How the States Lost Their Sovereignty and 10th Amendment Rights: Revenue Sharing

Ever wonder how the states lost their sovereignty and 10th amendment rights?  As folks opine over the massive concentration of wealth and power in the DC District of Crime, they need not look any further than Fedzilla's ultimate power grab - revenue sharing.  Once the federal government started handing out money to the states, the states became compliant beggars at Uncle Sam's table.  Astute folks who analyze the pathetic State of the Union generally conclude that revenue sharing resulted in the beginning of the end of the Republic.  The states are now dependent on Fedzilla for an astronomical amount of what they spend.

Federal Aid to State Budgets

Mississippi tops the list with 49% of its general revenue coming from Washington; Alaska, by contrast, gets only 24% of its general revenue from the feds.

Much of this federal money directly funds state run Medicaid programs, other socialist programs as well as transportation and other projects.

Why Do Republicans Reject the Constitution?

As a Libertarian turned Republican turned Libertarian, one of the most frustration things I've encountered in political life is the fact that Republicans claim they revere the Constitution and liberty.  Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, Republicans are always accusing me of being a liberal and a socialist!  Republicans need to look in the mirror if they want to see socialists. The grand Republican delusion is that they truly believe that they endorse liberty and constitutional governance.

Yet, Republicans consistently vote for anti-Constitutionalists and big government statists. In fact, Republicans vote against liberty and the Constitution every chance they get. Republicans cheered the Bush era, including No Child Left Behind (written by Ted Kennedy) and Medicare Part D, the multi-trillion dollar prescription drug entitlement.

Why is it that Republican socialism is somehow good while Democrat socialism is bad?  There is no such thing as good socialism or good statism.

For reasons no sane person can fathom, Republicans are notorious for going on a rampage accusing Obama and Gang of being socialists. Republicans and their media mouth pieces have even labeled Obama the 'Food Stamp President'.

The truth?

Bush is the REAL Food Stamp President

It’s true that the most recent figures from the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (provided to Factcheck.org/USA Today) show that a record number of people—some 46.2 million—are enrolled in the program. But the same data shows that more individuals were added to the program while George W. Bush was in office than have enrolled under Obama’s presidency: Under Bush, the program grew by 14.7 million individuals; under Obama so far, it’s grown by 14.2 million, and, as of October, was declining.

So Bush wins on volume, and Obama wins on velocity: In just a few years, President Obama managed to expand the program by nearly as much as Bush. But Obama didn’t do it without some help from his Republican predecessor, who approved policy changes that set the stage for the program’s current growth.

To some extent, the food stamps expansion the country has seen under Obama is how food stamps are supposed to work: It’s a countercyclical program, meaning that as the economy declines, enrollment grows. Typically, then, the program grows in recessions and declines in economic boom times. But with the 2002 farm bill, President Bush dramatically expanded eligibility, restoring benefits to nearly a million individuals at the beginning of 2003, and paving the way for the program to expand as it did during the rest of presidency. As a result, Bush managed to oversee unprecedented growth in the program even as the economy grew. Obama then followed up on this with an eligibility expansion of his own in the 2009 stimulus package.

It’s not unreasonable to criticize Obama for the expansion of the food stamps program under his watch. But Obama's Republican critics shouldn’t forget that it was a GOP president who helped make that expansion possible.

Meanwhile, frustrated Republicans just don't understand why Libertarians and constitutionalists just won't hold their noses and vote Republican because as they see it, the Republicans are the lesser of the two evils. But unconstitutional statist evil is still unconstitutional statist evil and Libertarians and constitutionalist see no differences between the Republicans and the Democrats, except for the social issues which they don't care about anyway because they correctly perceive that the theocrats are anti-natural rights advocates who seek to criminalize every possible human behavior that they don't like.

I don't know what will happen in November but I do believe that the advantage goes to Obama simply because the Republican Party has totally wimped out and failed to distinguish itself on critically important issues. 

Meanwhile, I urge Republicans to read the Constitution, here, especially Article 1, Section 8, that lists the specific enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the states that created the Constitution.  The Federal government has no constitutional right or authority to do anything that it wasn't specifically authorized to do.  Our founders worked hard to limit Federal powers and now we've got "Fedzilla Gone Wild".