Should the Federal Government Vacuum Leaves?

"Subsidiarity," according to Wikipedia, is an organizing principle of decentralization, which holds that a matter ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized authority capable of addressing that matter effectively.

The principle of subsidiarity is built into the U.S. Constitution. As designed, the federal government was to have only such specific powers as the experiment under the Articles of Confederation made clear were necessary and proper to an efficient national government, consistent the with notion that ours was to be a federal system. The last two amendments to the Bill of Rights were specifically designed to prevent mission creep -- to limit the federal government to the exercise of its "specifically enumerated powers." They are:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." -- Ninth Amendment (1791)

"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." 10th Amendment (1791)

To understand the practical implications of the principle of subsidiarity, consider Moline's annual leaf vacuuming program. And consider whether every American has a right to have his leaves vacuumed up.

Every year at this time, Moline goes into the business of collecting leaves that have fallen from Moline's innumerable trees. This is a great program. The men and women who conceived, implemented and have continued this leaf collection deserve the gratitude of everybody who breathes Moline air.

In 2012, Moline collected 1,624 tons of leaves (3,248,000 lbs) Oct.15-Nov. 30. This job took 5,592 man hours. In addition to vacuuming leaves, the city also collected 167 tons of leaves using a tractor and hay baler. Once collected, most leaves were spread and then worked into the soil on two farms owned by the city; the remainder were utilized by local farmers. The city incurred no land-fill fees.

The cost of the 2012 program was $285,187, or $6.59 per resident. This was a bargain for every resident of Moline, and an even greater bargain for those residents with asthma or other respiratory diseases who avoided just one night in the hospital.

Nowadays, as the federal education department and Obamacare clearly demonstrate, whenever Congress decides that a problem is "national," the principle of "subsidiarity" gets obliterated.

This federal government mission-creep is not new. It dates back to Dec. 5, 1791, when Alexander Hamilton made his Report on Manufacturers to the House of Representatives. In it he wrote:

"It is, therefore, of necessity, left to the discretion of the National Legislature (Congress) to pronounce upon the objects which concern the general welfare, and for which, under that description, an appropriation of money is requisite and proper.

"And there seems to be no room for a doubt, that whatever concerns the general interests of learning, of agriculture, of manufactures, and of commerce, are within the sphere of the national councils, as far as regards an application of money.

The only qualification of the generality of the phrase in question, which seems to be admissible, is this: That the object, to which an appropriation of money is to be made, be general, and not local; its operation extending, in fact, or by possibility, throughout the Union, and not being confined to a particular spot.

No objection ought to arise to this construction, from a supposition that it would imply a power to do whatever else should appear to Congress conducive to the general welfare."

The federal courts, which were originally controlled by federalist judges, accepted Hamilton's construction of the Constitution. When 140 years later, Congress passed Social Security, federal judges sustained it using Hamilton's reasoning.

But if the only qualification is that "the object, to which an appropriation of money is to be made, (must) be general, and not local, what would stop the federal government from deciding that the leaves that fall throughout the nation each autumn, are a matter of "general" and not just "local" concern? What would stop Congress from deciding that the federal government can do a better job of collecting and disposing of leaves than Moline (and all the other cities throughout the nation)?

How many people would have to be hired at salaries in the range of $100,000 per year to run the new Federal Department of Leaf Collection and Disposal? Would they get pensions? Health care?

What would become of the Moline employees who up until now have collected leaves? Would they become federal employees? Or would they be replaced, and new federal employees hired? Perhaps politically connected ACORN "workers?" Would the appropriations for the new department increase at 3 percent, 5 percent, or 10 percent per year? And would the new federal employees get the leaves collected as efficiently as our local workers? And what new "regulations" would be imposed on Moline home owners?

And when the Feds got involved would the cost remain at $6.59 per Moline resident, or would it decrease? Increase? If you have any doubts, just look to the U.S. Department of Education. It began with two employees. Its 2013 budget was $105 billion. Were the services provided by Washington worth $105 billion to the nation's 81 million school children?

Did each child get $1,300 worth of services from Washington?



John Donald O'Shea of Moline is a retired circuit court judge.


Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2013, 11:48 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

What's Left to Give when Everyone Is Broke?

"There is no misunderstanding this, except by men interested to misunderstand it." — Abraham Lincoln, The Galesburg Debate (1858)

I have never been jealous of rich people. Here's why.

Imagine you have no assets, and that your income is $2 per day. How much can you give (Christian charity) to help the poor? How much can the government tax (social justice) you to assist the poor?

Social justice is premised on the notion that those with excess wealth can be taxed to provide for the basic needs of the poor in genuine need. Social justice presupposes an upper class and a middle class, each having some degree of excess wealth, that can be redistributed to meet the genuine needs of the poor. But what happens if you have no upper or middle classes; when every citizen is poor? Penniless?

Without wealthy capitalists -- and even without the wealthy socialists -- who is there to tax? If nobody is wealthy (which I define as "having surplus wealth"), who can make meaningful charitable or social contributions?

If perfect equality is achieved, and if everybody is abjectly poor, who can you meaningfully tax?

I am not ideologically opposed to social justice. But it is predicated on taxing the people with excess wealth to assist the genuinely needy. If everybody is genuinely and equally needy, social justice income redistribution becomes impossible.

To illustrate, consider a country with a population of 10.1 million, where more than half the men, women and children live on less than $1 a day. Where about 80 percent of the people live on less than $2 per day. A country where 80 percent of the people live below the poverty line. Where 54 percent live in abject poverty.

Imagine a country where 80 percent of its college grads choose to live abroad. Where the money they send home represents 53 percent of the country's GDP. Imagine a city within a city in that country where 500,000 people literally eek out a living on a garbage dump in a place described by the U.N. as the most dangerous on Earth. A country where 225,000 children work for their existence as unpaid household servants.

Imagine Haiti.

What charitable contributions are those who are trying to survive able to make? When somebody is starving on $2 per day, how much of his income can be redistributed? How many of these 8 million Haitians, living on $2 or less per day, are able to provide jobs for fellow Haitians, so as to provide them with a living wage? Would anybody be able to start or run a business and pay salaries on $2 per day? Pay health benefits?

The poor of Haiti have very little to share -- even if they want to. In Haiti, only 20 percent of the people live above the poverty line.

The World Bank tells us that the Haitian 2012 Gross National Income was $760 per person per year. (As such the Total National Income would be $7,676,000,000: that is, 10.1 million Haitians x $760 per person.) Therefore, if the nation's entire GNI was equally redistributed, each Haitian would have $760 annually to live on. The 50 percent living on less than a dollar a day ($365 per year or less) would, after redistribution, see their incomes "jump" all the way up to a still miserable $2.08 per day. Those living on $2 per day as well as the wealthy, after redistribution, also would have incomes of $2.08 per day.

Again, I am not against social justice. But to have meaningful social justice you need prosperous and numerous upper and middle classes. If you have 99 "wealthy" people and only one in "genuine need," social justice is easy to achieve. But when you have 99 who are living in abject poverty, and 1 who is "rich," social justice is an impossibility.

In a thriving capitalist system, you can tax excess wealth, and redistribute taxes to the less fortunate -- to a point. But there comes a point when taxes are raised on the wealthy, that it no longer is worthwhile to run a business and/or take the risks to create "excess wealth." When that point is reached, businesses either shut down, or downsize.

Indeed, the main ways any business downsizes is by laying off employees, and/or by reducing their hours. While those with excess wealth can be asked to pay more, there are therefore practical limits.

The early Christians sold all they had and laid their wealth at the feet of the apostles. That system worked only briefly. But if it was the best system, why did the early Christians abandon it? Why didn't it work for the Pilgrims? And what happened during the 1920s in Germany when the middle class was destroyed?

If you want social justice and redistribution of wealth, you'd had better make sure that you have vibrant upper and middle classes with "excess wealth." The more they have, the better for income redistribution.

Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2013, 12:00 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

Supporting 'Democratically Elected' Enemy Is Nuts

The U.S. cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Egypt, according to The Associated Press, after the "military ouster last summer of the nation's first democratically elected president."

The "democratically elected president" was Mohammed Morsi, who had previously served as chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party when it was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood. Once elected, however, Morsi granted himself power to rule by decree on the pretext that he would "protect" the nation from the "Mubarak-era reactionaries."

There are a number of good reasons for ending American foreign aid. This was not one of them.

There are a great many ways to win an election. The only democratic way is to get more votes than your opponent in an open and free election. But there are many other ways that are hardly democratic. You can kill everybody inclined to vote for your opponent. You can jail opposition voters or keep them away from the polls. You can outlaw opposition political parties, and allow only supporters to vote.

A great many in the Obama administration believe America should support the Muslim Brotherhood as long as it is democratically elected, not withstanding the fact it would destroy our country if it could.

They close their eyes to how it managed its democratic win. We are asked to support a party that kills Coptic Christians and destroys their churches.

According to Wikipedia, the Muslim Brotherhood's stated goal in America "is to instill the Qur'an and Sunnah as the 'sole reference point for ... ordering the life of the ... community ... and state."

The online encyclopedia quotes An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goals for the Brotherhood in North America, 1981, which said, for the Brotherhood it is a "'Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan (brothers) must understand their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Wikipedia also links to a federal court document which states the general strategic goal of the Brotherhood in America is "Establishment of Islam in North America, meaning: establishing an effective and stable Islamic Movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which adopts Muslims' causes domestically and globally, and which works to expand the observant Muslim base, aims at unifying and directing Muslim efforts, presents Muslim as a civilization alternative, and supports the Global Islamic State wherever it is."

The Muslim Brotherhood, although ostensibly democratically elected in Egypt, was democratic only until it gained power. Once in power it became an intolerant, ruthless theocratic dictatorship.

Eighty years ago, another political party appeared to come to power democratically. But it won by suppressing the vote of all who opposed it. Then, once in power it "democratically" turned itself into a ruthless dictatorship. Next, it started World War II.

On Jan. 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor. Immediately, Hitler demanded dissolution of the Reichstag and new elections. In February, in anticipation of the March 5, 1933, election, the Nazis unleashed a campaign of political terror. Hitler's stormtroopers began attacking trade union and Communist Party (KPD) offices, as well as their homes. Gangs of Nazi "brownshirts" broke up Social Democrat meetings and assaulted speakers and audiences. Newspapers were banned.

The German Catholic Centre Party was attacked. Twenty newspapers were shut down for allegedly "slandering" Hitler's government. Centre Party members holding governmental offices were dismissed from their positions. Stormtroopers viciously shut down their party meetings in Westphalia.

Six days before the election, the German parliament building was set ablaze. The Nazis blamed the Reichstag fire on a communist. Those who believed the Nazi propaganda, turned against the KPD.

Capitalizing on the "emergency," Hitler induced President Hindenburg to issue the emergency Reichstag Fire Decree. Civil liberties were suspended and 4,000 KDP members and their leaders imprisoned. As intended, the Communist vote was suppressed. The day after the March 5 election, the Communist Party was banned.

The Reichstag Fire Decree also handicapped Social Democrats. Party leaders fled to Prague. Members were forced underground. The Nazi terror worked as intended, and on March 5, the Nazis won 43.91 percent of the vote, and 288 seats out of 647. To keep his majority, Hitler continued his coalition with the Black-Red-White Struggle Front.

To the outside world, it appeared Hitler had been democratically elected, and that he had democratically formed a coalition government.

But Hitler wanted to rule by decree -- to have dictatorial powers. He got his constitutionally required two-thirds vote when he persuaded the Center Party and a number of the smaller parties to vote in favor of his March 23, 1933, Enabling Act which gave him power to rule "by decree." Forty-two days later, he abolished trade unions. Leaders were arrested. In July, he decreed it was a criminal offense to start or be a member of any political party other than the Nazis.

The Western Democracies deluded themselves into believing Hitler really didn't mean what he said in Mein Kampf.

America needs to see the Muslim Brotherhood for what it really is. It makes no sense to support someone who would destroy our Western way of life.

A dictatorship, even with the trappings of democracy, is still a dictatorship.
John Donald O'Shea, of Moline, is a retired circuit court judge.

Posted Online: Nov. 07, 2013, 12:00 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea