December 11, 2003

Proposal for a Constitutional Amendment.

Why isn’t the government accountable as to how to pay for the programs it enacts?

Federal and State governments are constantly voting to spend money without any requirement to account for how they’re going to get that money. The recent new $400 billion prescription drug entitlement is a huge example. Many people believe there’s no way to pay for it at all. And because it’s an entitlement, there’s no way to reduce it once it’s enacted. (There must be some way to cut these entitlements—but that’s a subject for another post). Much of the public is left scratching our heads, wondering what the heck our elected officials are thinking.

Another example cropped up today: Social Security checks could go south of border.

WASHINGTON – U.S. and Mexican officials are discussing an agreement that would allow millions of Mexicans to return home and still collect U.S. Social Security benefits.

The controversial proposal that could transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in Social Security payments south of the border has riled some Republican lawmakers. They worry that it could reward scores of undocumented Mexican immigrants with a U.S. pension, draining the country’s Social Security trust fund at a time when its future solvency is in doubt.

...”Let’s be honest, there are millions of Mexican immigrants contributing to the Social Security system and the U.S. economy,” said Katherine Culliton, an attorney with the Washington, D.C., office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It’s only fair they get back a benefit they deserve that will keep them from dying in poverty.”

Sure—they’re breaking our laws, entering this country illegally, and then they are forced by the laws of ours that they can’t figure out how to break, to contribute taxes. Let’s give ‘em some money!

“Talk about an incentive for illegal immigration,” said GOP Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. “How many more would break the law to come to this country if promised U.S. government paychecks for life?”

That’d be a great Constitutional Amendment: any government program has to be accompanied by documentation as to how it would be paid for.

Supreme Court Limits Freedom of Speech.

The ads close to an election usually are over-the-top, out-of-control attack ads. So the Court’s decision may really lead to more civilized elections.

At the same time, there’s tremendous concern from many observers that the Court has expressly limited the free speech guaranteed to us by the Constitution.

I never, in my most screwed up dreams, imagined that SCOTUS would uphold the part of the legislation that bans third-party commercials sixty days before an election. This is a definite blow to the first amendment—and against political speech, no less—and the Supreme Court let it happen.

This the Court has astonishingly, in fact done:

“The court has given government an extensive role in the area [TV commercials and so forth] on grounds that there is a fundamental national interest in rooting out corruption or even the appearance of it. That concern justifies limitations on the freedom of speech, the court has said.”

How can the Court discover in the Constitution a limit on freedom of speech? It’s insane.

Also, Rush makes a very good point. Now that candidates are forbidden to get their message out using the previously-normal method of TV and radio ads, how are they going to do it? They’ll have to go begging to the media—the overwhelmingly liberal media—for articles and interviews. This will give the media even more of a stranglehold over what can be said.

You know they’re not going to be bashing Democrats on these network news shows…. So what’s happened now, the mainstream press, they’ll go get whoever guests they want and they can trash whoever they want. That person who has been trashed cannot respond on television, can’t buy a commercial, can’t get a commercial run, can’t do it.

Just last week Ann Coulter was talking about the Supreme Court’s “discovering” all kinds of rights in the Constitution that couldn’t possibly have been intended by the Framers.

This appears to be insanity on a massive scale.