Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Cavalry Isn’t Coming from DC – States Need to Save Themselves
Obama brought us Obamacare, the Stimulus, and doubled the debt to $20 trillion. George W. Bush brought us the Wall Street bailout and interminable middle-eastern wars. Congress, alternately run by Democrats and Republicans over the past 16 years, approved all of these messes. And seeing how everyone in DC — politicians, press, lobbyists, and probably Uber drivers — have spent the past five months in an endless slap fight, we shouldn’t expect the Beltway to produce much of consequence for the foreseeable future.
How do we enact conservative change in this environment? The best option is to build a doorless wall around DC; Washingtonians of every stripe can give each other swirlies while the rest of America gets about fixing the nation. But since that effort might be frowned upon, let’s just ignore the lot of them the best we can and focus closer to home.
The United States wasn’t designed to be run by some far-off mandarins in an imperial capital. Most day-to-day responsibilities were handed to each state, and most state responsibilities were handed to counties, cities and towns.
When people talk of checks and balances, they usually think of the White House, Congress and courts holding each other responsible. But the Founders also created a check and balance between Washington and the states. It’s on the state and local level where citizens make the largest impact.
The next few years will be a roller coaster. If a state wants to survive — let alone thrive — its leaders need to make the big decisions themselves. Each state needs to create its own success.
As I note in the article above, those of us lucky to live in places like Texas and Arizona have watched our leaders spend the last decade or two disentangling themselves from the big swamp. Instead of waiting for one-size-fits-all federal reforms, forward-thinking states are fixing unemployment, education, taxes, and cutting through mountains of red tape with a chainsaw.
If progressives don’t like the choices being made in their state, it’s much easier for them to replace local leaders with some who parrot their worldview. (Good luck with that, liberals.) No offense to our friends in New York and California, but I’m fine with their pols pushing womb-to-tomb governmental paternalism — if businesses and residents don’t like it, they can vote with their feet as tens of millions have already.
Of course, Americans could just cross their fingers and hope that Washington decides to get its collective act together in the next few weeks. But the far more realistic option is to accept that the cavalry isn’t coming. Let’s fix all that we can right now in our towns, counties, and statehouses. To paraphrase Gov. Rick Perry, let’s make Washington as inconsequential in our lives as possible.
Published in Politics
Build the Wall!!
Based upon the commercials I am seeing in the VA governors race, and the stuff coming out of California, the toxicity is spilling over the bulkheads and the unsinkable ship is going to sink. I don’t think the states can save themselves either. Those institutions will get pulled down into the same nihilist hellscape as the feds are.
Preach on, brother!!
I think we’re too big for a democracy; maybe our country should regionalize.@guruforhire is right. I’m afraid people who run for state office no longer focus on their states–and if they do try to secure their people and boundaries, the Courts will slap ’em down.
I wrote before: we’ve seen the courts hold that the fed govt can’t coerce states to cooperate with fed immigration law. Next step will be: the states can’t legislate about immigration either, not at all–that’s the job of the fed govt. and presto: open borders! No more nation, well just be a polyglot holding pen.
The usual method by which the federal government meddles/muddles in the states’ day to day affairs is regulations and lawsuits. We are in dire need of basic legal reform. Case in point: somebody has to address the “Dear Colleague” letter (scam) by which the Department of Education mandated federal policies on all schools, specifically bathroom policy. That’s a mafia-quality intimidation and ought to be stopped; some court should tell the DOE that its letter is nothing more than liberal lawyer intimidation and it must stop. Every other similar intimidation ought to be called for what it is, and stopped.
Absolutely right. It is the only solution. Washington cannot fix itself any more than it can govern 300 plus millions of the most diverse complex nation in history. The notion is absurd. Things actually take place in the States, cities and municipalities. Washington exercises it’s control primarily through the money states are quick to grab. Just don’t take the money and fix all the stuff progresses have rotted. Some states, run by Democrats, or where progressives are so powerful that everybody competes in the same demagogic space may not be able to fix themselves, but others can and it will work, with sound policies gaining traction in purple states. States can save money and grow their economies by providing school choice, reducing muninciple controls, licensing, meddling, reducing their welfare roles, adopting right to work, ending minimum wages etc. The thing is we know what works and we know what doesn’t work. It would help states if there were some coordination coming out the the Republican Gov meetings. A known strategy would also strengthen conservatives on the hill because there will be big battles over all the money the Federal government takes from the states. States need as much back as they can get, but it must be their own money, not tied to anything other than their own tax payers. These public choice dilemma’s are the political leverage the centralizers use to corrupt everything they touch.
Jon Gabriel, Ed.: But the Founders also created a check and balance between Washington and the states.
Repeal the 17th Amendment.
This underscores why such agencies should not exist to begin with. Not only are they wasteful and ineffective, but they also are used by the beaurocracy to coercively force policy.
Yes. States can do tort reform on their own and address issues like standing and regulations not passed by Congress. I’d like to hear from Epstein on what states could do to free themselves form some of the noxious federal meddling if they do not take money.
As suggested above, the trick, of course, is to keep the federal government from interfering while the states fix stuff. I’m not sure how you do that except through weakening and/or dismantling all the little federal agencies and the tyrannical bureaucrats embedded therein. As the great C.S. Lewis wrote:
I’ve been saying for a few years that the governors need to have their own John Marshall Moment. John Marshall declared that the Supreme Court had the power to interpret the Constitution, although it doesn’t give the Court that power anywhere in the Constitution.
Fair enough. All that “living Constitution” theory has a pedigree.
But the Governors need to lay claim to the power to enforce the 9th and 10th Amendments, and possibly the rest of the Constitution itself, since the Court, along with the other two branches of the federal cabal, have done little to inhibit the growth of federal power over the states and the people.
This is the only way, short of a horrible civil war, that we have of saving our freedoms at this point.
The solution is in the Constitution itself. The Founders -especially Grorge Mason – anticipated that this day might arrive and provided ‘we the people’ with the means to reign in an over-reaching, out of control central government. We need an Article 5 Convention of the States.
Because of all the really suicidal stuff going on all around me, even I, a Californian, hope you’re right. But I’m worried – the Democrat / liberal / socialist grip on this state is so pervasive, and the majority of voters are so propagandized, I’m hard pressed finding reason for hope.
I think it will be difficult for the states to take back their power, although I think it’s an excellent idea. The problem is that so much of state funding comes from the feds that they have little freedom to do what they want. Unless entire federal departments are eliminated, such as education, the states will be enslaved to the federal government, who holds the purse strings.
Along with the 16th. How insane is it to let the federal government collect income taxes directly only to dole some remnant of it back to the states (usually for doing its will)? It should be the other way around. The federal government should have to come begging to the states for money. It’s at least one thing from the Articles of Confederation that should have been retained.
I like the hell out of this:
“The best option is to build a doorless wall around DC; Washingtonians of every stripe can give each other swirlies while the rest of America gets about fixing the nation.”
Gov. Perry does not get the credit he is due for Texas job growth helping national labor stats. That being said Abbott is tanking that growth, and the state in general.
The problem with this is that our biggest problems have been caused by the Federal government and, unfortunately, can only be solved by the Federal government. States can do very little to nothing about illegal immigration, the crushing national debt, high Federal taxes, Islamic terrorism or our declining military.
I think the issue is that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the Federal government is incapable of self-reform when it comes to the budget, particularly now that so much of the government apparatus is directed by a judicial oligarchy and bureaucrats of the administrative state. Congress is just along for the ride, considering the recent stories I’ve read that even the Republicans are balking at the proposed far-too-little-to-make-a-difference spending cuts currently on the table. If it’s not happening now, it won’t happen until we have a crisis, and I’m not sure even then.
I cannot “like” this comment enough.
Thank you.
agreed
the war is “interminable” because we haven’t finished winning the war they started and continue to wage against us. I’m sick of the lack of perspective inflicted on our society by anti-American and anti-western enemies.
Think locally, act locally. Great piece.