by refusing any federal monies and therefore federal influence. States and communities that didn’t say no to the enticement of “free” money have allowed the federal government to worm her way into all aspects of our lives, a hundred times more than had we stayed with the enumerated powers of the Constitution, to the point that it now tells us where we can go to the bathroom. Sadly we have sold ourselves into dependence. Texas provides the only solution at this point: “the state is willing to forfeit $10 billion in federal education dollars rather than comply.” Will other states and lesser governments follow and break the dependence or continue groveling for the money and more slavery?

Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.

States should not sue the Federal Government over Transgender Bathrooms

By Harold Pease, Ph. D

States should not sue the federal Government to obtain rights they already have under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution because doing so undermines—potentially to oblivion—that Amendment.  It reads: “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.”

The proper constitutional state response to the Obama directive of May 12, 2016, allowing transgender students in public schools to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity, should be to ignore it and forward a letter to the president reminding him that transgender bathrooms, or anything like unto them, are nowhere listed in the enumerated powers of the Constitution Article I, Section, 8 and have not been added by way of amendment.

States using the 10th Amendment should also encourage other states to do the same thing.  If the eleven states presently suing the federal government for abuse of power instead took this course, the president would back off—proportionally, more so, as states refusing compliance on constitutional grounds, enlarged. This approach not only does not allow the federal government to weaken the 10th Amendment, but frees the state from costly litigation and the schools from costly implementation.  Resolvement is also immediate.  Progression through the lower courts to the Supreme Court takes years for resolvement, which is not likely to happen in the Obama Administration.  While we wait the administrative objective is, in effect, fait accompli.

The choice to litigate rather than use the 10th Amendment not only implies that the federal government might have some measure of jurisdiction but allows a federal branch of that government sole power to decide.  Rare has been the modern Supreme Court decision that limits federal power or protects the separation of power between the federal government and state government.  Consider recent decisions on national health care, also not an enumerated power and therefore 100% a state power.  State protection of state sovereignty becomes impossible should the Court rule against suing states.  States will have neutralized themselves.

Those advocating the litigation process have forgotten the role of federalism in our republic—that two governments, one primarily for foreign affairs, the other for domestic affairs, each coequal, were established in the Constitution.  This was the first separation of powers—those not specifically given by the states to the Federal Government belonged to the states.  It supersedes the second division of power that of the creation of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches in the Constitution, which then divides the power left to the federal government.  The Founders viewed the enumeration of responsibilities in the three branches they created as sufficient.

Fortunately the states, fearing a future over-reaching federal government, insisted on an amendment in the Bill of Rights restating what was then the obvious, before they would ratifying the Constitution.  This, in order to protect more fully the separation that had been established—their right to be coequal—thus the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.  Thomas Jefferson explained it best when he said, “The states are not subordinate to the national government but rather the two are coordinate departments of one single and integral whole…. The one is domestic the other the foreign branch of the same government.”

The Supreme Court serves a very important role as the umpire in keeping the division of power between the three branches separate but cannot nullify or adjudicate to oblivion the first separation of power, that between the two coequal governments.  If a power is not enumerated in the Constitution, having been given to the federal government by consent of the states, in a process outlined in Article V, it belongs to the state and no decision of the Supreme Court can change this.  Keep in mind that judicial review, now the peg post to hang most Supreme Court decisions, was not effectively established until Marbury vs. Madison in 1803, thirteen years after the Constitution went into effect and long after the establishment of State authority to nullify federal over-reach.

Perhaps Alexander Hamilton said it best when he wrote that every act outside of enumerated authority is contrary to the Constitution and thus is void.  Hamilton continues, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void.  No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.  To deny this, would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid” (The Federalist, No. 78, p. 467).

Again, States should not sue the federal government over transgender bathrooms or anything else to obtain rights they already have under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.  What they need instead are governors and legislatures with a better understanding of the document and “fire in their bellies” to protect the Constitution they have sworn by oath to preserve.  The federal directive for transgender bathrooms is the most outrageous abuse of the enumeration clause of the Constitution ever and therefore the most likely abuse to gain public support for state nullification.   It is passed time to use the Tenth.  Have we governors that will do it?

Finally, a Victory for the Constitution on Nationalized Healthcare

By Harold Pease, Ph. D

A federal judge just ruled that Congress never appropriated the funding for the cost-sharing reductions in Obamacare. Judge Rosemary Collyer, citing Article I, Section 7, Clause 1, “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives…” reminding the President that “Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one.”

Apparently, President Barack Obama realizing that his program to fund those unable to afford healthcare unless subsidized by the taxpayer, like food stamps, had not been appropriated by the House of Representatives, as required by the Constitution, defiantly looked for ways to do it anyway. That body denied his request that they do so in their fiscal 2014 budget. Rather than accept the fact that this is the only body that can approve expenditures constitutionally, the President began to pour billions into it, in effect raising revenue. Since the inception of nationalized healthcare the House had voted more than 70 times for its repeal so subsidizing what they considered a failed program was not going to happen. When, through executive orders Obama funded it anyway, House Speaker John Boehner filed a lawsuit challenging the executive branch’s ability to alter legislation once approved by Congress.

The judge’s ruling to stop further reimbursements to insurance companies who reduced health insurance for those thought to be unable to pay in exchange for the government’s promise to pay the difference out of tax funds, is delayed while the case is appealed to the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Affected are approximately 57% of the people who signed up (estimated 5 million) for coverage through the federal exchange web page. Without the subsidies healthcare costs will rise substantially, although the taxpayer should get a break.

There are few parts of the Constitution more clear than, “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” This means that any law, which extracts money from the backs of the American worker, can only originate from the House.

So why should you care if the president defies this small part of the Constitution? For thousands of years, until the Constitution, governments taxed their citizens whenever and whatever they wished. The people had no say. If the Egyptian Pharaoh wanted bricks without straw from the Israelites, for instance, so be it. Rulers lived lavishly off the wealth extracted from their poor subjects with little or no mercy toward them—lavish physical structures and frivolous wars of conquest were too often the norm. The Founders wisely took this power from the rich and gave it to the poor themselves by requiring that the poor, then the majority, had to consent to any taxation over them. The power to tax is the only constitutional power exclusively given to the masses. The House of Representatives was the only branch of government designed to actually represent them as it is based upon population. The Senate was to represent the states, the people only indirectly.

As far as I know the United States is the only country in world history that had this protection from their government placing its tax base with the masses that pay the taxes. It is a priceless freedom. If we are over-taxed in the United States we have chosen to be and one body alone is responsible—The House of Representatives. And, if over-taxed, a correction by the masses can follow quickly as all members of this body come up for reelection on the same date—every two years.

No tax can constitutionally originate with the President or the Supreme Court, not even the Senate, although it can modify as on other bills once originated by the House. The House is also in charge of spending—even defunding something previously funded. The power of the purse (both taxing and spending) is one of the most important powers of the Constitution. We must not let this freedom dwindle or allow the line between the two legislative branches to be blurred into oblivion.

Addressing this subject James Madison, the father of the Constitution, observed, “This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.” The U.S. Constitution mandates that “the House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government.” This power alone he added, “can overcome all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government. They, in a word, hold the purse… (The Federalist 58).”

This may seem like a small thing but the people really do not want to surrender their freedom from excessive taxation, which, prior to this constitutional clause did not exist. No president should take this power unto himself by obligating the House through his defiant spending in opposition to existing law prohibiting such. Losing this is serious because, once gone, it is unlikely to be retrieved. Thank God Judge Rosemary Collyer understood this. Hopefully the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals will as well when appealed to by the President.

Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College.

Will Presidential Candidates use Constitution in Problem Solving?

By Harold Pease, Ph. D

It is indeed pathetic that a constituent has to remind Trump, Clinton and Sanders of basic Government 101 constitutional principles of separation of power. None have established confidence with the people that they revere, understand, or will use the Constitution in problem solving. Sadly, none have given any evidence that they have read the document to which one of them, the President Elect, with right hand placed on the Bible, the other raised to the square, will promise the following: “I do solemnly swear … that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

It is even more pathetic that the people, after having experienced two presidents, Barack Obama and George W. Bush and 15 years of little regard for the Constitution, would elect candidates demonstrating the same. But it is also pathetic that few Millennials have had to read the Constitution in any class of study at the college or university level. So let me outline the basic principles of this document to which every elected person in this country is bound.

First, we have federalism, shared or dual government, the federal government to handle primarily foreign policy and the states to handle domestic policy. Like a good marriage neither ruling over the other—two separate and equal entities. All power not listed in Article I, Section 8, or elsewhere in the document, or added by way of amendment to the Constitution thereafter, is a state power. This concept was so important that it was even more strongly defined in Amendment 10 of the Bill of Rights. “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.”

Any change in the Constitution necessitates the two governments reassembling and the affirmative vote of three-fourths of the states as per Article V. As such, most Trump, Clinton or Sanders campaign promises are outside Article I, Section 8 or are state prerogatives, thus cannot be implemented constitutionally without state permission. Duel government was the principle concept housed in both the Articles of Confederation (our first national government) and thereafter under the Constitution. None of the three federal divisions of power created later, executive, legislative or judicial, can alter this first division of power—only with the permission of the states as provided by Article V.

Second, federal power was then divided into three separate entities, the legislative to make all the federal law that was constitutional, the executive to execute that law, and the judicial to adjudicate that law when challenged, according to the Constitution. Each was restricted in its sphere.

The Legislative branch was limited to only four areas of law-making power: to tax, to pay the debts, to provide for the general welfare and to provide for the common defense. These are laid out in Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 prior to the first semi-colon, so essential to the proper interpretation of Section 8. To tax needed one qualifier that such must be “uniform throughout the United States” but in the same article, Section 7, Clause 1 the power to tax had already been given to the House of Representative to originate. To pay the debts needed no qualifiers. But no one in the Constitutional Convention trusted Congress with a free hand in deciding the two other powers, general welfare and common defense. Either could mean anything to a power grabbing federal congress. Each of these needed eight additional qualifiers so Clauses 2-9 were the law-making powers of Congress with respect to what general welfare is and Clauses 10-17 what common defense is.

The long 18-paragraph sentence (yes, sentence) ended with Congress having the power “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers…,” those listed. Congress was never given power to make any law they thought desirable but only within four perimeters and 17 qualifiers. Nor was there power given them to create bureaucracies to legislate for them such as the EPA and BLM or a hundred other such agencies.

As the Congress was not permitted to make any law they liked, the Executive Branch, the president, was also limited in Article II, Sections 2-3 in what he could do. Already noted is his primary responsibility “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution….” Unfortunately, Barack Obama has become a principle violator of the Constitution. As reported in a previous column, simply stated, the president has two supervisory powers over existing organizations and two shared powers with the Senate; otherwise he pardons, recommends, appoints and entertains. That is it!  Notice the absence of power to make any rules and regulations on us.  This is the job of Congress alone. The president can only persuade Congress to agree to his proposed changes.

The Judicial Branch, Supreme Court, was limited to only nine areas of adjudication. Two of which, those affecting public ministers and when a state is a party, they were given complete, called original, jurisdiction. In the other seven, appellate jurisdiction, “both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as Congress shall make.” The Supreme Court cannot adjudicate wherever they like, only in two areas and the other seven areas only at the permission of Congress.

And, of course, there are areas forbidden to government intervention mostly listed in the Bill of Rights as for example the Second Amendment. If any of these basic principles sound strange or foreign it is because educators and the media have failed to transfer knowledge of the Constitution to our Millennials. In any case, it is doubtful that any of the presidential candidates left will use the Constitution in problem solving.