One of the numerous legislative deadlines that Congress will be forced to confront this session is the expiration of the 8th short-term extension of the 2005 surface transportation authorization law (SAFETEA-LU).  With federal transportation spending growing beyond its revenue source, an imbalance between donor and recipient states, inefficient and superfluous construction projects popping up all over the country, and burdensome mass transit mandates on states, it is time to inject some federalism into transportation spending.

Throughout the presidential campaign, many of the candidates have expressed broad views of state’s rights, while decrying the expansion of the federal government.  In doing so, some of the candidates have expressed the conviction that states have the right to implement tyranny or pick winners and losers, as long as the federal government stays out of it.  Romneycare and state subsidies for green energy are good examples.  The reality is that states don’t have rights; they certainly don’t have the power to impose tyranny on citizens by forcing them to buy health insurance or regulating the water in their toilet bowels – to name a few.  They do, however, reserve powers under our federalist system of governance to implement legitimate functions of government.  A quintessential example of such a legitimate power is control over transportation and infrastructure spending.

The Highway Trust Fund was established in 1956 to fund the Interstate Highway System (IHS).  The fund, which is administered by the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration, has been purveyed by the federal gasoline tax, which now stands at 18.4 cents per gallon (24.4 for diesel fuel).  Beginning in 1983, Congress began siphoning off some of the gas tax revenue for the great liberal sacred cow; the urban mass transit system.  Today, mass transit receives $10.2 billion in annual appropriations, accounting for a whopping 20% of transportation spending.  Additionally, the DOT mandates that states use as much as 10% of their funding for all sorts of local pork projects, such as bike paths and roadside flowers.

As a result of the inefficiencies and wasteful mandates of our top-down approach to transportation spending, trust fund outlays have exceeded its revenue source by an average of $12 billion per year, even though the IHS – the catalyst for the gasoline tax – has been completed for 20 years.  In 2008, the phantom trust fund was bailed out with $35 billion in general revenue, and has been running a deficit for the past few years.  Congress has not passed a 6-year reauthorization bill since 2005, relying on a slew of short-term extensions, the last of which is scheduled to expire on March 31.

Short-term funding is no way to plan for long-term infrastructure projects.  In their alacrity to gobble up the short-term money before it runs out, state and local governments tend to use the funds on small time and indivisible projects, such as incessant road repaving, instead of better planned long-term projects.

It’s time for a long-term solution, one which will inject much-needed federalism and free-market solutions into our inefficient and expensive transportation policy.

Read More →

One of the numerous legislative deadlines that Congress will be forced to confront this session is the expiration of the 8th short-term extension of the 2005 surface transportation authorization law (SAFETEA-LU).  With federal transportation spending growing beyond its revenue source, an imbalance between donor and recipient states, inefficient and superfluous construction projects popping up all over the country, and burdensome mass transit mandates on states, it is time to inject some federalism into transportation spending.

Throughout the presidential campaign, many of the candidates have expressed broad views of state’s rights, while decrying the expansion of the federal government.  In doing so, some of the candidates have expressed the conviction that states have the right to implement tyranny or pick winners and losers, as long as the federal government stays out of it.  Romneycare and state subsidies for green energy are good examples.  The reality is that states don’t have rights; they certainly don’t have the power to impose tyranny on citizens by forcing them to buy health insurance or regulating the water in their toilet bowels – to name a few.  They do, however, reserve powers under our federalist system of governance to implement legitimate functions of government.  A quintessential example of such a legitimate power is control over transportation and infrastructure spending.

The Highway Trust Fund was established in 1956 to fund the Interstate Highway System (IHS).  The fund, which is administered by the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration, has been purveyed by the federal gasoline tax, which now stands at 18.4 cents per gallon (24.4 for diesel fuel).  Beginning in 1983, Congress began siphoning off some of the gas tax revenue for the great liberal sacred cow; the urban mass transit system.  Today, mass transit receives $10.2 billion in annual appropriations, accounting for a whopping 20% of transportation spending.  Additionally, the DOT mandates that states use as much as 10% of their funding for all sorts of local pork projects, such as bike paths and roadside flowers.

As a result of the inefficiencies and wasteful mandates of our top-down approach to transportation spending, trust fund outlays have exceeded its revenue source by an average of $12 billion per year, even though the IHS – the catalyst for the gasoline tax – has been completed for 20 years.  In 2008, the phantom trust fund was bailed out with $35 billion in general revenue, and has been running a deficit for the past few years.  Congress has not passed a 6-year reauthorization bill since 2005, relying on a slew of short-term extensions, the last of which is scheduled to expire on March 31.

Short-term funding is no way to plan for long-term infrastructure projects.  In their alacrity to gobble up the short-term money before it runs out, state and local governments tend to use the funds on small time and indivisible projects, such as incessant road repaving, instead of better planned long-term projects.

It’s time for a long-term solution, one which will inject much-needed federalism and free-market solutions into our inefficient and expensive transportation policy.

Read More →

Look this is getting down to the wire in Iowa and the voting will start soon. As a small government conservative I have to really make sure I make the right choice when I pull the lever or check the box. I hope others will think as hard as I’ve have, and here is my argument for my preferred candidate.

Even from the perspective of a liberal President Obama has not gotten the job done, and much of the reason for this probably sides on the fact that he was a legislator before he became president, instead of an executive of some kind; that and even though he has tried to appear like he has been a partisan free president, the truth is not so clear, it appears that he has been as obdurate as any president in recent history.

The closest thing I can think of as training for the job of president is the state governor. The American governorship is a historically weak position with limited power, but they do have about the same amount as the president when compared to the legislature.

Here are a list of some of the duties a governor have, and see if you can see the making of a good president in there.

• · Directing policy: which is something the president does, and he/she is good at it then it becomes the policy of the country.
• · Marshaling legislative action: here is when the governor gets to try to influence the agenda of the legislature, if the person is good at it they will even bring some in the opposing party along with them. Obama seems to have failed at this.
• · Administering the executive branch: as chief executive of the state the governor is in charge of numerous agencies, departments, boards, and commissions. This is a task the president has just on a grander schedule.
• · Serving as master of ceremonies: the governor like the president as to spend a lot of time on ceremony type activities; these include stuff like cutting ribbons for new highways and welcoming new businesses to the state.
• · Coordinating intergovernmental relations: Governors serve as the major point of contact between their states and the president, Congress, and the numerous national agencies; this is a lot like what the president has to do when they have contact with foreign nations.
• · Promoting economic development: as the promoter of economic development a governor works to bring business into the state, promote tourism, and encourage economic growth from sources within the state; this can sometimes even lead the governor to other countries to promote their states business climate. This is something I feel has been lacking in the Obama presidency, he has not be as focused as he should have on making the climate of the nation as a whole more friendly to economic growth. Rick Perry has shined in this role for the state of Texas.
• · Leading a Political Party: when a governor wins the election he then becomes the leader of his party in the state, or at least the highest ranking member. This used to be more pronounced when the party convention picked things like the nominations in the state legislature and the executive branch offices, but it still has an impact through campaign aid, endorsements, and a few other things. If a governor endorses a state legislator and they win they will likely feel indebted to that governor which would help pass their agenda.

So it makes good sense for the country to like electing governors as presidents, the jobs description is very similar.

We have three governors in this race and if the Republican Party wants to beat president Obama next year the best thing to do would be to pick one of them.

Mitt Romney was not a successful governor from a conservative perspective, and he has developed the reputation of a moderate. He has worked in the past as an investment banker in which these types have angered citizens on both sides of the political divide. Romney is not offering any real change from the last 11 years, and let’s remember the nation was not to fond of the George W. Bush presidency towards the end either, it would not be hard to paint Romney as more of the same East coast elite Republican who only cares for big business and Republican big government.

John Huntsman has a wonderful record as governor of the state of Utah, and his plan is quietly conservative. The problem I think he as is twofold, one is now that he is trying to paint himself as the consistent conservative he will have to explain his former positions on things like climate change; he has not been consistent on issues that matter to conservatives.

Second I believe like Bush, Huntsman wants to be liked by the other side. I am not convinced he is willing to fight for conservative principles. He also has the whole growing up silver spoon fed problem Mitt Romney has. I am not sure how well having super wealthy candidates will play in an election cycle that will clearly be about economic problems. I have no issue with rich people, but I am not so sure about the middle of the political divide; but his weaknesses are nowhere near as prominent as Romney’s.

Out of the three I think Rick Perry would not only be the most conservative or best president, he would also be the one most likely to win against Obama. I understand what the polls say, but in reality they mean little when it comes to the general election. The Republican Party would get behind a Perry nomination with extreme fervor if he was to win the nomination; and as the governor of the state that is leading in job creation one has to expect that it would not be hard to argue Perry has the economic credentials to get the job done.

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Maximizing happiness pursuits via state sovereignty in the age of Obama

It is one of the great tragedies of American history that one of the key components in the brilliant governing structure erected by the framers of the Constitution got so inextricable and nearly exclusively identified with race.

I speak, of course, of the concept of federalism and state’s rights. The brilliance of this concept was in its de facto subjection of states to market forces and allowance of non-market eccentricities deemed more valued than the attraction of more settlers/citizens. It maximized happiness pursuits by allowing the like-minded to congregate in close proximity and enact laws reflecting their own values.

So powerful was the market for new settlers, that by 1840 no state imposed a state religion, despite their right to do so. Thomas Jefferson himself, never deigned to mis-apply the Establishment Clause to the states via Congress nor the courts. Yet, his religious freedom law of Virginia ended up winning the day in all states without the assistance of an oligarchical (Jefferson’s term) judiciary imposing its will on the nation.

Sadly, but probably inevitably, federalism couldn’t prevent the bloodbath that was the War between the States. A future President Abraham Lincoln famously declared that the American house would not stand divided free from slave, and with a Southern section so completely dependent economically on involuntary servitude and business interests in the Northern section so dependent on exploiting that southern dependence, a gradual, non-divisive unification on the issue of slavery was simply beyond ability of human beings even within the brilliant federal edifice.

The deaths of half a million Blue and Gray was the first step in discrediting state’s rights in the public mind, with Jim Crow, separate but equal de jure race discrimination and the growth of the regulation of interstate commerce being the second and third steps, about which we will return later.

But there had already been a New England flirtation with secession, about which the Constitution was silent, as well as the John C. Calhoun-led 1828 Nullification movement and first South Carolina secession threat 28 years before the firing on Fort Sumter.

What is significant about the above for our present purposes is its relation to current movement of state declaration’s Ninth and Tenth Amendment sovereignty. The most significant iterations of this movement have been the Secessionist throwaway line by the Governor of the Lone Star State and the Big Sky state’s brilliantly constructed guns in, by and for the borders of Montana only law.

First, let us deal with this issue of whether a state may “legally” secede from the Union and the so-called “Lincoln” precedent. The U.S. Constitution is silent on the issue but advocates for and against the right of a state to separate itself from the Union existed since at least as early as Thomas Jefferson’s pronouncements in the wake of U.S. Supreme Court rulings he deemed to be oligarchical usurpation’s of the powers of the executive and legislative branches and the right of self government.

But it was all quite theoretical until SC’s 1833 Ordinance of Nullification, which amounted to a refusal to pay tariff duties that were quite punitive to the Southern states. Punitive tariffs were also part and parcel of the post-Lincoln election secessions in 1860-1, inextricably tied to slavery and the South’s fear that a President Lincoln’s refusal to admit any more slave states from the western territories would put the institution on an inevitable path to elimination that would render monied interests in Dixie gone with the wind.

And while I think the non-judicial Lincoln precedent is quite instructive on the issue of secession, Calhoun’s nemesis on the issue better defined the matter for our purposes today.

President Andrew Jackson (pictured), also a native South Carolinian and Jeffersonian advocate for state’s rights, nevertheless was second to none in his belief in the Union.

Calhoun, previously a Unionist, had resigned the Vice-Presidency to lead an overreaching Nullification movement after a change of heart. I say overreaching, because Congress does have the explicit, enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce.

President Jackson declared that state nullification of a constitutional law passed by Congress to be treason and that secession was, by definition, to be impossible:

The most important among these objects [replacing the Articles of Confederation], that which is placed first in rank, on which all the others rest, is “to form a more perfect Union.” Now, is it possible that, even if there were no express provision giving supremacy to the Constitution and laws of the United States over those of the States, it can be conceived that an Instrument made for the purpose of “forming; a more perfect Union” than that of the confederation, could be so constructed by the assembled wisdom of our country as to substitute for that confederation a form of government, dependent for its existence on the local interest, the party spirit of a State, or of a prevailing faction in a State? Every man, of plain, unsophisticated understanding, who hears the question, will give such an answer as will preserve the Union. Metaphysical subtlety, in pursuit of an impracticable theory, could alone have devised one that is calculated to destroy it.

I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which It was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.

Jackson declared that “To say that any state may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States are not a nation.” He prepared to send troops to South Carolina and have Calhoun hanged, but actually resolved the crisis by compromising on the tariff law.

Texas governor Rick Perry did not actually threaten nullification or secession over tea this past April 15, but he did sign a state sovereignty bill and allude to the Republic of Texas’ entry into the Union and suggested that the particulars allowed Texas unique rights to secede. I think Perry is wrong if he thinks that given that acts of Congress are required for entry, I doubt any state would be allowed exit absent acts of Congress.

But the most significant aspect of Perry, Montana and other states engaged in the sovereignty movement is their avoidance of the mistakes of Nullification overreach, so far.

I think the only way this movement fully blossoms to reign in a century old diminution of the Ninth and Tenth are if states begin to refuse to accept federal dollars and the inherent strings attached.

Also important will be the recognition of the limitations of the Ninth and Tenth given the expansion of properly defined interstate commerce and court rulings that presently improperly expand it. But even if properly defined, the parameters of intrastate commerce are quite confined. The fact is that we depend on interstate trade from most good and services we use.

But on non-economic issues, the power of states should be quite plenary, which is why I had so hoped that Alabama’s governor had refused to allow federal marshalls to remove Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments courthouse decoration from a state building. That would have forced President George W. Bush to make a very stark choice between accepting the fact that state’s don’t establish religions with art or treating the adornment as the equivalent of the murder of Medgar Evers.

What I find quite ironic about the present state’s rights movement is that it occurs with the nation having forever proven its redemption on the issue of race which had come to de-legitimize the federalism and separated powers concept that has been one of the keys to our growth, strength and longevity as compared with all other nations on Earth.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all for verification links may be accessed.