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Marianne Stebbins (mstebbins) [Message] Excelsior, MN 55331 (952) 239-1007

We're going to be picking a couple issues to take to the legislature this year, so be ready to educate your fellow man, and get your legislators' phone numbers on speed dial. Suggestions for free market legislation welcome.  We're most likely going the route of budget-cutting and fiercely fighting any whiff of a tax increase given the $5 billion budget shortfall.

Posted by fmontez on 01/05/09
Last updated 01/05/09

The word, “compromise”, has taken on sinister overtones in the modern political landscape. This negative connotation is the result of political ineptness and cowardice being passed off as compromise. Despite what some politicians might claim there is no such thing as a win-win compromise. Some pundits even put forward the idea of a win-lose compromise, but that situation is by definition, “a defeat.”

Compromise is a necessary part of Republican rule, our forbearers practiced this art before, during, and after they drafted our historic Constitution. Of course our nations founders understood that compromise is the last resort before hostility, and that it is a lose-lose solution. 

In Minnesota we have developed our own special form of compromise; it is a variation on the mythical win-win and win-lose compromise scenarios: we allow the DFL to win just a little, the GOP to lose just a little, and both sides declare victory.

Of course the result of the great Minnesota Compromise has added up. The GOP in Minnesota has gone from a virtual stalemate in the State Senate to a veto proof DFL majority and from the majority in the State House to an insignificant caucus.

Compromise itself is not inherently a bad process, in fact it is a requirement of Republicanism, but this twisted caricature of compromise is destroying the important Conservative/Liberal balance.

A few key factors that we should all remember:

ü             All power in the United States comes from the people

ü             The Constitution enumerates the power of the government

ü             There are inalienable human rights, both individual, and for the collective (i.e. we have formed this Republic to enable a society of individuals to live together)

ü             Everyone has opinions, and people interpret EVERYTHING differently (this is why empathy is key to solid government practices)

ü             Sometimes it is better to lose for a principled cause

ü              Sometimes it is better to compromise to avoid defeat

ü             Sometimes it is better to win than compromise

ü             Reality and Perception are seldom the same

ü             Empirically people are wrong more than they are right, that includes you, but that also includes them

Felix Montez

www.felixmontez.com

Posted by mstebbins on 01/04/09
Last updated 01/04/09

Congress, in its impeccable wisdom, effectively voted last year to shut down the children's resale clothing business via the "Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008." Not a soul in the House dared to vote against "children's safety," proving many in the Congressional cesspool of counter-productivity neglect to read legislation before voting. (I'll cut a break for the 25 who abstained, as they potentially didn't vote because they hadn't an opportunity to read the bill.)

The act requires lead testing of all products sold for children aged twelve and under, including but not limited to clothing and toys, regardless of the date of manufacturing and the high improbability of lead in the clothing, particularly that manufactured domestically. Goodwill, other thrift stores, and one-person shops reselling new and used children's clothing, making a couple dollars per item, would have to forgo a year's worth of profit to fund third-party testing services, essentially putting most out of business. Further, as I understand it, the testing requires the destruction of an individual unit out of a batch, and would therefore not work for unique items.

Taking effect February 10, 2009, this ex post facto regulatory taking comes precisely at a time when lower-income and newly unemployed parents most need inexpensive children's clothing and the dollars they receive from selling or consigning their children's briefly used items.

While clothing is one of the few areas in which the market demands recycling, stores with existing, untested merchandise will have to opt for sending truckloads of perfectly good clothes to the landfill. And parents who purchased that expensive special occasion dress with plans to resell it after one wear are simply out the money. Not even Goodwill can take it now.

After planning my own recession-proof business, a children's resale shop, where one was lacking in my neighborhood, I'm lucky to have found this news story yesterday, before signing a lease. Although I am out some minor capital expenses and inventory costs, the regulatory taking could have had a worse toll, and at least I avoided the $100,000 fines or five-year's imprisonment.

Posted by BillofRights on 01/04/09
Last updated 01/04/09

We know that the House of Representatives presently consists of 435 members.  But do we know how it got to be that number and whether that number is in accordance with the law, particularly our U.S. Constitution? 

Article 1 Section 2, third paragraph, of the US Constitution requires that there be one representative for each 30,000 persons.   On September 25, 1789 the United States Congress -- predominantly as a result of James Madison's earlier efforts -- proposed to the States twelve amendments to the U.S. Constitution.    The first proposed amendment of the twelve was to allow the number of Representatives to increase with population gains and to allow not "more than one representative for every fifty thousand persons."

This proposed amendment was never ratified; neither was the second proposed amendment, which dealt with compensation.  Thus, the third proposed amendment -- freedom of speech, the press, religion, right to assemble and to petition the government -- ultimately became the first.  Our U.S. Constitution therefore leaves in place the original language that "[t]he number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand".

In 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, which mentioned representation but did not alter the original language of 30,000 per representative.  It only states that "[r]epresentatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed."

In 1911 the number of represenatives was fixed at 435 by statute (Public Law 62-5), a number that has not changed since.  Based on the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 646,952 persons per Congressional district.  Using a present population estimate of 300 million, and the 30,000 persons per representative as stated in Art. 1, Sec. 2, we should have about 10,000 representatives in the US House (if my math is correct) -- not 435!  According to the US census, there are about 5,000,000 persons inhabiting the State of Minnesota.  Thus, we should have about 166 US Representatives in Minnesota, not 8.  A federal statute, of course, cannot override the U.S. Constitution.

How to fix this apparent lack of representation?  First, more research certainly needs to be done.  I only started looking at this issue yesterday.  (Perhaps a lawsuit down the road with the Secretary of State, demanding that the State give us our representatives, would at least draw attention to the Constitutional question?)  In any case, this should be an issue that the Campaign for Liberty may want to look at in greater detail and perhaps pursue.

Posted by Steve Rogers on 01/02/09

Mind you this is just my personal experience, and not in any way a sampling.

When I have spoken to liberals, (and in my part of town it is about 80% based on election results) I have found some interesting responses to a few questions. They all want to help everyone else out, and don’t we all want to ease suffering? But not a single one has been aware of the wastefulness and sheer folly of most government programs, both state and federal.

When the chair of the Minneapolis City Republican Committee started researching good governance, (disclosure – I am it’s vice chair) and found a city with around twice the population of Minneapolis running on half the budget, even I was surprised.  That would mean that the city of Minneapolis could run on about a quarter of its current budget.

So I began asking liberals if you had to pay for something, anything really, and you had a choice between paying a dollar or paying four dollars for the same item, which would you choose? It does not take a rocket surgeon to figure out the unanimous response. Then I told them that they were overpaying for their city services, largely due to democrat control of the Minneapolis government for decades.

Almost all, not to my surprise, expressed disbelief, and espoused faith in government. So, to educate the voting populous indeed does become the primary objective of any conservative, and even a fiscally responsible liberal concerned with the direction that this city is taking. With examples of failed policies, and the numbers to back them up, instead of party politics, we can begin to wake up the sleeping dragon that is the American voter.

Despite differences on the proper role of government, I have not found anyone to argue that returning the power to the states where it is more accountable, and a heck of a lot more cost effective, to the voters is a bad idea. Nor have I found a single liberal who wants to spend 2, 3, or 4 times as much is as needed to provide a service to the public.

So in my neighborhood, I cannot win the battle out of the gate with changing minds on the proper role of government, fine. Then I will start with exposing the inability of those in power to manage the affairs with which they are charged in a fiscally responsible fashion. This, as a businessman, I can do. We do not need to make them understand all of our positions, only enough to convince them that new leadership is required.

Tailor the battle to the battleground.

 -R. Steven Rogers

Posted by RonaldMiller on 01/01/09

One person I chat with on another list made the distinction between the Israeli State and the Jewish Peoples in regards to the recent conflict. I believe We The People (U.S. Constitution) should be questioning our State that is located with its Pentagon and Supreme Court in Washington, DC. as to why it sides with the Israel State's occupation and use of violence in a land not its own.

Egypt and Libya have introduced a resolution in the U.N. Security Council regarding Israel's military response to Hamas' missle attacks. The United States' UN representive responded to the resolution by stating that no where in the resolution is it mentioned that Hamas initiated and continues its missle attack.

I believe the U.S. superpower State that claims to be putting democracy in Iraq with its military is the same morally bankrupt statist philosophy that the Israeli state and its religious zealots who support its philosophy are using to back its violence now in Gaza. IMHO, We The People (U.S. Constitution) have more to gain by uniting with the Jewish People against this nefarious form of democratic statism being forced on the people of the world by the United States using unconstitutional means.

Ronald A. Miller