You have heard Hillary and Barry promising the moon during their campaigns, universal Pre-K, universal health-care, universal “Oh Lord, kumbaya” and cradle to grave nanny-ism. Once upon a time they would have been laughed out of the political scene as everything they promise would have been unconstitutional. These are clearly not the mandate of the federal government, anymore than are public education or Social Security and Medicare.
Even a causal reading of the constitution will demonstrate that to the several of us still able to read after suffering public education. These programs and laws behind them were never intended to be the domain of the federal government, nor should they have been. Were a state or states to impose these burdens on its citizens, while distasteful, it would have been their prerogative as they would have answered to the citizens of those states and their passage much less likely with the more limited resources of a state.
So how did it come to this? You can blame a few activist judges, now dead, who with the stroke of a pen side stepped, rewrote and trashed the constitution and stole your liberty for the grand total of $7.11 – yes seven dollars and eleven cents, and the dupe in all of this was a small time farmer who happened to grow wheat.
Back in the early 1940s Mr. Filburn was a small farmer in Ohio. He was given a wheat acreage allotment of 11.1 acres under a Department of Agriculture directive which authorized the government to set production quotas for wheat, this directive was unconstitutional on its face, but like all of us who love to suckle at the teat of free stuff, farmer Filburn and many farmers of his day and today know not what they do until the mighty federal government that Madison, Adams and others warned us about comes a biting in your ass.
See by setting a wheat quota, the government was establishing a market price for wheat which has the benefit of making the price of bread predictable both here and in the world, but has the effect of killing free markets and more importantly your rights of liberty, gosh who knew right?
Well farmer Filburn harvested nearly 12 acres of wheat above his allotment and that is when the trouble started big time for all of us. He was fined a penalty for growing more wheat than allowed and he did not like that even a little. Now it is important to realize that farmer Filburn grew his wheat in the state of Ohio and only in the state of Ohio. He did not grow any in Indiana or Pennsylvania all his wheat was sowed, bloomed and reaped in Ohio, a state last time I checked.
Some of the wheat was used for seed for next year, some for feeding his chickens and other livestock, some made into bread to eat for his family and some was sold, though very little was left for that, as all the extra was used on the farm. He was by definition, an independent farmer living the American dream.
Farmer Filburn went to court because he was fined by the federal government for an activity that was legal – growing wheat, on private property and within the confines of a single state – Ohio. The federal government went after him under the Interstate Commerce Act. “I hear a tongue shriller than all the music cry “Caesar!” “Beware the ides of March.” “What man is that?” “A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.” Forgive my way of warning you to beware the federal government my friends, but beware.
So farmer Filburn, remember him, in court argued that the excess wheat was unrelated to interstate commerce since he grew it for his own use - foolish, foolish man. The federal government argued before the Supreme Court that the Interstate Commerce Act did in fact apply to this case, thereby giving them jurisdiction to levee the fine.
By their warped reasoning and the feeble brain of the Supreme Court, it goes like this. Yes Farmer Filburn grew his wheat on his own property for his own use in a single state, however – yes Matilda, however. By growing the wheat for his own use he did not purchase wheat to feed his family or cows and chickens and there by affected the price of every-one’s wheat. Got that?
This is the case that gave the federal government the power to regulate everything and anything and is why Hillary proposed mandating; yes mandating that her Health-care proposal be subscribed to by everyone under penalty of law. You will not have the choice to opt out because you will be fined under the Interstate Commerce Act. Keep asking for things and you shall receive them to your utter dismay.
“Immediately one of these arms slid like a serpent down the opening, and twenty others were above. With one blow of the axe, Captain Nemo cut this formidable tentacle, that slid wriggling down the ladder. Just as we were pressing one on the other to reach the platform, two other arms, lashing the air, came down on the seaman placed before Captain Nemo, and lifted him up with irresistible power. Captain Nemo uttered a cry, and rushed out.”