Interesting editorial from today’s Salt Lake Tribune:

Excerpts:

-”So, guided by the brilliant Madison, our federal system was abolished and a new national one was created, under a Constitution that granted national powers “far beyond those exercised by the British Parliament,” including the power, without consent of the state legislatures, “to levy money directly upon the people themselves.”

None of this sits well with today’s descendants of 18th century opponents to ratification of that Constitution. Without exception, they would have voted “NO” with their reactionary predecessors. Think of those who have suggested secession, would nullify U.S. law, argue for their own coinage, loathe every national enterprise and its “socialist, central planning,” would in fact see Washington defer to the states.

Then think of Madison’s observations in his Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787: “Too much stress was laid on the rank of the States as political societies,” he said, warning that for an egalitarian nation to defer to state authority, sanctioned merely by the accidents of geography, would eventuate in inequalities. Today, there is sad and ample proof that he was right, from inequalities in education and health care to taxes and minority rights.”

-”Madison’s voice was not the only one arguing for “centralized planning” and reduced states rights. Elbridge Gerry asserted in convention, “We never were independent states, were not such now, & never could be even on the principles of the Confederation. The states & the advocates for them were intoxicated with the idea of their sovereignty.”

Alexander Hamilton… saw through the specious anti-constitutionalists’ argument that renouncing state sovereignty is to give up liberty: “It is a contest for power, not for liberty.”’

-”This is not without its irony, since those same opponents to the Constitution with its pre-eminent power, granted and sustained by the people directly without state intercession, endlessly praise it and plead that we “get back to it.”

Indeed, do let us get back to it.”

Them’s fightin’ words for the modern conservative.  Thoughts?

Today on FTP:

4-5: Former Logan mayor Doug Thompson will be joining me as a guest host today and in the first hour we will talk with his son Marshall Thompson, an Iraq War veteran, about the official end of the war. What can be learned from our adventure in Iraq and can anything positive result?

5-6: In the second hour we will be joined by Bracken Longhurst for an in-depth discussion of health care policy in the U.S. Bracken recently published a paper in the Nevada Law review on the possibilities of Health Care Exchanges as an amendment or replacement for Obamacare. From the abstract of Bracken’s paper:

“Health care exchanges would combine a health insurance exchange with a similar health provider exchange and reward consumers that focus on value. Exchanges would fix the health care system and deliver the major commitments and goals of proponents and opponents of PPACA, namely: 1) lower overall health care costs; 2) lower health insurance premiums; 3) increase the number of people covered by adequate health insurance; 4) remove the pre-existing conditions barrier to adequate health insurance for nearly all individuals; and 5) allow individuals to keep the doctor and health insurance plan of their choice. ”

Doug will provide his expert analysis as former executive director of the Logan Regional Hospital Foundation. I will mostly take notes.

It’s a solid day of policy on this holiday week edition of For The People!

Programming note: we will push FTP Quickfire to tomorrow when Jason and Jonathan will rejoin me in studio.

Rep. Ron Paul gets history wrong

On Sunday an op ed by Presidential candidate Ron Paul appeared in the Deseret News.  The topic was familiar as the headline read, “Utah needs to protect state and local authority, decentralize government”.  For the record let me state that I absolutely agree with Dr. Paul on several of these key points.  The structure of federalism in our country is profoundly out of balance.  Federal overreach into nearly every facet of our everyday lives is oppressive and a very real threat to individual liberty in 21st century America.  Some level of push-back from the states is appropriate in both political and historical contexts.

But I do not believe the case for protection of states’ rights is bolstered by the re-writing of history.  In the opening lines of his op ed Dr. Paul perpetuates one of the great historical myths of modern conservatism. “Our Founding Fathers understood the dangers of a massive and intrusive federal government.

That’s why they gave us the U.S. Constitution — establishing a very limited, decentralized government to provide for national defense and little else.”  This is, quite simply, a direct inversion of the historical realities that led to the convening of the Constitutional Convention in 1787.  Ignore, for a minute the preposterous idea that America’s Founding Fathers “understood” any single issue of government with a unanimous mind and turn your attention to the idea that the U.S. Constitution was somehow drafted to limit the powers of the federal government and decentralize that power on behalf of the states.  This is a modern conservative talking point that has been repeated so often it is now accepted by many as fact.  On the contrary however, the federal Constitution was drafted to establish a powerful centralized government.

When James Madison entered the Philadelphia Convention in June of 1787 he did so with a revolutionary plan to free the Union from its dependence on the states.  Enjoying near autonomy in their loose association under the Articles of Confederation, it was the failure of the states to unanimously approve needed amendments to those Articles, to meet the financial requisites of Congress (this had been a problem since several states refused approval for funding for Washington’s army in the Revolutionary War), and their failure to abide by the provisions of the Treaty of Paris which ended the War that these called into account the fundamental premise of the Confederation: that states would exercise their sovereign powers in good faith to fulfill rather than frustrate essential national interests.

Madison and most of the other delegates attending the Convention came to Philadelphia with a determination to secure a vibrant and powerful Federal government capable of properly subduing these destructive tendencies in the states.  (Most who thought like Dr. Paul does today about local and state governments purposefully ignored the federal convention in Philadelphia as they considered the idea of a powerful federal government both dangerous and a betrayal of the ideals of the Revolution…sound familiar?)  In fact, the key to  Madison’s plan was a Congressional veto of an any state law deemed in opposition to the national interest!  Delegates from the South balked at this idea and eventually Madison was forced to settle for the “supremacy clause” in Article VI, a compromise he feared would prove a weak and ineffectual check on the influence of unruly state legislatures.

Writing to Thomas Jefferson who was serving as U.S. Ambassador to France during 1787, Madison gave his observations on the reasons for calling the Convention.  “The evils issuing from the states contributed more to that uneasiness which produced the Convention…than those which accrued to our national character and interest from the inadequacy of the Confederation to its immediate objects” (Madison to Jefferson; October 24, 1787).
Nowhere in his notes on the Convention do we find the rants against centralized authority that would characterize Madison’s writings in the partisan wars of the 1790s and Tea Party rallies of 2010.  In fact those arguments were made forcefully in 1789 by the opponents of the Constitution.

The history is clear that the impetus for the urgency behind the drafting of the Constitution was the “evils issuing from the states” and the threat those evils posed to the very survival of the Union.
Again, I don’t mind Dr. Paul’s calls for a new emphasis on reclaiming local government in the digital age, but an attempt to claim the philosophical and political high ground by flipping the historical record on its head seems at the very least, unhelpful, and at the most dishonest and destructive.

(It should be noted, interestingly, that Madison’s political thought at this time (1786-1789) stands in stark contrast to his thinking both before and after the Constitutional period.)

Tonight:
The Mero Moment addresses the possibility of Utah joining the National Popular Vote Plan. Is the Electoral College antiquated and ineffectual? Weigh in at 4.

We have a split crew tonight with Jason reporting live from the Den of Iniquity, er, the Capitol building in SLC. Utah redistricting wraps up tonight (maybe) and we have coverage of all the morons, idiots, wimmers, and goobers – with hopefully a hero or two.
One thought before we jump in. Do you think this is a messy, even gory process? Does it feel to you like someone told a roomful of preschoolers they won’t be having recess, but instead have to draw a bunch of maps?
Well, if Utah’s process seems out of control and unfair, consider the maps below. Note to Utah citizens: these all happened in “purple” states without super-majorities. So before anyone buys into the tirade from Utah democrats about the “raping and pillaging” of Utah citizens’ rights, look what gerrymandering abominations come from states where legislators end up trading one “community of interest” for another.
http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/11/11/the-top-ten-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts-in-the-united-states/
It could be lots worse folks.