States’ rebellion begins to rumble
Thursday, March 26, 2009Walter Williams has heard the alarm bell in the night, and knows exactly what it means:
Put simply, these 10th Amendment resolutions insist that the states and their people are the masters and that Congress and the White House are the servants. Put yet another way, Washington is a creature of the states, not the other way around.
Williams is right — it’s just a rumble now. Just noise. But the noise arises from real tension along real fault lines, so it’s just a matter of time before the States put teeth in their assertions of sovereignty. One State has already shown the rest how to do it. No, not South Carolina in 1860, but Colorado in 1994:
Congress and the White House will laugh off these state resolutions. State legislatures must take measures that put some teeth into their 10th Amendment resolutions. Congress will simply threaten a state, for example, with a cutoff of highway construction funds if it doesn’t obey a congressional mandate, such as those that require seat belt laws or that lower the legal blood-alcohol level to .08 for drivers. States might take a lead explored by Colorado.
In 1994, the Colorado Legislature passed a 10th Amendment resolution and later introduced a bill titled "State Sovereignty Act." Had the State Sovereignty Act passed both houses of the legislature, it would have required all people liable for any federal tax that’s a component of the highway users fund, such as a gasoline tax, to remit those taxes directly to the Colorado Department of Revenue.
What happens next? No telling. But Williams joins a growing chorus of advocates for restoring self-government, and with resistance to Obama’s Big Government schemes gaining strength every day, no other course may be possible.
On The Web: www.dixienet.org/rebellion/2009/03/states-rebellion-begins-to-rumble.html
