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Just Say NO! to Stimulus Plan

Stimulus Can Sink Recession Into Depression
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS
in Investors Business Daily
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=319076189169608
Posted Monday, February 09, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Dr. Robert Higgs, senior fellow at the Oakland, Calif.-based Independent Institute, penned an article in Monday's Christian Science Monitor that suggests the most intelligent recommendation that I've read to fix our economic mess. The title of his article gives his recommendation away: "Instead of stimulus, do nothing — seriously."

Stimulus package debate is over how much money should be spent, whether some should go to the National Endowment for the Arts, research sexually transmitted diseases or bail out Amtrak, our failing railroad system.

Higgs says, "Hardly anyone, however, is asking the most important question: Should the federal government be doing any of this?"

He adds, "Until the 1930s, the Constitution served as a major constraint on federal economic interventionism. The government's powers were understood to be just as the framers intended: few and explicitly enumerated in our founding document and its amendments.

"Search the Constitution as long as you like, and you will find no specific authority conveyed for the government to spend money on global-warming research, urban mass transit, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid or countless other items in the stimulus package and, even without it, in the regular federal budget."

By bringing up the idea of constitutional restraints on Washington, Dr. Higgs is whistling Dixie. Americans have long ago abandoned respect for the constitutional limitations placed on the federal government. Our elected representatives represent that disrespect.

I'd ask Higgs: Isn't it unreasonable to expect a politician to do what he considers to be political suicide, namely conduct himself according to the letter and spirit of the Constitution?

While Americans, through ignorance or purpose, show contempt for our Constitution, I doubt whether they are indifferent between a growing or stagnating economy. Dr. Higgs tells us some of the economic history of the U.S.

In 1893, we had a depression; we got out of it without a stimulus package. A major recession hit the country in 1920-21; though sharp, it quickly reversed itself into what has been call the Roaring '20s.

In 1929 came an economic downturn, most notably featured by the stock market collapse, after which came massive government intervention — you might call it the nation's first stimulus package.

President Hoover and Congress responded to what might have been a two- or three-year sharp downturn with many of the policies President Obama and Congress are urging today. They raised tariffs, propped up wage rates, bailed out farmers, banks and other businesses, and financed state relief efforts.

When Franklin Roosevelt came to office, he became even more interventionist than Hoover and presided over protracted depression where the economy didn't fully recover until 1946.

Roosevelt didn't have an easy time with his agenda; he had to first emasculate the U.S. Supreme Court.

Higgs points out that federal courts had respect for the Constitution as late as the 1930s. They issued some 1,600 injunctions to restrain officials from carrying out acts of Congress.

The Supreme Court overturned as unconstitutional the New Deal's centerpieces such as the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act and other parts of Roosevelt's "stimulus package."

An outraged Roosevelt threatened to pack the court, and the court capitulated to where it is today giving Congress virtually unlimited powers to tax, spend and regulate.

My question to my fellow Americans is: Do we want a repeat of measures that failed dismally during the 1930s?

A more fundamental question is: Should Washington be guided by the Constitution?

In explaining the Constitution, James Madison, the document's acknowledged father, wrote in Federalist Paper 45:

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce."

Has the Constitution been amended to permit Congress to tax, spend and regulate as it pleases or have Americans said, "To hell with the Constitution"?

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc

(NOTE: This article is posted strictly for educational comment purposes as allowed by "Fair Use" under the US Copyright Law; "§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use"

Basic Math Re: Government Giving ...

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

The late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 to 2005
Former Pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN, USA

OBAMA TO FUND U.N. PRO-ABORTION AGENCY

On January 24, President Obama said, “I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the U.N. Population Fund.” He pledged to do this “in the coming weeks,” maintaining that “It is time that we end the politicization of this [abortion] issue.”

Bill Donohue explains the Catholic League’s response:

“The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) claims that it is not pro-abortion. It says that it merely supports ‘reproductive rights.’ Not quite. Starting in 1979, in the first five years of China’s draconian one-child policy, UNFPA gave the program $50 million. To accomplish this goal over the years, which is still ongoing, IUDs have been forced into the wombs of hundreds of millions of women against their will. Indeed, no coercive method is considered taboo, including forced abortion. It was for reasons like these that in 2002 the U.S. State Department blasted China for its affront to human rights. Indeed, Secretary Colin Powell backed the Bush administration’s denial of funds to UNFPA.

“The one-child policy has abetted female infanticide, so much so that there has been a massive decrease in the female population—there are now an estimated 350 million girls missing from China. Other non-white areas of the world where UNFPA concentrates its efforts include Vietnam, Nigeria and Peru. But it can be multicultural: When the genocidal maniac from Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, wanted to tame his people, he invited UNFPA to help reduce the population of Kosovo; he wasn’t unhappy with the results, nor, of course, the means.

“So here we have it. In the name of women’s rights, UNFPA undercuts women. In the name of eradicating poverty, it eradicates the poor. Moreover, it works closely with anti-Catholic groups. And now Obama wants us to bankroll UNFPA. During a recession, no less. To top things off, he is doing all of this in the name of ending the politicization of issues that he says marked previous administrations. The ironies are as endless as they are priceless.”

Susan A. Fani
Director of Communications
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
catalyst@catholicleague.org

Obama Plans to Eliminate Privacy

Read the article:

LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER
Economic stimulus? Feds want your medical records
Electronic database to include lawsuit, mental health, abortion, sexual details

HERE

This article details the current administration's plans to make our private health records available to government use - without an option to opt out. Information such as documentation on abortions, mental health problems, impotence, being labeled as a non-compliant patient, lawsuits against doctors and sexual problems could be shared electronically with, perhaps, millions of people would be collected. Also included is Google's part in the scheme.

It also talks about the next generation of "family planning" where DNA is collected from newborn babies so "experts" can determine whether these children will have criminal tendencies and become a threat to society if they are allowed to grow up. "They want to test every child for 200 conditions, take the child's history and a brain image, and genetics, and come up with a plan for that child," the article quotes.

You NEED to know about this.