![[House of Cards]](cards-s.gif)
Is your children's future
a house of cards?
Remarkable Remedy
Jean Carpenter
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VI Destination: Disaster
Where Are We Headed
THREE EVENTS of 1913 trampled the Constitution. They defined a treacherous "government policy," subjecting the land to financial distress with all its accompanying woes. Each was perpetrated despite clear constitutional restrictions, and all must be repudiated -- soon -- before this great nation lands on the scrap heap of history.
The Sixteenth Amendment, though never ratified, has been used as the means for the destruction of our prosperity -- and for the confiscation of much of our property -- by burdensome taxation. The government then squanders our hard-earned money.
The Seventeenth Amendment, also not ratified, demolished a safeguard and deprived the States of their power to check the federal government. That power has been transferred to self-serving interests such as Political Action Committees.
The Federal Reserve Act, the most devastating by far, authorized the destruction of our real money. It surrendered control of our economy and our personal wealth to foreign-dominated interests. And it is quietly and surreptitiously confiscating our property, relentlessly, piece by piece. The debt load is about to engulf us with a depression that, if not averted, will make the '30's seem like a Sunday School picnic.
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Dangers We Face
Depression
Reliable indicators predict impending economic collapse, barring a dramatic change of direction very soon.
Collapse will be the direct result of runaway debt -- both government and private. Government debt has been incurred through unlawful appropriations by a spendthrift Congress. And both have been incurred as a direct consequence of a lawless monetary system (see "The Incredible Money Caper," p. 55 in The Treasury).
A balanced budget, however necessary to fiscal responsibility, is not feasible under our Alice-in-Wonderland monetary system. Simply put, if the debt does not increase by the same percentage as the interest rate, there will be no money to pay the interest. So the interest will have to come from savings or foreclosures; and, in time, depression will result. (See box on p. 25, and "The Incredible Money Caper," p. 55).
Our devastating monetary and tax system is the consequence of government lawlessness. The first and foremost step toward a balanced budget is to enforce the Constitution.
The people, already defrauded of much of their wealth and property, are required to sacrifice even more to pay for the "pork" being dished up by the 535 men and women in Congress with the approval and consent of the President. They are collectively out of control. The deficit is not the result of our paying too little in taxes. The deficit is the result of their spending money that does not exist.
The fifty States have been effectively replaced by ten regions (box, p. 66), as power shifts to Washington. They have not exercised their constitutional muscle in the federal system of checks and balances, and in their own territories.
The danger now facing our nation has little to do with labels, political or social. Ultimately, as has happened many times in world history (in GermanyÕs Weimar Republic, for example), without a radical turn-about, we will welcome a Hitler to solve our unbearable fiscal problems.
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Deception
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) debate centered upon whether it would be good or bad for the economy. The real issue, never publicly mentioned, was its constitutionality, both in substance and in method of ratification. By this treaty, passed by the House (which is supposed to have no "say" in treaties) and ratified by the Senate 61 - 38 (less than the required two-thirds), we have given up our sovereignty and our Bill of Rights. We will be subjected to regulations, fines, and impositions devised by an unelected, unaccountable, international bureaucracy.
Some say the Constitution is antiquated and should be repaired or scrapped. The only two methods for amending it are prescribed in Article V. The only one used so far is by proposal of Congress. The other -- by a Constitutional Convention called at the request of two thirds of the legislatures of the several States -- was opposed by Jefferson and has never been used. The Constitution places no restrictions upon the activity of such a convention; and several judges, including Chief Justice Warren Burger, have alarmingly said it cannot be limited! Even if called for a specific purpose, a convention could replace the whole document (including how it should be ratified)! There is ample precedent for just such action. The 1787 Convention was called for the specific purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. They threw out even the title and the rules for ratification and started over.
When New York called for a constitutional convention to add a bill of rights, Jefferson opposed the idea: "In this way, the whole fabric would be submitted to alteration. Its [the Constitution's] friends, therefore, unite in endeavoring to have the first method [resolution by Congress] adopted, [which it was]."
At least one such replacement constitution (New States Constitution) has already been prepared for the occasion -- by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. In this deceptively nice looking document, rights which haven't disappeared altogether have become conditional privileges, subject to the whim of government. This "new" constitution would install dictatorial rule, disguised in benevolent dress. There is no Bill of Rights or state sovereignty. There are no protections for individuals. All the effort and sacrifice of our forefathers would be lost.
To date, legislatures of thirty-two States have called for a Constitutional Convention. Three of them (Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana) have rescinded their call. A federal judge has issued an injunction against these three States in an attempt to disqualify their rescissions. Currently, several States are considering making such a call. (Kentucky has defeated it.) Unless an injunction is brought against Congress (on the basis of the three rescissions), upon the positive action of only two more States, Congress will have no choice but to call a convention.
We must be wary, and suspicious of any proposed amendments, including the so-called, and highly questionable, Liberty Amendment (which purports to enforce what the Constitution already requires), or an amendment to balance the budget, which under our current monetary system is unbalanceable without foreclosures, loss of capital, and eventual depression.
The World Constitution has, also, already been drafted. These facts, and more, are revealed in the book, En Route To Global Occupation, by Gary Kah, a former high-ranking government liaison (p. 161).
Environmental problems, both real and alleged, and ÒpeacekeepingÓ are ciited as justification for the treason of bowing to a world government. Are we incapable of responsible behavior toward our environment and one another without the UN policing us? Are we willing to submit to the rule of an unelected multinational bureaucracy? ... to suffer the imposition of fines and penalties, and be tried in UN courts, for infractions of codes devised by foreign unaccountable bureaucrats? ... and trade our proven Constitution for one unproven?
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No Fourth Amendment?
In fact, no one is safe from a government drunk with power and out of control.
The Federal Register daily records new regulations churned out by the federal bureaucracies -- FDA, OSHA, EPA, IRS, DEA, etc. (tens of thousands of pages of small type in one year). Everything in the Federal Register has the force of law, and you are responsible for knowing every Òjot and tittleÓ on every page. Many people have been jailed for running afoul of these obscure "laws," "legislated" by the executive, not legislative, branch of government.
Under an obscure 1984 law, sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court and justified as essential to the war on drugs, the police can now seize your home, cash, business, jewelry, retirement plan, gold, bank accounts, safe deposit boxes, cars ... all without due process. The property of some has been permanently confiscated -- often without their ever being charged with any misconduct. Our current forfeiture laws don't require conviction; and in 50 to 80 per cent of forfeiture cases, charges are never filed! This is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment ("the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"). Are we victims of the butter trick (p. 5)?
Many have thought that law-abiding citizens were immune to the possibility of such assaults.
Recently a gardening contractor put his year's profits of $9,600 in his pocket and headed for Houston to buy flowers and shrubs. At the airport, two policemen searched him, seized his money, and gave him a receipt. The brash assumption was that no black man would have that much cash unless it were drug money. No charges were ever filed. This is a common occurrence.
One man, unaware of EPA wetlands regulations, was sentenced to three years in prison for dumping three loads of clean fill dirt on his own land. (Robert J. Pierce, former wetlands enforcer, in congressional testimony in 1991, said, "For regulatory purposes, a wetland is whatever we decide it is.")
Reputable suppliers of nutritional supplements have had natural vitamins (food), along with business equipment, confiscated. Why? Product claims were alleged "unfounded," even though supported by legitimate independent scientific studies.
(See details in "Forfeiture: Your Possessions at Risk," p. 67 in The Treasury.)
Some victims of such abuse, mindful of the Constitution as the protector of our liberties, openly challenge unlawful "laws." These brave people risk -- and many have lost -- their fortunes and freedom, fighting for the supremacy of the Constitution. They make the news, if at all, as "law-breakers" getting their just due. But such open court challenge is a legitimate form of petitioning for redress of grievances.
Jefferson gave us fair warning in his Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, February 15, 1793:
To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.
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Two Holes in Our Boat
Is the Constitution simply ignored? As a matter of fact, most of the harm we see is perpetrated in the name of the Constitution. Judicial misinterpretations of the Constitution form two loopholes. Through them anything can escape the confines of the Constitution, rendering it meaningless. The clauses in question are the general Welfare clause in Article I, Section 8, and a clause in Article VI, Paragraph 2, governing the making of Treaties. The Treaty limitation clause in that article and one in Article III, Section 2, have been simply ignored.
The General Welfare clause reads:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;...
Hamilton claimed the phrase "general welfare" was itself a grant of power to do anything that Congress might deem would promote any welfare as long as it was for everyone and not for a select group or locality. (Apparently even he would not have approved of pork). Hamilton was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers (a series published anonymously to promote ratification of the Constitution), but on this subject he was significantly silent until after ratification. Otherwise ratification might well have failed, since this clause had raised great alarm among the States.
Madison had taken copious notes at the Convention. He made clear in Federalist Papers #41 that the term "general Welfare" could never rationally be given a power-grant interpretation. He stressed that the powers delegated to the federal government were not broad, but few and defined -- enumerated in Article I, Section 8, in the clauses following the welfare clause.
It was on this assurance that the States did ratify. But at least six States accompanied their ratifications with resolutions that all powers not specifically granted were reserved. Among the amendments submitted by the First Congress was the one that became the Tenth Amendment:
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.
This amendment was immediately ratified. Its purpose was to lay the "general welfare" issue to rest. Congressman Samuel Walker McCall thought it had laid it to rest, when he said in 1907 ...
... it deals a death-blow to the theory that our Government has about it any "divine right" or any "inherent power," or any power that is not contained in the express grant.
Jefferson opposed HamiltonÕs interpretation on the grounds that it would render the rest of the Constitution meaningless. He had this to say ...
This assembly does further disavow and declare to be most false and unfounded, the doctrine that the compact, in authorizing its federal branch to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States, has given them thereby a power to do whatever they may think, or pretend, would promote the general welfare, which construction would make that, of itself, a complete government, without limitation of powers; but that the plain sense and obvious meaning were, that they might levy the taxes necessary to provide for the general welfare, by the various acts of power therein specified and delegated to them, and by no others.
And again, in a letter to C. Wilson Nicholas, Sept. 7, 1803:
Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.
And again, in a letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823 É
The States supposed that by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers ....
Nevertheless, the claim of Hamilton continued to be propounded through the years, and became entrenched with the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. An astonishing Supreme Court decision in 1937 denied even review by the courts.
The Treaty clauses were subverted by the Supreme Court in 1920 with another astonishing opinion: that powers reserved to the States in accordance with the Tenth Amendment could be given to the federal government if a foreign power agreed (i.e. by a treaty).
Both misinterpretations are soundly refuted and their consequences accurately foretold by Thomas Jefferson. (For more about both see, in The Treasury, the "Loophole" essays [pp. 98, 99], for the wisdom of Jefferson, and "Reconstructing the Republic," by Howard Phillips [p. 123.)
Article V provides the only legitimate means for amending the Constitution. Informal amendments -- whether by judicial interpretation, congressional legislation, "evolution" of meaning, agency usurpation, or any other means -- simply cannot be valid.
The whole Constitution was specifically designed to restrain the government from mischief, to shield the citizen from tyranny, and to preserve individual liberty. Again from Mr. McCall:
... the striking thing in the American Constitution, which differentiates it from the previously formed constitutions of all other nations, is the manner in which it imposed limitations upon government, recognizing that all power originally resided in the people, and that no government had any species of authority over them which they did not expressly grant.
Jefferson gives warning in a letter to Joseph Cabell, February 2, 1816:
What has destroyed the rights of men in every government under the sun? The concentration of all powers in one central body.
And Jefferson waxes hot against the judiciary in a letter to C. Hammond, July 18, 1821. (See also "The Sappers and Miners," p. 101 in The Treasury.):
... the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body ... working like gravity by night and day, gaining a little to-day and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.
Back to TopClearly, our government is out of control. The situation may look hopeless. It is not, as we shall see. But what are some of the fundamentals necessary to our understanding?
To continue: VIb Destination Disaster Some Fundamentals