The Right Stuff: The rise and fall of the republic: Part 2

By Earl Heal

The Right Stuff on Oct. 10 reviewed the strength of the Constitution that encouraged the amazing growth of America into a world power.

Other than the Bill of Rights and three amendments related to the slavery issue, no amendments violated the human nature concepts in the Constitution until 1913. For 150 years the Founders’ wisdom had produced the greatest growth in freedom and economy of any nation in history.

The 17th Amendment, passed in 1913, required senators to be elected by the people instead of appointment by their respective state legislatures. It was promoted on the concept of improving voter rights that were already protected by the so-called peoples’ house. The amendment’s unintended consequence weakened the strength of state’s rights and weakened the defense against “the emotion of the masses,” bringing America closer to being a democracy and impairing the republic. French scholar Alexis de Tocqueville predicted during America’s formation that “a democracy can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.”

Far greater deviation from the clearly stated intent of the Founders occurred in 1937 during the Great Depression. Mass unemployment was a new experience in the 1930s resulting from the stock market’s decline and the national economy’s collapse and the Industrial Revolution’s introduction of concentrated employment.

Need for wage insurance was never previously experienced, but the country was suffering on a biblical scale. Thirty states under constitutional authority had already commenced welfare programs to address unemployment when President Franklin D. Roosevelt replaced the authorized state programs in 1935. He promoted through Congress a Social Security bill that violated Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution – implied powers, which authorizes powers only for “the foregoing (enumerated) powers and all other powers vested.”[...read more]

The Right Stuff: Biden’s student loan forgiveness a scam

By Roger Oberbeck

President Joe Biden intends to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt (arbitrarily $20,000 for those with federal Pell grants) for those with annual incomes of up to $125,000 and $250,000 per household. According to a Federal Reserve study, the median outstanding debt is between $20,000 and $24,999.

This is a gross, negative, regressive and inflationary redistribution of income, taking debt from high-income college graduates and effectively transferring it to lower income workers who did not have the opportunity or choice to go to college. The average workers with less than or only a high school diploma makes $32,188 per year. Salaries increase with each additional level of education to more than $200,000 for physicians. In reality, all students on government loans get a free gift of $10,000 or $20,000 from the government, which only collects or redistributes money. It prints money at its choosing. Penn Wharton puts the cost of this illegal inflationary act at $400 billion. Essentially, 70% of the top 60% of high-income students get the benefit. There would also be a government loss of annual interest of $16 billion. Do they really think lower income non-college graduates are stupid, that they don’t understand they are being stuck with the bill for privileged college graduates who are making much more that they are? This smacks of an attempt by President Biden to buy votes with taxpayer money.[...read more]

The Right Stuff: The rise and fall of the republic: Part 1

By Earl Heal

The wisdom of America’s Founders is well recognized, but perhaps not fully appreciated.

No government had ever been a servant of its people, but that was their dream. No government had ever permitted subordinate levels of government (states) to have sovereign power, but that was their dream. Their study of autocracies, aristocracies, democracies, monarchies, oligarchies, republics and theocracies fed the Founders’ imaginations with concepts to employ and to avoid.

The Articles of Confederation, first drafted in 1771, proved inadequate, primarily by not providing the national government sufficient power. The original Congress authorized the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to revise the Articles, but some proponents intended to build a new frame of government based on evaluations of historic records of policies that produced governmental successes and failures. The Founders observed that human nature never changes and neither does the American Constitution, unless amended. Only 17 amendments (after the 10 Bill of Rights developed by the Founders) in 234 years validates the Founders’ wisdom. With regard to the size of government, George Washington is accredited with saying, “Government is not reason and not eloquence. It is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”[...read more]