Why do you feel socialism is bad?

[sidbrown]

No. In fact, George Washington, upon leaving office, considered one of his greatest achievements as president to be that the average citizen had little or no contact with the national government. Clearly, “welfare” in the context of the preamble meant something besides a welfare state.

What the Constitution means or does not mean is not up to you to decide. It is decided and determined by the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

 

[sidbrown]

There are programs that benefit everyone, such as military spending and infrastructure creation, and there are programs that benefit only certain groups, such as welfare.

It is quite easy to tell that the authors of the constitution for in favor of the former- you have yet to present evidence that showed they were in favor of the latter.

If you could read, you would see already that I have given you the case in which the Supreme Court has decided the issue. I have cited this case more than once.

 

[sidbrown]

Sid has falsely claimed that the founding fathers supported social programs. That is what I was discussing- your statement is unrelated to that.

I’m still waiting on an explanation as to how nationalizing health care will make more of it in a way incentives could not.

I am claining that the federal courts have never held that it is not allowed for the US Congress to promote or to provide for the general welfare by enacting social welfare programs. In fact, quite the contrary. The Supreme Court of the United States of America has already decided the issue. The Supreme Court, and not tjm, is the official body which determines what the Constitution means or what it does not mean.

 

[ComputerGeek25]

I am claining that the federal courts have never held that it is not allowed for the US Congress to promote or to provide for the general welfare by enacting social welfare programs. In fact, quite the contrary. The Supreme Court of the United States of America has already decided the issue. The Supreme Court, and not tjm, is the official body which determines what the Constitution means or what it does not mean.

And the Supreme Court isn’t St. Paul. You never addressed the bible passage me and another poster alluded to… We have massive fraud and waste in our welfare system.

What about those that are unwilling to work (but are able to) but still want to eat?

 

[GodLovesTheSpek]

United States vs. Butler

What is it really? Read here: supreme.justia.com/us/297/1/case.html

Abraham Lincoln: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

United States vs. Butler 1936 was a Supreme Court case that challenged the constitutionality of the Agricultural Adjustment Act passed by US Congress in 1933. The Act was an attempt by the US Government to tax farm products and redistribute the collected monies to pay farmers to reduce crop size area to reduce the amount of surplus thus increasing the price of the crop.

(Sound familiar?)

Ultimately (in a non-unanimous decision) the Agriculture Adjustment Act was ruled to be in violation of 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.

There is nothing in this case that equates promote or provide with OWN.

Read what the decision of United States vs. Butler really says: supreme.justia.com/us/297/1/

Held:

(1) The Act invades the reserved powers of the States. P. 297 U. S. 68.

(4) The power of taxation, which is expressly granted to Congress, may be adopted as a means to carry into operation another power also expressly granted, but not to effectuate an end which is not within the scope of the Constitution. P. 297 U. S. 69.

(7) The right to appropriate and spend money under contracts or proper governmental purposes cannot justify contracts that are not within federal power. P. 297 U. S. 72.

(8) Congress cannot invade state jurisdiction by purchasing the action of individuals any more than by compelling it. P. 297 U. S. 73.

(11)** Existence of a situation of national concern resulting from similar and widespread local conditions cannot enable Congress to ignore the constitutional limitations upon its own powers and usurp those reserved to the States.** P. 297 U. S. 74.

(12) If the novel view of the General Welfare Clause now advanced in support of the tax were accepted, that clause would not only enable Congress to supplant the States in the regulation of agriculture and of all other industries as well, but would furnish the means whereby all of the other provisions of the Constitution, sedulously framed to define and limit the power of the United States and preserve the powers of the States, could be broken down, the independence of the individual States obliterated, and the United States converted into a central government exercising uncontrolled police power throughout the Union superseding all local control over local concerns. P. 297 U. S. 75.

(13) Congress, being without power to impose the contested exaction, could not lawfully ratify the acts of an executive officer in assessing it.

 

[tjm190]

I am claining that the federal courts have never held that it is not allowed for the US Congress to promote or to provide for the general welfare by enacting social welfare programs. In fact, quite the contrary. The Supreme Court of the United States of America has already decided the issue. The Supreme Court, and not tjm, is the official body which determines what the Constitution means or what it does not mean.

I take your refusal to address the question as admitting that the founding fathers did not, in fact, believe social programs were within the scope of the government.
What was decided after the fact is another issue, and quite frankly, not what you were saying before.

 

[Frenchmen]

Wow guys
I’m watching the news tonight and what do I see - A DEFICIT OF $1.6 TRILLION in the US budget for this year!!!
Canada (like the European countries we talked about already) has a free health care system but not such a deficit !!!
Seeker100 - proud to be Canadian:thumbsup:

 

[tjm190]

Wow guys
I’m watching the news tonight and what do I see - A DEFICIT OF $1.6 TRILLION in the US budget for this year!!!
Canada (like the European countries we talked about already) has a free health care system but not such a deficit !!!
Seeker100 - proud to be Canadian:thumbsup:

Imagine how much worse it’d be with health care on top of that!

(Also, our deficit, is roughly 10% of GDP. Britain has a GDP of roughly 2.1 trillion dollars and a deficit of 178 billion pounds. A quick conversion tells us that this is equivalent to 280 billion USD. Fun fact- that is more than 10%.)

 

[GodLovesTheSpek]

Wow guys
I’m watching the news tonight and what do I see - A DEFICIT OF $1.6 TRILLION in the US budget for this year!!!
Canada (like the European countries we talked about already) has a free health care system but not such a deficit !!!
Seeker100 - proud to be Canadian:thumbsup:

Isn’t it astounding? The USA shouldn’t have enacted socialist government policies.

In any event, if war, economic catastrophe and totalitarianism occur in Europe or anywhere again, we’ll be there to help rather than cheer on the tormentors and oppressors.

fleursdelamemoire.free.fr/

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

See the Crosses and Star Of Davids? That is the true cost of Socialism.

God bless the French for such an incredible, beautiful memorial.

 

[sidbrown]

I was locked out of 5 courses because I did not have the prerequisites.

The space is limited to those students who have met the qualifications and prerequisites for the course. Someone who is unprepared can drag down the whole class as the teacher attempts to get his point across.
It really is unfair to those students who already have the prerequisites. They have done all the work and they are prepared for the new knowledge. Why should the good students who are prepared have to sit and listen to the low level questions and low level explanations which would be required to bring students who do not have the prerequisites up to speed?

 

[sidbrown]

The USA shouldn’t have enacted socialist government policies…

This is your opinion, but as far as I know, there has never been a case in a federal Court, upheld by a decision of the Supreme Court, according to which a law promoting the general welfare has been overturned on the grounds that it was unconstitutional to provide for the General Welfare. Quite the contrary. The General Welfate Clause has been upheld as Constitutional.

 

[sidbrown]

I take your refusal to address the question as admitting that the founding fathers did not, in fact, believe social programs were within the scope of the government.
What was decided after the fact is another issue, and quite frankly, not what you were saying before.

I gave you the quote of Alexander Hamilton which upholds the liberal interpretation of the General Welfare Clause. We can understand what is meant by the term General Welfare by consideration of all of the laws which Congress has passed in order to provide for the general welfare and by consideration of the fact the the US Supreme Court has never once said that any of the laws passed by Congress with a view to promoting the general selfare were unconstitutional. Whether or not you agree with the de facto Congressional interpretation of promoting the general welfare, the fact is that it has already been shown by close examination of the laws passed, that the liberal interpretation is the one which is operational today. Therefore it is irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial to base an interpretation of the General Welfare Clause on what laws have been passed in this area by a particular founding father. However, that being said, we still must take note of what the Founding Father Alexander Hamilton said in this regard, and that the opinion of Alexander Hamilton has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The question before us should be and must be, what interpretation is warranted by the de facto laws passed by Congress in the name of the General Welfare Clause and have these laws been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States?

 

[GodLovesTheSpek]

On March 9, 1937 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in a radio “fireside chat” (how harmless and cozy) : **“We have, therefore, reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself.” ** He demonized and usurped the very branch of the government created to interpret and defend the Constitution. He took an oath: “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.” Because his policies and his opinions were not being supported by the Supreme Court prior to that time, he cut the legs off the very branch he swore to “preserve, protect and defend”.

When asked if the “general welfare” was a grant of power in 1792, James Madison, the primary writer of the The Constitution Of The United States wrote in a letter to Henry Lee: "If not only the means but the objects are unlimited, the parchment [the Constitution] should be thrown into the fire at once."

George Washington in his Presidential farewell address warned: "Let there be no change in the constitution by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

Provide and Promote do not mean OWN.

 

[GodLovesTheSpek]

This is your opinion, but as far as I know, there has never been a case in a federal Court, upheld by a decision of the Supreme Court, according to which a law promoting the general welfare has been overturned on the grounds that it was unconstitutional to provide for the General Welfare. Quite the contrary. The General Welfate Clause has been upheld as Constitutional.

The General Welfare Clause says nothing about OWNING. Providing and Promoting can be done without OWNING.

 

[sidbrown]

The General Welfare Clause says nothing about OWNING. Providing and Promoting can be done without OWNING.

In McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316 (1819), Chief Justice Marshall held that the Constitution authorized Congress to take the means necessary to give effect to the powers granted. And so it can promote the general welfate by enacting social welfare legislation.

 

[GodLovesTheSpek]

Promote not Own. The words do not have the same meaning.

Is it believed the words have the same meaning?

 

[sidbrown]

Promote not Own. The words do not have the same meaning.

Is it believed the words have the same meaning?

The United States government has **direct ownership **of almost 650 million acres of land (2.63 million square kilometers) – nearly 30% of its total territory. These federal lands are used as military bases or testing grounds, nature parks and reserves and indian reservations, or are leased to the private sector for commercial exploitation (e.g. forestry, mining, agriculture).
I don;t know of a single case tried by the US Supreme Court which has determined that this **direct ownership ** of land by the United States is unconstitutional.

 

[CPA2]

“Firmly committed to the principles of interventionism, governments try to check the undesired result of their interference by reporting to those measures which are nowadays called full-employment: unemployment doles, arbitration of labor disputes, public works by means of lavish public spending, inflation, and credit expansion. All these remedies are worse than the evil they are designed to remove (Ludwig von Mises).”

 

[CPA2]

“The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration. The individual is always ready to ascribe his good luck to his own efficiency and to take it as a well-deserved reward for his talent, application, and probity. But reverses of fortune he always charges to other people, and most of all to the absurdity of social and political institutions. He does not blame the authorities for having fostered the boom. He reviles them for the inevitable collapse. In the opinion of the public, more inflation and more credit expansion are the only remedy against the evils which inflation and credit expansion have brought about (Ludwig von Mises).”

 

[CPA2]

Governments lie. There is huge difference between what the White House, especially under Clinton, reported as a deficit/surplus and what the Federal Reserve reports. I tend to trust the Federal Reserve’s figures.

I lost confidence in many government statistics many years ago. A prime example is the CPI (Consumer Price Index). I think that the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses something called the “hedonic factor”. They actually try to calculate the increased “productivity” of computers to reduce the CPI. I call this the “fudge factor.” Beat the data until it confesses! As a consumer I only look at the price at the gas pump and at the food store. That is my CPI.