Welfare Parasites

[finehoe]

With all due respect Finehoe, you are quoting the preamble to the Constitution, which carries no force of law.  Th "general welfare" clause that you are referring to is in Section 8: Powers of Congress.  I'm not going to cover the entire Madisonion v. Hamiltonian debate here, but suffice it to say that the "interpretation" of the general welfare clause that allows such programs is a result of the FDR Supreme Court.  It has resulted in the massive national shame that we call a Federal government today.  The same USG that has indebted our great, great , great grandchildren for life, and it is still not through.  The founding Fathers wrote a simple and clear document.  They then discussed it over and over in letters and public print.  Their intent  and their description of "enumerated powers is well documented.  "Charity" is discussed at great length.  I urge you to study up on this.  The ignorance of the American people and their elected representatives has directly resulted in our current debacle.

And of course that indebtedness has nothing to do with the worldwide global military presence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases) that I'm sure the founding fathers had in mind when they penned Section 8.

[NotNow]

StephenDare!,

I'll explain what you should have learned in high school. 

The "preamble" to the Constitution is an introduction and as such it has not been used by the USSC in their interpretations.  The "general welfare" clause that we so often discuss here, the actual text, is in Section 8 of the Constitution.  The proper quote would have been:

Article 1, Section 8 - Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

I find these facts to be quite clear.  What exactly about this confuses you?

[NotNow]

Seriously, I urge all here to become familiar with the U S Constitution.  Here is a web site:

http://www.usconstitution.net

[finehoe]

Seriously, I urge all here to become familiar with the U S Constitution. 

Thank you.  I am already quite familiar with the document.

Might I suggest that you become familiar with the topic of constitutional law, the interpretation and implementation of the United States Constitution. As the Constitution is the foundation of the United States, constitutional law deals with some of the fundamental relationships within our society. This includes relationships among the states, the states and the federal government, the three branches (executive, legislative, judicial) of the federal government, and the rights of the individual in relation to both federal and state government.

Here is a web site:  http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/constitution/

[NotNow]

Whatever you say FH.. 

[finehoe]

Whatever you say FH.. 

What I'm saying is you seem to think that nothing in the Constitution is open to interpretation.  Two hundred years of constitutional law says differently.

[NotNow]

Actually FH, the deluded expansion of the "general welfare" clause happened during the FDR Administration:

United StatesMain article: Taxing and Spending Clause
The United States Constitution contains two references to "the General Welfare", one occurring in the Preamble and the other in the Taxing and Spending Clause. It is only the latter that is referred to as the "General Welfare Clause" of this document. These clauses in the U.S. Constitution are exceptions to the typical use of a general welfare clause, and are not considered grants of a general legislative power to the federal government[2] as the U.S. Supreme Court has held:

the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution "has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the Government of the United States or on any of its Departments";[3][4] and,
prior to 1936, the General Welfare Clause was not considered an independent grant of power, but instead a qualification on the taxing power which included within it a power to spend tax revenues in the interest of the general welfare.[5][6] In recent decades, the Court conferred upon Congress a plenary power to impose taxes and to spend money for the general welfare subject almost entirely to its own discretion, including the power to indirectly coerce the states into adopting national standards by threatening to withhold federal funds.[7]
Thomas Jefferson explained the latter general welfare clause for the United States: “[T]he laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They [Congress] are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose.”[8]

In 1824 Chief Justice John Marshall described in obiter dictum a further limit on the General Welfare Clause in Gibbons v. Ogden: "Congress is authorized to lay and collect taxes, &c. to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States. ... Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States."[9]

The historical controversy over the U.S. General Welfare Clause arises from two distinct disagreements. The first concerns whether the General Welfare Clause grants an independent spending power or is a restriction upon the taxing power. The second disagreement pertains to what exactly is meant by the phrase "general welfare."

The two primary authors of the The Federalist essays set forth two separate, conflicting interpretations:

James Madison advocated for the ratification of the Constitution in The Federalist and at the Virginia ratifying convention upon a narrow construction of the clause, asserting that spending must be at least tangentially tied to one of the other specifically enumerated powers, such as regulating interstate or foreign commerce, or providing for the military, as the General Welfare Clause is not a specific grant of power, but a statement of purpose qualifying the power to tax.[10][11] It should be noted that the requisite threshold of nine states for ratification of the constitution had already been met by the time Virginia ratified[12], and eight states had already ratified before the specific paper in which Madison made this argument [13] was published in bound form [14][15]. Before this time, they had only been published irregularly outside of New York[16], which itself ratified after Virgina. While the Federalist papers are considered an important contemporary account of the views and intentions of the founders[17], they are widely considered to have had little effect on the actual passage of the constitution.[18][19][20][dubious â€" discuss]
Alexander Hamilton, only after the Constitution had been ratified,[21] argued for a broad interpretation which viewed spending as an enumerated power Congress could exercise independently to benefit the general welfare, such as to assist national needs in agriculture or education, provided that the spending is general in nature and does not favor any specific section of the country over any other.[22]
While Hamilton's view prevailed during the administrations of Presidents Washington and Adams, historians argue that his view of the General Welfare Clause was repudiated in the election of 1800, and helped establish the primacy of the Democratic-Republican Party for the subsequent 24 years.[23]

Prior to 1936, the United States Supreme Court had imposed a narrow interpretation on the Clause, as demonstrated by the holding in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co.,[24] in which a tax on child labor was an impermissible attempt to regulate commerce beyond that Court's equally narrow interpretation of the Commerce Clause. This narrow view was later overturned in United States v. Butler. There, the Court agreed with Associate Justice Joseph Story's construction in Story's 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Story had concluded that the General Welfare Clause was not a general grant of legislative power, but also dismissed Madison's narrow construction requiring its use be dependent upon the other enumerated powers. Consequently, the Supreme Court held the power to tax and spend is an independent power and that the General Welfare Clause gives Congress power it might not derive anywhere else. However, the Court did limit the power to spending for matters affecting only the national welfare.

Shortly after Butler, in Helvering v. Davis,[25] the Supreme Court interpreted the clause even more expansively, conferring upon Congress a plenary power to impose taxes and to spend money for the general welfare subject almost entirely to its own discretion. Even more recently, the Court has included the power to indirectly coerce the states into adopting national standards by threatening to withhold federal funds in South Dakota v. Dole.[7] To date, the Hamiltonian view of the General Welfare Clause predominates in case law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Welfare_clause


It is obvious that the power grab that occurred in the 1930's has led to explosive growth of Federal power and size.  The current path is unsustainable.  While the Constitution must certainly be interpreted by the USSC, the original intent and meaning of the founding fathers has been ignored far too often by our politicians.


StephenDare!,

You are always quick to criticize with a sarcastic tone, yet your arguments contain no facts, no references, and carry no weight.  In this instance, your general denigration of my "knowledge" refers to nothing except your personal dissatisfaction with my thoughts and avoids the current subject.  Are you arguing that the preamble to the Constitution carries the force of law?  Are you arguing that the "general welfare" clause that the USSC used to expand the  role of the Federal government in the 1930's  is NOT in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution?  These are the facts that were discussed and you inferred that I didn't know what I was talking about.  If you would debate with valid facts, or referenced judgements, then I could take you more seriously.  As of now, your posts pretty much could have been written by a dissatisfied  fourth grader.

My intent here was not to insult anyone, but simply to correct FH's use of the preamble in her quote. (A common error.)   Your insulting tone tends to make me answer in kind.  To answer an argument with simple name calling says everything about your knowledge of the subject.  The general welfare clause IS an important debate for today, and there are valid points to be made on both sides.  The tactic of denigrating the person rather than debating the point makes this forum useless for mature exchanges of ideas.

[NotNow]

You are a legend in your own mind.  Your inability to ever admit error must be a difficult cross to bear in life.  You are mistaking insulting others with "sheer weight of facts".  Just like today, you will never admit an error and simply substitute a completely different argument.  It is a childish tactic.  To bring up the obviously flawed thinking  of the institution of slavery is just a desperate reach on your part for ANY validity in this discussion.  Intellectually dishonest, at best.  For a guy that likes to think of himself as the smartest guy in the room, your having a pretty bad day.

Really.

[Garden guy]

I love the word bunkum....there's a bunch of that in jax..

[NotNow]

Try rereading my post.  I wrote a clear sentence.  Another flawed tactic is to redefine what others say.  It is not just improper, it is discourteous.  You need some new tricks, you have become quite boring.

Perhaps if you actually argued a point, rather than resort to such tactics.  Just a thought.

[Garden guy]

You are a legend in your own mind.  Your inability to ever admit error must be a difficult cross to bear in life.  You are mistaking insulting others with "sheer weight of facts".  Just like today, you will never admit an error and simply substitute a completely different argument.  It is a childish tactic.  To bring up the obviously flawed thinking  of the institution of slavery is just a desperate reach on your part for ANY validity in this discussion.  Intellectually dishonest, at best.  For a guy that likes to think of himself as the smartest guy in the room, your having a pretty bad day.

Really.

Flawed? That's funny...do you think that if the founders knew that one day guns would run the streets like water and children would be using them to kill each other? i think they ban the whole damn idea of free weapons of mass distruction. Flawed...i thinks so
so there was flawed thinking in the Constitution?

[NotNow]

zzzzzzzz....gee whiz, garden guy AND StephenDare!.   What a formidible duo. 

Let's try the questions on this thread first.  Are military benefits a form of "welfare" in your mind?  Oh, you already said that you believed that.  OK, does the preamble to the Constitution carry the force of law?  Is the general welfare clause actually found where I said it was, Article 1, Section 8?  Of course, we all know that all of what I said is fact, yet you will ignore it.  You are such a sad case.

As to your question, the Constitution did refer to slaves, a legal institution at that time.  And the founding fathers included a means of accounting for change and unforseen circumstance.  The amendment process worked in correcting the slavery issue.  Mr. Lincoln did not pack the Supreme Court and try to bend the language of the founding fathers, he followed the amendment process in the proper way.  Unlike the flawed ideas of you and your cohorts, who would simply ignore our founding documents and our shared history with the common liberal/progressive "groupthink" that you think you are not just smarter than everyone else in the country, but you think you are smarter than the founding fathers as well.

I strongly suggest a little humility, and a lot of reading.

[NotNow]

Do you understand the difference between the amendment process and "interpreting" what you want out of the Constitution, even when the original writers were quite clear in their intent?  So, if you want to solve a Constitutional problem, like Mr. Lincoln did on the legal standing of slavery, then you should follow the system put in place by the great men who founded this country, like Mr. Lincoln did.   To do otherwise is a perversion of our system. 

This is where you start yelling that water boarding is torture...

[NotNow]

As usual, your posts make no sense whatsoever. 

Your little game is so boring anyway.  Let me know if you ever have anything useful to add to a thread.

[NotNow]

Your posts are gibberish.   Do you have a coherent question? 

Make it quick, I'm tiring of the childrens room.