Obama Citizenship

Latest on Franken-Coleman; Rep?s $9k Taxpayer Amendment; Dynamics of Deliberation; the Administrative State

By Phil

Former Clinton advisor-turned-liberal critic and activist Dick Morris has an interesting report on the state of the Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) / Al Franken race (key excerpt):

Media Hiding Truth About Franken Election Theft

It’s a disgrace what has been done. It is an outrage the media have simply not reported this story.

Let’s review some key facts Harry Reid, Al Franken and the liberal media don’t want you to know:

* Every major Minnesota newspaper has agreed that the election is not over until the Election Contest is over. The state’s largest newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ,stated: “Coleman is justified in going to court. . . . Both Franken and Coleman should want court-ordered answers to questions that the Canvassing Board could not answer.”

* In its initial review of a few issues in front of the Canvassing Board, The Minnesota Supreme Court specifically deferred several significant issues during the recount to the Election Contest judicial panel including the issue of double counted ballots.

* Even Franken in December was arguing that some issues such as double counting and wrongly rejected absent were issues for the courts during an Election Contest.

* The manual of the Soros-ACORN backed Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s office on how to conduct a recount plainly states a Minnesota recount cannot address all issues. “This is an administrative recount held pursuant to M.S. 204C.35 and M.R. 8235. It is not to determine who was eligible to vote. It is not to determine if campaign laws were violated. It is not to determine if absentee ballots were properly accepted. It is not — except for the recounting the ballots — to determine if judges did things right. It is simply to physically recount the ballots for this race!”

Representative Paul Broun, MD (R-10th GA), pictured, has proposed an amendment to the President’s stimulus plan that would give every taxpayer almost $9,000…

Presser from Atlanta’s NBC affiliate, 11Alive.com:

Dr Broun: “‘Bout Time the American People Got Their Own Earmark” 
Introduces an Economic Recovery Amendment that Actually Stimulates

(Washington, D.C.) - Representative Paul Broun, M.D. (GA-10) introduced an amendment to President Barack Obama’s Bureaucrat Stimulus Plan that will allow hardworking taxpayers to keep their trillion dollars and actually stimulate the economy. Dr. Broun’s amendment gives every American who files a tax return approximately $9K — their share of President Obama and Speaker Pelosi’s bureaucrat wish list.

“My amendment gives every tax filer their fair share of President Obama’s bureaucrat stimulus plan. It’s my belief that putting this money back in the pockets of hardworking taxpayers will do more to turn this economy around than spending it on 150 different federal programs, sod for the National Mall, or new cars for feds.

“Middle-class Americans are our nation’s economic engine, and they know how to spend their money much more wisely than out-of-touch Washington bureaucrats. This point is most recently illustrated by President Obama’s decision to spend $1 trillion on a plan that according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office will not impact America’s economy for many years, if ever.

“I urge President Obama and Speaker Pelosi to skip the pork wish list and work with my colleagues on a true economic recovery program that provides tax relief to small businesses and families and offers incentive-based relief for job creators,” said Dr. Paul Broun.

The amendment would provide a stimulus check of equal monetary value to every legal resident of the United States that filed a taxable return for 2008.

The amount to be divided among each legal taxpayer is equal to the monetary size of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, as introduced.

For example, each legal tax payer would receive an $8,895.75 check assuming the legislation’s cost is $825 billion divided by 92,740,927 taxable returns (number of taxable returns for 2006).

Dr. Broun’s proposal is similar in concept to Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) Taxpayer Holiday proposal.

From the constitutional activists at constitution.org, their recent article briefly discusses the essence of republicanism: deliberation:

It is sometimes said that the essence of republican government is representation, but that is not correct. Its essence is deliberation. Representation comes when it becomes unwieldy for groups to deliberate directly, either because there are too many deliberants, or they have too much business to decide.

This matter is discussed in my Introduction to Constitutional Conventions: Their Nature, Powers, and Limitations, by Roger Sherman Hoar (1917).

Any scheme of representation must represent a balancing of several conflicting utilities:
1. Representation of diverse interests and expertise so that the body can avoid errors in their decisions.
2. Representation of interest groups in proportion to their numbers, so that distributive decisions can accurately weigh those interests.
3. Allow agendas that allocate enough time to every question for all views to be heard by all members of the body and commented on by all of those who wish to do so. …

Numerous proposals have been made to make at least the U.S. House of Representatives more “representative”. Some have addressed the ways election districts are drawn. The Voting Rights Act tries to legislate against “dilution” of “majority minority” districts, which is becoming mathematically impossible but is politically untouchable. Some have argued for a proxy system, others for sortition, which is the only method anyone has found to dispel the undue influence of special interests discussed in public choice theory. On theoretical and practical grounds some form of most of these has more merit than increasing the sizes of deliberative assemblies.

The above are merely the beginning and ending portions of the posting; the rest is definitely worth a read as well.

Part of the reason why it’s been downright impossible to get the Judiciary to consider a “redress of grievances” is primarily due to the concept of the “Administrative State.” The following links come from the research of a well-known blogger:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Administrative_State
• http://www.heritage.org/Research/Thought/fp16.cfm
• http://www.answers.com/topic/administrative-state

The first, wikipedia, entry is rather short; the latter two are rather long but make for good reading.

-Phil

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on January 27, 2009 (boomark / email).