Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:44 am
Sorry but my question was badly phrased - or not phrased at all - they hardly just get 100 dollars a year ?? They are very cheap TDs.
Interesting question as to whether the Lisbon Treaty has the like of the 10th Amendment .... if ibis is around he might know
I don't understand how or when the 10th Amendment overrules Federal Law though - for now all those states are operating under Federal Law one part of which might be that the Dollar is legal tender in those states and it's an offence to burn the Star Spangled Banner. The 10th Amendment affects the legality of these things does it ? When though - when is it effective or when does it apply ?
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:17 am
Good value for money all right. 100 bucks a year it is.
The 10th amendment is saying that federal law is illegal unless it deals with subject matter written there in
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:25 am
youngdan wrote:
Good value for money all right. 100 bucks a year it is.
The 10th amendment is saying that federal law is illegal unless it deals with subject matter written there in
Is it that Federal Law is null unless it is the same as state law ? And when does it come into effect do you know - it's not effective now in any state is it ? Have those Bills all been defeated ?
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:26 am
whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force
So it only applies whenever the Federal Government try to enforce laws that are not State laws or delegated to the Federal Government by the Constitution ?
But how else can the Federal Government make laws other than via the Constitution ?
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:46 am
I think that is the point, surely the arguement has to be that the federal government is acting beyond its remit.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 2:53 am
Is it to do with Executive Orders - isn't that an avenue by which Federal Law is made that may not derive from the Constitution ?
The Constitution is very well respected isn't it.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 3:20 am
Auditor #9 wrote:
youngdan wrote:
Good value for money all right. 100 bucks a year it is.
The 10th amendment is saying that federal law is illegal unless it deals with subject matter written there in
Is it that Federal Law is null unless it is the same as state law ? And when does it come into effect do you know - it's not effective now in any state is it ? Have those Bills all been defeated ?
no,no, no.
None of the bills have been defeated as they are just now being introduced in 25 state legislatives. In Oklahoma it has been voted on by the INTIRE house and passed easily. Next the senate in Oklahoma votes and then the governor decides whether he signs it. All 25 bills are not the same but similiar.
Topics like education, health care, drugs and a long list of other things not listed in the Constutution is no business of the feds and all federal laws about them are void. For example California legalised pot but the feds are still arresting guys for pot. This tells the feds to screw.
So the federal law is null and the state law is whatever the state decides. Some states might outlaw abortion for example and some might legalise it
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 3:32 am
Jesus it's very radical when you think of it - loads of Federal Law must not derive from the Constitution then but must be made up - the Founding Fathers didn't have ganja mon did they? So who made up that Law on the ganja and on what basis ? The Federal Government can make Laws I'd say as long as they don't violate the constitution - they could decide everyone cannot carry firearms at all but must keep them in their houses whereas at the moment each state has seperate firearm interpretations of the 2nd Amendment.
In Oklahoma if the Senate also passes it (does it look like they will) can the Governor just say "nah - I don't want to sign it, sorry". Hardly.
And if it passes, all the body of Federal Law hitherto written does not apply to Oklahoma ?
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 3:41 am
The Federal Government can only make laws on issues covered in the constitution.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 3:51 am
It remains to be seen Audi. If the governor vetos a bill the legislative body can override his veto and forse it into law on a two thirds majority vote.
You are looking at it backwards. It is not a case of the feds being able to make law unless it violates the constitution. It means that they can only make a law if the constitution lists it as being their responsibility.
This is what the 10th amendment says
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 4:06 am
youngdan wrote:
It means that they can only make a law if the constitution lists it as being their responsibility.
This is what the 10th amendment says
It can't be put much clearer than that I'd say. It's still a slippery one without examples but your Pot example is good enough as a model.
Someone needs to update Jefferson.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:38 am
I still don't know if I understand that stuff about the 10th Amendment though - how does a Federal Law get made that bans pot if not someway via the Constitution some way, somehow ? Would asserting the 10th Amendment not mean that states could get into legal wrangling with the Federal Govt. over what is Constitutional and what is not ?
In other news, Hillary Clinton went a-begging to China to get them to continue buying US Treasuries ..
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to continue buying U.S. Treasury bonds to help finance President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, saying “we are truly going to rise or fall together.”
“Our economies are so intertwined,” Clinton said in an interview today in Beijing with Shanghai-based Dragon Television. “It would not be in China’s interest” if the U.S. were unable to finance deficit spending to stimulate its stalled economy.
These two are in a strange, semi-symbiotic dance of growth and debt it seems - China wants to grow but it seems to need the US ... could it be that the US dependency allows it to grow at a particular rate which it wouldn't if the US wasn't their biggest consumer ? Surely China would grow anyway by selling to other markets if the US were to fail in their begging mission ?
Quote :
The U.S. is the single largest buyer of the exports that drive growth in China, the world’s third-largest economy. China in turn invests surplus earnings from shipments of goods such as toys, clothing and steel primarily in Treasury securities, making it the world’s largest holder of U.S. government debt at the end of last year with $696.2 billion.
China’s leaders understand that “the United States has to take some very drastic measures with the stimulus package, which means we have to incur debt,” Clinton said. The Chinese are “making a very smart decision by continuing to invest in Treasury bonds,” which she called a “safe investment,” because a speedy U.S. recovery will fuel China’s growth as well.
This looks like the Reserve World Currency again - if the Chinese don't accumulate the dollars then they won't be able to get their share of the world market in oil and whatever else is traded in dollars only.
Quote :
‘No Viable Alternative’
JPMorgan Chase & Co. predicted in a Feb. 6 report that China will keep buying Treasuries “not only for the near-term stability of the global financial system, but also because there is no viable and liquid alternative market in which to invest China’s massive and still growing reserves.”
Why not euros or Sterling ? Maybe it's the case that the best customer at your party (or shipmate on your boat) is the one who can eat the most.
Quote :
“The international financial crisis is having a big impact on the entire world,” Wen told Clinton at their meeting. “I very much appreciate your comment that people should work together like passengers in a boat.”
Or maybe they're genuinely interested in carbon emissions reduction - indeed, could world markets not have reacted child-throwing-toys-out-of-a-pramwise when Obama's Administration came into office - a crowd perhaps serious about carbon emissions and a greener economy?
Quote :
Power Plant Visit
After meeting Yang, Clinton and her special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, visited the year-old Taiyanggong power plant, a gas-fired low-emission facility powered by General Electric Co. generators and turbines which provides heat for 1 million homes and buildings in Beijing, including the U.S. embassy. The tour was aimed at highlighting opportunities for the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to cooperate on clean energy.
Clinton noted that China, with its rapid industrial development, has surpassed the U.S. as the largest source of carbon emissions and said collaboration on green energy would offer a business opportunity.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:28 am
If you can't grasp the 10th Amendment then we will leave the other 26 for another day.
Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Wed Feb 25, 2009 11:57 am
Gotta give it to Obama. This blind optimism malarky really sells. One can only ponder the consequences if he were to be found running around waving his hands in the air screaming: "We're fucked, We're fucked!!"
Selling hope. And these days it's a growing market, it's the only growing market. And it's not even faith based.
Tis like that film, the title eludes me: "You can't handle the truth!"
The disintegration of the US hasn't even started yet and already the sun worshippers are claiming to see light at the end of the tunnel - it's more likely to be the effect of the embolism and is probably itself a symptom of the root of the illness. Not a single State has bottomed out and the infighting amongst the survivors is a ways off yet. Other countries, China in particular, are still exporting goods to the US and are being paid in promises. A promise won't buy that baby a new pair of shoes. Wait till that free meal is cut short...
I've said this in other posts and will say it in many more: Bootstrapping. No government, and very few media outlets, have paid it any attention. It is the single biggest influence on what has only started to arrive. We can survive what's coming but what amounts to prayer has no place in even being discussed, nevermind being implemented as a national policy. We're doing the same. We're up Shit Creek, the muppets with the paddles are all working against each other and the flow is taking us.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:10 pm
A few good men ... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expects an energy bill to be ready for a vote within the next few weeks and a climate change bill to be ready by the end of the summer.
Now that the stimulus bill has passed, Congress is moving on to more environment-specific legislation. According to a recent AP interview,
The upcoming energy bill will focus on renewable energy and efficiency and will most likely include a national energy standard requiring 20 percent of the energy generated by utilities to come from renewable sources by 2020. A national standard has been proposed before unsuccessfully, but now that several states have passed their own mandates, it's likely to have a better shot this time around.
The senator also expects more tax incentives for energy efficiency, particularly in the construction and retro-fitting of buildings, to be included in the bill.
The climate change bill will concern actions necessary to slow down global warming and will most likely be put to a vote before the international climate negotiations happening in Copenhagen in December. The climate change bill is expected to be more controversial and involve topics like CO2 emission caps.
So far, it seems the new administration is keeping its promise to act quickly on energy and environmental issues. We'll be keeping close tabs on what comes of these bills and keeping our fingers crossed for effective legislation.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Thu Feb 26, 2009 9:24 pm
Yes, New Taxes
Obama Seeks $1 Trillion Tax Increase in Budget Plan (Update1)
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama proposed almost $1 trillion in higher taxes on the 2.6 million highest- earning Americans, Wall Street financiers, U.S.-based multinational corporations, and oil companies to pay for permanent tax breaks for lower earners.
Obama’s 2010 budget proposal, released today, would reinstate the top two Clinton-era tax rates of 36 percent and 39.6 percent in 2011, up from the 33 percent and 35 percent the richest Americans now pay. It would raise taxes on capital gains and dividends to 20 percent for top earners, up from the 15 percent set by former President George W. Bush in 2003.
The tax increases, which Obama vowed to impose as a presidential candidate, would be the first on high-income earners since 1993 and would reverse a course set by Bush of lowering the tax burden on the nation’s wealthiest people.
“It’s a clear repudiation of Bush’s policy,” said Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland in College Park. “It’s more Obama Robin Hood.”
Obama’s budget does keep in place Bush’s tax cuts that benefit lower- and middle-income earners and it preserves a sliver of policy that benefits the more affluent: A preferential tax rate on corporate dividends. Before Bush, dividends were taxed as ordinary income, or at rates as high as 39.6 percent in the 1990s.
...
Higher-income earners, primarily families with more than $250,000 of income, would face an additional tax burden under a proposal to reinstate limitations on their itemized deductions, which would subject more of their income to tax. In all, top- earning households would pay $636.7 billion in additional taxes over the next decade, Obama’s budget estimates.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:05 am
"In keeping with my committment to make our Government more open and transparent, this budget is an honest accounting of where wer are and where we're intend to go.
For too long our budget has not told the whole truth about how precious tax dollars are spent."
Obama puts his Keynsian tax and spend budget together, putting on hold lowering the deficit for the moment which will be 1.75 trillion this year according to the article below. He's hoping to leverage a war chest of nearly 4 trillion with which he will wage war on the ailing economy at home and intends to only spend 75bn in the external war in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.
He probably intends to make savings for one thing through energy conservation which will contribute monetarily over the long term.
Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Sat Feb 28, 2009 2:30 pm
Quote :
Obama sets Iraq deadline, unveils new strategy
CAMP LEJEUNE, North Carolina (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday he would end U.S. combat operations in Iraq in 18 months but leave up to 50,000 troops there to provide stability, a decision that riled Democrats who favored a larger withdrawal.
"We are leaving Iraq to its people, and we have begun the work of ending this war," Obama said in an address to Marines almost six years after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein in a vain hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
Congressional Democrats who fought the Bush administration for two years to bring home U.S. forces home expressed disappointment, with Senate leader Harry Reid saying 50,000 troops was "higher than I had anticipated" and Representative Lynn Woolsey calling it "unacceptable."
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian fighters planes scrambled to intercept an approaching Russian bomber less than 24 hours before U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Ottawa last week, Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay said on Friday.
The long-range Bear bomber did not enter Canada's Arctic airspace but the two CF-18 fighters had to order the plane to "back off", MacKay told a news conference.
He also told reporters that Russia had not warned Canada that the flight was coming, a statement that a Russian government source in Moscow dismissed as farcical.
The Russian government source said Canada had been informed about the flight before it took off.
What's so special about Taiwan anyway that the Chinese want it back (whereever it went) - is it strategic in any way besides political.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:59 am
Auditor #9 wrote:
What's so special about Taiwan anyway that the Chinese want it back (whereever it went) - is it strategic in any way besides political.
Never underestimate the importance of loss of face in matters oriental. It has to be genetic for I doubt if Westerners properly understand the concept.
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Subject: Re: The Obama Administration / State of the Union Address Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:43 pm
Squire wrote:
Auditor #9 wrote:
What's so special about Taiwan anyway that the Chinese want it back (whereever it went) - is it strategic in any way besides political.
Never underestimate the importance of loss of face in matters oriental. It has to be genetic for I doubt if Westerners properly understand the concept.
Interesting ... and speaking of genetics ... The Obama Administration is expected to reverse the current restriction on stem cell research which only allows investigation into limited colonies of stem cells according to Bloomberg below.
Here is your Next Big Thing in my view - this will free up investment for projects that could see novel cures and therapies for all sorts of diseases, among other things, although it'll take a few years.
Quote :
Obama Stem Cell Shift Will Speed Hunt for Cures, Scientists Say
March 7 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s expected reversal of an 8-year-old restriction on U.S. funding for embryonic stem cell research has excited scientists and health advocates who say the action will accelerate the search for cures to major illness.
Obama plans to lift the funding ban, imposed by former President George W. Bush, in a March 9 signing ceremony, said two government officials, who spoke yesterday on condition of anonymity. Bush objected to the use of the tissue because the process caused the destruction of human embryos.
The change will free federally backed scientists to work with hundreds of newer cell colonies that have been off-limits under Bush’s order, including some that carry genetic mutations causing diseases such as juvenile diabetes and Huntington’s. If scientists can study these cells using U.S. government funding, it will speed research into those conditions, said Larry Soler, executive vice president of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
The expected shift will “update the current policy, which has been frozen in place since 2001 and allow broad use of new technologies discovered over the last eight years,” Soler said yesterday in a telephone interview. “For 30 million Americans with some form of diabetes, stem cell research offers a possibility to develop new treatments.”
Stem cells derived from days-old human embryos have the potential to form any of the body’s 200 or so cell types and to repair or replace damaged tissue or organs. Those that contain mutations may reveal how illness develops and identify targets for prevention or treatment.
Opponents of the research consider embryos to be human life and research that destroys them to be immoral. They say stem cells from adult tissue and umbilical cord blood are available without harming embryos and already in clinical use, while treatments from embryonic cells are years off.
On a perhaps unrelated note but something of note, the Big Pharma company Merck bought Schering-Plough for $41bn