Defund and Disobey
Posted by Alex GimarcFriday, December 18, 2009
THE DOUBLE-D STRATEGY FOR RESCUING AMERICA
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Thursday, 17 December 2009
A friend of mine lives in Kona on the Big Island in Hawaii. He has a fishing boat which he proudly named the 44-DD after a spectacular feature of his wife’s anatomy. This is not about that sort of Double-D.
While it may be difficult to keep your mind off what that spectacular feature might look like - just as it’s hard to comply with the demand that you not think of a pink elephant - let’s try and focus on a Double-D that can rescue our country from the clutches of the Fascist Democrat Party and the destruction being wrought upon it by President Zero.
So - what does this Double-D stand for? It’s a strategy for any Republican wanting to get elected or re-elected to Congress in 2010, and for any Tea Partyer wanting to take individual action now against a government that ignores the Constitution. Double-D stands for Defund and Disobey.
Let’s talk about the Defund D first. The Founders in their usual brilliance place the power of the purse in the House, whose members must face election every two years - for if they become profligate with this power the voters can throw them out within months (24 max) rather than wait years (6) like the Senate.
All Appropriation bills authorizing any branch of the federal government (legislative, judicial, executive) to spend any money for any program must be initiated in and passed by a majority of the House. The Senate can only agree or disagree, and the same with the President.
The obverse of this appropriation authority is that if the House doesn’t authorize money for something, then no money can be spent on that something by anyone in the federal government.
This was Senator Jim Inhofe’s point when he announced (12/13) that “Obama has no power to make a deal in Copenhagen.” Unless the House appropriates the money for any deal he makes, there’s no deal at all.
A conservative group in DC, Americans for Tax Reform run by Grover Norquist, has had a successful program for some years called the Tax Protection Pledge. It is a pledge signed by a candidate for public office to his constituents that (s)he will oppose any and all tax increases.
Thus it has been helpful in not increasing the burden of government on taxpayers - but it does nothing to actually decrease that burden.
Currently, this is the best that can be done at the federal legislative level. That is, the key goal of House & Senate Republicans is to block the passage of Dem legislation that will expand government and make our economy so much worse than it already is. There is no way for the Pubs to pass legislation that will make things better - and this is true even if the Republicans gain majority in the House in 2010 due to Zero’s veto power.
There is another way. One key solution to solving our problems, economic and social, is to get the federal government out of the way. To the extent that this requires positive legislative remedies - such as eliminating capital gains taxes, the depreciation schedule for capital expenses, and Sarbox - these will have to wait until we get a pro-capitalist president instead of a pro-socialist in 2012.
This means we must focus on negative legislative remedies that the Pubs can effect with a House majority right after 2010 and not wait until 2012. They can simply refuse to fund Zero’s programs. The Zero Administration is adding some 10,000 new federal employees to government payrolls every month? Eliminate the funding to pay them, requiring that their jobs be terminated.
ObamaCare is passed by the House & Senate and is made law, providing for a government seizure of one-sixth of the economy? Refuse to appropriate the money to fund the administrative apparatus required.
The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) wants to conduct a carbon jihad and seize control over the economy by regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant? Gut the EPA’s budget and thus its ability to do so.
NASA and other government agencies continue to conduct climate fraud? Zero out all funding for global warming research.
Thus, in order to gain the support of TeaPartyers and plain normal voters for their candidacy, Republicans wishing to get elected or re-elected to the House should be required to sign The Defund Pledge:
“Should I be elected, I solemnly pledge to my constituents that I will consistently vote to defund, or vote against appropriating any money for, any federal program or activity not specifically authorized by an enumerated power in the United States Constitution. For any federal program or activity I do vote to fund, I will provide the specific enumerated power constitutionally permitting it.”
It’s the only “purity test” conservatives need.
Just as the “Contract with America” enabled Republicans to gain a House majority in 1994, so the Defund Pledge will ensure they do so in 2010. The voting public is increasingly fed up with the Dems. But they are still wary of the Pubs who refused to shut off the spending spigots during the Bush years.
The Defund Pledge can reassure voters that the GOP will in fact dismantle Democrat fascism by committing to a concrete and simple way to do so: defund the Dem programs and on a Constitutional basis.
It provides the starkest contrast to the insufferably outlaw arrogance of Dems, epitomized by Nancy Pelosi, who when asked where in the Constitution was it allowed for the federal government to force people to buy something (e.g., health insurance), angrily responded, “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?”
And it gives the TeaPartyers the single uniting electoral message they are searching for. Right now, the TeaParty movement is inchoate, more emotion than focus. As this article points out, “the biggest challenge facing the movement is how to organize hundreds of local groups, and dozens of Tea Party leaders nationwide with divergent interests, into a force that can influence elections.”
The Defund Pledge solves the challenge.
And yet… the 2010 elections are next November and the new Congress, presumably with a Republican majority, won’t take office until the end of January 2011. The amount of damage Zero and the Dems can do until then is monumental - on top of the damage they have already done this year. How can that be prevented and undone? What can be done now?
The answer is the second D: Disobey. Disobey the Ghandi Way. Peaceful civil disobedience. No violence. Just the refusal to obey fascist and unconstitutional laws.
There are only three federal crimes in the Constitution: treason (Article III section 3), piracy, and counterfeiting (Article I, section 8). Yet Congress has passed laws making over 4,000 activities a federal crime now, and federal regulatory agencies have issued tens of thousands of rules and regulations the violation of which constitutes a jailable offense.
Ever hear of the Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act? Under it, anyone who transports water hyacinths across state lines for “interstate commerce” can be put in jail for six months and fined thousands of dollars.
Suppose a group of TeaPartyers, with press in tow, walked across a state line wearing water hyacinth flowers in their hair, and met another group of TeaPartyers waiting for them who proceeded to buy the flowers for a penny apiece?
The Federal Register contains some 85 thousand pages of rules and regulations, most all of which are unconstitutional. TeaPartyers have a lot to choose from.
Or they could focus on, say, ObamaCare. If it’s passed with the mandate to buy health insurance or pay a $1,000 fine - what if tens of thousands, what if hundreds of thousands of TeaPartyers refused to do either? Perhaps a few might be prosecuted - but there is no way all but a tiny fraction could. There are not enough prosecutors nor judges and it would tie the fed courts up in knots.
And that’s the goal. For so many people to disobey so many rules that it becomes impossible for the rules to be enforced.
Call this The Revolution of Disobedience. A Mass Movement of Conservative Civil Disobedience that empowers every participant who knows he or she is actually doing something specific and concrete to bring down Fedzilla.
The anger among TeaPartyers is growing to such an extent that one hears “lock and load” talk, implying they are ready to physically fight against the federales with guns and violence. If they have the guts to do this, then surely they have the guts to simply disobey fascist laws non-violently and peacefully, to fight in the courts and not the streets. Yet it’s a far safer and more effective way to cripple Leviathan.
Ghandi knew this. He saw where the Brits were vulnerable and went after them with disobedience. After building railroads in India, the Brits couldn’t run the place without them. And they couldn’t run the railroads by themselves, for they required many thousands of Indian railroad workers. So he persuaded the railroad workers to go on sitdown strikes. They did, the Brits shouted and screamed that such strikes were illegal, Ghandi and the workers said “So what?” - and British rule of India was over.
If the EPA conducts a Carbon Jihad, if the Dems enact a Cap & Tax bill penalizing energy production in the US, it would take no more than 50,000 energy workers to go fishing next winter, shutting down refineries, coal plants, pipelines et al, for the entire east coast to freeze in the dark.
What Ghandi knew - what TeaPartyers need to know - is that the key to success of any mass movement is the opponent’s loss of moral legitimacy. The goal, then, of The Revolution of Disobedience is to deligitimize the moral obligation to obey fascist laws.
There is no such obligation - any more than there is a moral obligation not to lie to a mugger holding you up at gunpoint about money hidden on you and not in your wallet. You may have a practical obligation to obey what he says, but no moral duty.
Just like the mugger, Fedzilla may have power and guns - but no moral authority unless its rules and laws are enumerated constitutionally.
So - expect to see at TeaParty demos and meetings signs that declare Just Say No To Fascists - We Won’t Obey Your Fascist Rules - For The Health of America, Break At Least One Fascist Law A Day.
Expect to see public demonstrations of federal rule breaking, initially with mass arrests - and the arrestees all demanding a jury trial. Expect to see courthouse protests with protestors making sure the jury members understand jury nullification (for info on a jury’s right to nullify the law under which a defendant is being prosecuted, see the Fully Informed Jury Association). Expect to see them acquitted with rare exceptions, then the prosecutors and judges give up under the onslaught of mass disobedience.
We don’t need guns, we don’t need violence in any way to rescue America. We just need to say no. No to funding fascism. No to obeying fascism. The Double-D - Defund and Disobey - will save our country.
http://marlettsmith.com/blog/index.php/2009/12/18/defund-and-disobey/
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