Not since the US Civil War has our nation been so divided. But where slavery and state sovereignty were the issues in 1861, today the divide is much deeper; along ideological and cultural lines. There is no line on a map. The divide is among the people.
Take a moment to talk with the average resident from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, or New York City and you get one picture of what is right and wrong. Talk to someone from Texas, Florida, or fly-over country, and you get a polar-opposite view. The divide is geographically cultural.
States that harbor some of the largest urban populations – California, Illinois, and New York – tend to lean more to the radical Left, whereas a larger propensity toward self-sufficiency and freedom from government exists in states that have more rural and agricultural space.
Let’s get down to specifics.
It would be safe to say that California, Illinois, and New York – as well as a few others, can be considered solidly liberal states. They tend to be deficit-spending states that offer a large number of government-funded (read: taxpayer-funded) services to their residents.
These states also have a heavier hand in private sector oversight via regulations and taxation. After all, someone has to pay for all of the “free stuff” because, as the clear-eyed know, nothing is “free.”
In these states – and especially in their larger urban areas, the government has conditioned the people to expect the government to provide for them, many times beyond the threshold of the “common good” mandate, cultivating not only a public dependency on government but ceding a great bit of liberty to the government in return.
In these locations, the tolerance for bending the knee to regulation and mandate without questioning the government’s authority to impose either is greater. We all witnessed that fact during the recent COVID event.
Almost the exact opposite is true in an overwhelming majority of the Southern, Midwestern, Southwestern, and intercoastal Northwestern states; an overwhelming number of the 50 states.
This isn’t to say that the aforementioned dichotomy doesn’t exist within every state but that sense of dependence and expectation isn’t as prevalent. But the biggest gulf is bi-coastal with a more “government tolerant” ideology prevailing in the aforementioned states.
The thing is, this dichotomy doesn’t have to create an ideological gulf. We, as Americans, whether liberal, libertine, or conservative, don’t have to engage in a caustic cultural divide. In fact, our Founders and Framers addressed this issue in the debate over Federalism as captured in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers.
The cure for our current predicament – the remedy for our current divide, rests in an embrace of anti-Federalism. If we would have had fidelity to anti-Federalism as a balanced part of our government we certainly wouldn’t be experiencing today’s divergence.
If we are freedom-loving people; people who believe in individualism and liberty, then we shouldn’t seek to deny anyone the manner in which they choose to live. That said, we also shouldn’t deny people the right to exclude or include certain socio-political elements into society onto which they have placed importance.
Anti-Federalism – the decentralization of government (to “circle back” to an originalist idea now used by the cryptocurrency world) – allowed each state to embrace certain socio-political elements that enabled them to be unique from one another all while embracing the basic enumerated freedoms made sacrosanct in the Bill of Rights.
Anti-Federalism allowed California to be California and Texas to be Texas. Let me explain in terms of what that would mean today.
California recently budgeted to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants living in that state. In the end, because California’s spending on government services is supplemented by federal dollars, the entirety of the country is affected by California’s decision to do this.
They will make the argument that they are only using Californians’ tax dollars to do it, but when federal dollars free up state tax revenues to execute a plan such as this, federal tax dollars play into the equation. If California had to fully fund every program currently receiving federal tax dollars, it would be unlikely they would be shelling out $1.3 billion annually to provide that healthcare.
If anti-Federalism were embraced, the federal government wouldn’t be involved in supplementing any state-sanctioned program or initiative under state purview. There would be no unfunded federal mandates and the federal government’s role in governing the State of California would be limited to the enumerated powers of the US Constitution pre-bastardization of the Commerce Clause and subsequent federal government usurpation of the 10th Amendment.
The reward for the federal government being limited in state issues is that tax revenue from California that would normally go to the federal government’s General Fund would stay in California for the state legislature to manage, giving the state government broad purview over the overwhelming majority of government actions in California.
Less money to the federal government means more money to the state government without increased taxation on the people. Less money for the federal government to coerce state governments with means more state government autonomy under its unique constitution.
So, anti-Federalism in place in all 50 states, and the federal government starved; neutered in its power to the general provisions originally assessed by the Framers and what do we have? Fifty separate states with 50 separate jurisdictions and 50 separate governmental environments bound together by a limited federal government.
But what does this mean?
It means that where California can vote to give free health insurance to illegal immigrants in its state, that mandate doesn’t affect any other state, giving California the ethical authority to engage in that practice. It doesn’t impose its ethics or legislated morality on any other state.
It means if New York wants to embrace free abortions for pregnant women or mandate gender pronouns in schools, or if Illinois wants to make bathrooms available to all sexes, they can. But it also means that Florida, Nebraska, and all the other states don’t have to recognize those laws, being free to exist as uniquely as California.
But the larger point here is this. If someone identified as a glow-in-the-dark, cobalt blue, Marxist, they would have the freedom to exist in a state that embraces glow-in-the-dark, cobalt blue, Marxism. If someone identified as a Second Amendment supporting, church-going, biological sex-supporting conservative, they would have the freedom to exist in a state that embraced Second Amendment supporting, church-going, biological sex-supporting conservatism.
California would be free to be California. Florida would be free to Florida, and so on and so forth. It embraces the adage that in a free country – a truly free country, “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”
So, what’s the impediment to anti-Federalism? Why can’t each of the 50 American states exist unique and yet bound by general federalism?
The answer: The power-hungry and greedy political class in association with the national political parties.
Think about it. What entities are constantly attempting to pit one demographic against another? And aren’t these same entities only concerned about far-reaching legislation that would further strangle the states by federal overreach and unconstitutional purview?
Whether special interest groups or political parties, activists or politicians, all of the freedom-killing ideas foisted upon the country as “solutions” to the “problems” come from national entities seeking to create national legislation and national cultural change, robbing the states of their uniqueness and sovereignty; robbing the people of choice.
Employing anti-Federalism as an avenue to returning constitutional sovereignty to the states is imperative if we are to avoid the impending fracture of our nation. This can be done by the states crafting pre-emptive financial legislation that protects them from the punitive damages the federal government would impose to coerce states to its will and then employing the full force of nullification to claw back state sovereignty.
This is the simplest and most purely American way to take back our country from the charlatans, opportunists, and radical activists that have wrestled power away from We the People.
“The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.”
– President George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
Intent to Veto
On June 21st, Gov. David Ige released a lengthy list of bills he intended to veto. The Hawaii Constitution requires him to issue that list and provides that any bills not on the list will become law, with the Governor’s signature or otherwise.
The bills on the list included a few we had been discussing in this space.
House Bill 58, what we had been calling the “Enola Gay Frankenbill,” was a mishmash of tax increases and General Excise Tax exemption suspensions. We wrote articles discussing the exemptions proposed to be shut off; discussing the “Frankenbill” process where the bill, which at that time had nothing to do with tax increases, was stuffed with material from Senate Bill 56, which was all about tax increases; and describing its predecessor Senate Bill 56, an omnibus tax increase bill that we called the “Enola Gay” bill because of the potential for it to carpet-bomb our economy with the tax increases it contained.
In his intent to veto message, the Governor said that our economy was now looking to be in better shape so we no longer need the extreme revenue-raising measures contained in the bill. It also didn’t help that the bill would have raised conveyance taxes on all residential housing developments, including affordable housing.
Another bill that made the list was House Bill 862, which would shut off the existing sharing with the counties of transient accommodations tax money and force the counties to impose their own TAT surcharge on top of the 10.25% TAT, 4% GET, and 0.5% GET surcharge that is already imposed on a tourist’s hotel bill. We wrote about that bill back in May.
This bill also holds the dubious distinction of being the winner of the League of Women Voters’ and Common Cause/Hawaii’s “Rusty Scalpel Award” for being the most appalling bill that begins with one topic and drastically changes content in its way through the legislative process.
There, the Governor’s intent to veto message cited concerns about not adequately funding the Hawaii Convention Center, and also voiced concern that an added 3% county TAT “could have a major impact on Hawaiʻi’s nascent economic recovery.”
Also on the intent to veto list is House Bill 613, which among other things appropriated federal American Rescue Plan Act money to the Department of Education in great detail, and provided for a one-time stabilization payment of $2,200 for each full-time and half-time teacher. We observed that the “me too” syndrome may be in play here because HGEA’s members, including principals, staff, and custodians, were left off that gravy train.
The Governor’s message on this one focused on his concern that the appropriations in the bill didn’t comply with federal guidance for the spending, putting the state at risk for federal recapture of the funding.
Interestingly, several bills on the veto list, including this one, were called out for lack of transparency or lack of public participation in the law-making process. That struck this author as something unusual, and to some degree hypocritical because the Governor has suspended the State’s open records and open meetings laws for over a year, and that suspension is still in effect per the “Twenty-First Proclamation Related to the COVID‑19 Emergency” issued on June 7, 2021. If it can be believed, it’s a good development. It should force legislators to think more carefully about gut-and-replace, wholesale closed-door changes, or other secret maneuvers that change legislation at the last minute so the opportunity for the public to weigh in on it is abbreviated or eliminated.
Shortly, we will find out whether some of these bills will be vetoed, and shortly thereafter we should be hearing whether our legislative leaders will be mustering for possible veto overrides. Hopefully, the bad stuff will die and remain dead.