The Case For Small Government Part 2

If you didn't catch Part One, read the entry below first....

TRANSFORMING BACK… how to go back home.

So, how do we keep all the good things that government provides – the social safety net, consumer protections, benefits, and other niceties while keeping the Federal Government small? They are dichotomous intents… you just can’t have both! Either you accept the bloated Federal Government and all it provides, or you slash and burn the Federal structure and say goodbye to Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, The Departments of Education, Commerce, Labor, Interior, and all the other things that combine to create the greatest Civil monster ever designed by man.

Once again we venture into a briar patch of debate misled by intentional or accidental diversion. In the struggle for civil rights, from the reconstruction era all the way through current times, certain words and phrases that have a meaningful place in discourse have been bastardized and deemed “verboten”. Allow me to start off by saying that the phrase “states’ rights” has little – almost nothing – to do with slavery or Jim Crow laws! Unfortunately, the liberals, Southern Democrats, carpetbaggers, and Dixiecrats so intertwined that one phrase with their own desire to keep the black culture “down” that we are almost inured with a sense that any State calling upon its Constitutional rights is somehow advocating the return of Poll Taxes, lynchings, and even slavery itself.

States DO HAVE RIGHTS and those rights are specifically protected by the 10th Amendment of the Constitution. It’s not some archaic, antiquated, cute little law like horses needing to be properly tied to a hitching post when downtown; it is a very instrumental, structural support for our bottom-to-top government. We need to recognize the necessity and irreplaceable nature of the States in our system, and call on them to restore our Republic.

The first step is to spend a significant amount of federal money to build Government Contact Centers in the one hundred most-populated cities and towns. These would be large and inclusive buildings or campuses able to house remote offices for the majority of federal departments. Labor, Commerce, Agriculture, Transportation, Interior, Veterans’ Affairs, Social Security, ATF, Immigration… ALL federal departments would have a local presence and a centralized location.

NOW HERE IS THE DANGEROUS POINT that must be handled carefully!!!

If the federal government is allowed to just fill those offices with new employees, WHILE KEEPING THE main offices in Washington DC, all would be lost! The intent would actually be subverted and the purpose would be flipped 180 degrees. The country would at this crucial point be vulnerable to another massive growth in the federal government, potentially the largest federal power grab in history… which is the LAST thing we need!!

The officials, staff members, and personnel in Washington DC MUST BE RELOCATED and sent out into the country. The offices in Washington DC must be left with skeleton crews of no more than 10 individuals in each department!!

While these Government Contact Centers are being built, the President must have intensive and inclusive meetings with the governors of every state. The subject of these meetings will be the seamless transfer of most benefits and responsibilities from the federal level to the states. Incorporated into these discussions will be how to mitigate the transfer of tax collection. The feds and states would have 35 months from the President’s inauguration to devise a plan by which the federal government can hand-off the responsibilities to the legislatures of the separate states.

By January 1st of the President’s third year, the IRS would for the most part be dissolved. A three percent Value Added Tax (federal sales tax) would be implemented to provide for the military, State department, and to pay off Federal debts. The cost of all other services would be assumed by the states. Therefore, the vast majority of taxes on the state level would rise, in some ways skyrocket, but when balanced to the suddenly negligible federal taxes, the transfer shouldn’t present a panic or spike in taxes. The analogy would be a person paying fifty dollars to “John” every month. On January 1st he would begin paying ten dollars to John and the other forty to Jim. The state legislatures should be encouraged to fix their state taxes to total no more than twenty percent of personal and corporate income, and work within those guidelines to assume the costs of federal programs.

The federal and state governments would have nearly three years to make sure the transfer is as seamless as possible.

This rosy scenario is assuming the Congress is equally interested in limiting its own power and influence. Fat chance! So the solution is to move forward with the Government Contact Centers as well as negotiations with the state Governors and legislatures without Congress. Plan the transfer and build the infrastructure. As the head of the Executive Branch, the President transfers the staffs of Executive Departments to the state offices. He/She decentralizes nearly every executive department unilaterally. When the budget is approached during the transfer period, the President presents to Congress a budget assuming the transfer of departments to the states… he asks for the smallest federal budget since Teddy Roosevelt. If Congress insists on a bloated, expensive federal budget the President would just transfer those funds to the state offices. If the Congress places restrictions on how the funds can be spent, the President places those funds into a trust fund to be released when the restrictions are removed.

By its very nature, this process will create a ‘showdown’ between patriots and progressives. Throughout the entire process, the message of “returning the power to the citizens’ and ‘taking power and influence from Washington’ must be hammered home! As with any massive change, the citizens must be firmly on one side supporting and demanding the transfer of power. If handled correctly, this should not be difficult.
Power to the citizens… the federal government is overgrown, ineffective, and malignant… power should be local… power in Washington is held by multimillionaires and huge corporations that can buy influence and access… the arguments for decentralization are filled with populist and individual-centered arguments that already fill the political discourse!

Make no mistake, those with entrenched influence and power will fight passionately and without reservation! They will paint the program as anarchistic, undermining the federal structure, starving kids, putting people on the streets, disenfranchising minorities…they will hold no punches, and will not be constrained by the truth (just look at how the current argument over Arizona’s new illegals law is being misrepresented and lied about!) In fact, it will return power and influence to the hands of the individual citizen. It would no longer matter how General Electric outspends the mom-and-pop barber… the barber would have his rightful influence and voice! As power diminishes in Washington DC, the federal government’s influence would increasingly become irrelevant – AS WAS INTENDED by the founders!

So what do we do if we don’t have a President or Congress willing to gut the federal government? It is my firm belief that if such a President isn’t elected in 2012, we may well be venturing beyond a point of no return… a tipping point beyond which we can no longer claim our American birthright… our government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” If Obama, or a similarly Socialist-Progressive President takes office after the 2012 elections, we must, we MUST take matters into our own hands! The last hope is to engage the failsafe last-ditch, safety catch provided us by the Founders… the Constitutional Convention. We, as citizens, through our State Legislatures must push for the adoption of new, restrictive Amendments to the United States’ Constitution. It is for this very reason I have bought the domain names ConCov.org and ConCov2012.com and am currently developing this ‘central clearing house’ for all Constitutional Convention movements! Beyond that action, the ONLY option is rebellion and bloodshed – which is NOT an option! Neither is continuing with the status quo! Our system of government, our culture, our very essence as a civilization is under attack… it is being purposefully killed, destroyed, and transformed! If we do not act NOW, we will never again see the liberty and freedom on which we were built and thrived!