A conservative writes

[Long Run]

I don't get this constant return to dancing on the head of pins over an issue that is well-decided with no chance of overturning (others have their own dead-end pet peeve topics, and I guess we are all allowed our pet peeves). The courts have decided that Social Security and other welfare programs are constitutional. No one of any consequence is arguing to overturn those decisions. Politicians of both parties have no intention of politically changing this result, which has been in place for nearly 80 years. This is because the overwhelming majority of Americans, both those who pay a lot of taxes and those that don't, want these programs. Thoughtful Americans want the programs to work better and be sustainable, and various proposals and plans have been introduced to do so, but there is no political movement to end these federal programs. It is a non-issue. What gives?

[Gob]

The latest from Karl Rove is that Obama won the election by, wait for it, suppressing the vote.

Karl's getting a kicking!

WASHINGTON: Karl Rove and his investors were the biggest losers on election day.

The Republican strategist created the model for outside-money groups that raised and spent more than $1 billion on the November 6 elections - many of which saw almost no return for their money.

Mr Rove, through his two political outfits, American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, backed unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney with $US127 million ($122 million) on more than 82,000 television spots, according to Kantar Media's CMAG, a New York advertising tracker.

Down the ballot, 10 of the 12 Senate candidates and four of the nine House candidates the Rove groups supported also lost their races.

The results have angered some Republicans, who blame Mr Rove for ''sidelining conservatives''. ''Right now there is stunned disbelief that Republicans fared so poorly after all the money they invested,'' said Brent Bozell, president of ForAmerica, non-profit group that advocates for Christian values in politics. ''If I had 1/100th of Karl Rove's money, I would have been more productive than he was.''

Donald Trump posted a message on Twitter saying: ''Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.''

The election day results showed Mr Rove's strategy of bringing in huge donations from a few wealthy benefactors and spending that money almost completely on television advertising failed.

The Centre for Responsive Politics estimates the two Crossroads groups spent about $US176 million, making them the top non-candidate and non-party spender of the election. ''Crossroads was a failure and Rove's core strategy of base-centric GOP politics is a failure,'' said a senior Republican consultant not favourably inclined to Rove. ''There are not enough white men for the Rove view to work any more. His time is past.''

Democrats also piled on. ''If Crossroads were a business, and Rove was the CEO, he'd be fired for getting a poor return on his investment,'' the New York senator Charles Schumer, the chamber's third-ranking Democrat, said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

The Houston home builder Bob Perry gave $US7.5 million to Mr Rove's American Crossroads and $US8 million to Restore Our Future, a super-PAC (political action committee) that supported Mr Romney.

A spokesman, Anthony Holm, said Mr Perry had no regrets.

[Econoline]

No guarantees, no refunds!

You know, these people and their wealthy masters literally spent billions of dollars, billions, to defeat Obama.

All those dollars are now wasted.

They’ll never get anything back. Karl Rove basically took their money, bushels and bushels of it, and lit it on fire. If this was anything but politics (or religion), Rove would be in jail next to Bernie Madoff for running a bogus investment scheme, he lost just about as much money.

The ironic part is that these folks are the ones who are screaming the loudest about having to pay a couple bucks more in taxes, hell they gave double that to Rove and other SuperPACs and got nothing back. They could have saved themselves a shitload of money, garnered themselves a big fat tax break, saved thousands of small businesses, and kick started the economy right out from under President Obama by giving every out of work blue collar conservative a year’s wage – say $35K – to spend at the businesses of their choice. And they would have created a self-sustaining cycle that would have eventually paid back the investment with interest. Instead they poured their money down Karl Rove’s rat-hole. Savvy businessmen, my ass.

(source)

[Sue U]

And speaking of missed opportunities and money poorly spent, Shelly Adelson must be kicking himself now:

[Guinevere]

Aw, lighten up on Dave, Andrew. I'm pretty sure butthurt isn't covered by Obamacare.

If he would just relax and pretend its gay sex then perhaps he might enjoy it.

Dave is the fading whine of the version of the Republican Party, whose mascot should be a mastodon, not an elephant. Unless it changes and reinvents itself (and not by pandering to the tea partyists), it will become irrelevant sooner rather than later. There is opportunity in defeat, but it will take vision and change to be able to make the opportunity come to fruition.

[Scooter]

[Guinevere]

Gotta love Rachel!

[Andrew D]

Finally, I would like to point out one simple aspect of Article I Section 8: all of these provisions are for the PUBLIC good. None of them benefits any individual citizen. There are no farm subsidies, no retirement or disability payments, no student loans, no subsidized housing - none of it. The federal government is a PUBLIC institution, never intended to confer cash or other benefits on INDIVIDUALS.

(Emphasis added.)

The Congress shall have Power ... To raise and support Armies ....

Do not the paychecks issued by the Congress to the soldiers in Armies "confer cash ... on INDIVIDUALS"?

The Congress shall have Power ... To provide and maintain a Navy ....

Do not the paychecks issued by the Congress to sailors in the Navy "confer cash ... on INDIVIDUALS"?

The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries ....

Are not those Authors and Inventors "INDIVIDUALS"? Does not Congress have the power to "confer ... other ["exclusive"] benefits on [those] INDIVIDUALS"?

When it comes to the Constitution, dgs49, take your own advice: Read the fucking thing.

[dgs49]

Andrew, this is perhaps the lamest attempt at an argument that you have ever wasted the effort to post on this site.

Why didn't you mention that the salaries for President, Congress and the justices of the Supreme Court are also beneficial to those individuals? It is just as "compelling" as the idiocy posted above.

It is almost too obvious to point out that the Army, Navy, and patent offices are both directly and indirectly for PUBLIC BENEFIT. Indeed the entire rationale of issuing Patents is to induce inventors to DISCLOSE THEIR FUCKING INVENTIONS for public benefit, in exchange for a short-duration monopoly.

Really, Andrew, is this the best you can do?

[Grim Reaper]

And those systems still end up benefiting individuals in addition to helping the public at large.

Same deal with healthcare.

[Andrew D]

That's rich, dgs49, considering that you routinely post the lamest attempts at constitutional arguments which anyone has ever wasted the effort to post anywhere.

Worse, you pertinaciously cling to those inept arguments no matter how many times you are proved wrong. We have been through this many times. And out of magnanimity, I go through some of it yet again.

Bear in mind that the onus is on you to prove me wrong. I have laid out the arguments time and time again. You have responded with nothing more than “I say so; neener, neener, neener.”

At some point, this must end. At some point, everyone here will see – at least, those few who have not already seen – that your arguments are not merely inept but dishonest.

The next time that these things come up, either you will respond to and rebut in specific terms the arguments which have been presented to you time and time again, or everyone here will know that your façade of ignorance has crumbled and that you are, in fact, deliberately lying in order to advance your Neanderthal political agenda.

I Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution is not an exclusive list of Congress's powers. Various powers of Congress appear in at least twenty-two other sections of the Constitution. (I leave it to you to figure out what sections those are.) Therefore, this:

if you are aware of a law ... that does something not listed in (or even inferrable from) Section 8, then you can, by your very own logical analysis, rightly conclude that that law is unconstitutional.

is utter nonsense.

If a law is authorized by, say, the Fourteenth Amendment, then whether it is listed in or inferrable from Section 8 of Article I is absolutely irrelevant.

II: Pursuant to Section 8 of Article I:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes ... to pay ... for the ... general Welfare of the United States ....

That is an independent grant of power to Congress. It is not in any way dependent upon the other powers granted in Section 8 of Article I.

II.A: That is the most natural reading of the provision. If the Framers had meant the taxing and spending power to be dependent on the other powers granted in Section 8 of Article I, they could easily have said so:

In order to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States, the Congress shall have Power:
To lay and collect Taxes;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States; [etc.]

But they said no such thing. On the contrary, they said “The Congress shall have Power” and followed that with a series of things beginning “To”. And the first of those things is the power to lay and collect taxes to pay for, among other things, the general welfare of the United States.

II.BThat understanding of Congress’s taxing and spending power is not news. That is how Congress's taxing and spending power has been understood since George Washington was President.

II.B.1I am always amazed that you do not even bother to amass arguments which might support your view.

I really shouldn’t be, because the essence of your view is “That’s what I what the Constitution to mean, so that’s what it means, dammit!”

But I am.

After all, there are arguments which support your view. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both contended that the Taxing and Spending Clause conferred upon Congress nothing more than the power to tax and spend to effectuate the powers thereafter enumerated.

The problem, for them and for you, is that that is not how the Constitution reads.

And interesting as that debate might be in hindsight, the fact of the matter is that Jefferson and Madison lost the dispute. Hamilton argued that Congress’s taxing and spending power extended to all matters of national, rather than merely local, welfare.

And Hamilton won.

II.B.2 You have a penchant for presenting Hamilton’s view – the view that has prevailed for 220 years – as some sort of New Deal invention. Guess what: You are wrong.

When the Hamiltonian view of Congress’s taxing and spending power – the view which had prevailed for 134 years – was finally endorsed by the Supreme Court (because until then, it was so well settled that no one bothered seriously challenging it), there was not a single Justice nominated by FDR on that Court.

Not even one.

II.B.3 The Social Security Act falls squarely within the understanding of Congress’s taxing and spending power which had prevailed since the administration of George Washington and which had been endorsed by a conservative – not an FDR nominee to be seen – Supreme Court. It addressed a “nation-wide calamity” which could not be solved by the States acting on their own.

You wish that the Constitution did not empower Congress to address nation-wide calamities through its taxing and spending power. But wishing does not make it so.

III The Tenth Amendment does not provide that “the powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government (Congress) are reserved to the states and the people.” You wish that it did, but it does not.

The Tenth Amendment does not include the word “specifically”. And that is very much on purpose. During the debates over the Tenth Amendment, it was twice proposed that the word “expressly” – which in this context is synonymous with “specifically” – be added. And both times, that proposal was resoundingly defeated.

What you want to do is add to the Tenth Amendment a provision which its framers repeatedly refused to include in it.

That is just more of your wishful “thinking”: “I want the Tenth Amendment to say ‘specifically,’ so it does.”

(I leave aside the differences between your language “to the states and the people” and the Tenth Amendment’s actual language “to the States respectively, or to the people.” I am trying – not that you are making it easy, but I am trying – not to go over your head too much at once.)

The Tenth Amendment does not say what you want it to say, because the people who wrote it refused to make it say what you want it to say. Maybe you should have been there. Maybe you could have convinced them. And maybe pigs will fly out of my asshole.

The arguments are there for you to respond to. You are free to address them. You are free to resort to "Waah! I want the Constitution to mean what I want it to mean, so it does. Dammit! Waah!"

The choice is yours.

[Andrew D]

Note Andrew's posting above. Does he try to argue that the Constitution includes a provision for a compulsory retirement program? Of course not. the COnstitution does no such thing and he knows it.

Just so. The Constitution includes no provision for a compulsory retirement program. Therefore, a compulsory retirement program is unconstitutional.

The Constitution includes no provision for aircraft. Therefore, the United States Air Force is unconstitutional.

Refuse to pay that portion of your US income tax that pays for the Air Force. Do your patriotic duty!

The Constitution says nothing about orbiting satellites.

Do your patriotic duty!

That GPS that tells you how to get back home from someplace you'd never been until today?

Unconstitutional.

Do your patriotic duty!

Smash it into a million tiny pieces!

Sing our national anthem while it crumbles!

Do your patriotic duty!

So what if you get lost. The Framers of our Constitution obviously wanted you to get lost. So suck it up, and do your patriotic duty!

I would say that you can call me for directions, but the Framers said nothing about telephones. They must be unconstitutional.

So just stay lost until some helpful person in a horse and carriage comes by.

Do your patriotic duty!

[Econoline]

Bobby Jindal: GOP Should 'Stop Being The Stupid Party'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/1 ... 21511.html