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View Full Version : Emmer, R-Nominee for MN Gov, Article supporting direct nullification




John Taylor
06-22-2010, 11:04 AM
We need to elect this guy, even if nothing else, he'll be a champion of the 10th Amendment and will actively resist the Federal encroachment into the reserved powers of the states and of the people.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/96684759.html?page=1&c=y


These days, when people talk about government, they often mean the federal government.

That's too bad, because there is a reason why America's Founding Fathers put together a system that recognized the importance and separate roles of the national, state and local governments.

Simply put: In a country as diverse as the United States, it makes no sense to centralize all power thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C. But that is precisely what has been happening for the last 70 years. Things have gone so far that soon bureaucrats in Washington will be making decisions about what and how much health care each individual can get.

It may seem old-fashioned, but I happen to think that the Founding Fathers had the right idea.

We need government for a pretty simple reason. Just as it makes sense to leave it to individuals and families to look after their own good -- their own "pursuit of happiness" -- it makes sense to have government to help provide for the common good. Only government can marshal enough resources to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," as the Constitution puts it.

The Founders also understood that it was a bad idea to concentrate the extraordinary power of government in the hands of a few. That's why they created three branches of government -- the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. And that's also why they established a federal form of government, in which states and local governments were sovereign in themselves, and not beholden to the federal government except in matters that were national in scope.

This idea, that the federal government should be limited, was so important that the founders amended the Constitution to emphasize it. The Tenth Amendment, part of the original Bill of Rights, is straightforward: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

I, for one, think that government -- especially the federal government -- is too big, too powerful, too intrusive and too expensive. I believe the best way to reverse this trend is for states and individuals to push back against the encroachment of the federal government into the minutia of our daily lives.

That is why I proposed the Health Care Freedom Act last year. Had it passed, it would have given Minnesotans the opportunity to actually vote on whether or not they wanted to opt into Obamacare, rather than have that choice taken away from them. Several states have since passed such an act, but Minnesota Democrats led by Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher decided to prevent Minnesotans from having the same choice that millions of citizens from other states have.

When I am governor, passage of the Health Care Freedom Act will be one of our top priorities.

But frankly, getting the federal government out of our most personal health care choices is just a start. The federal government is too involved in too many aspects of our lives, and is too involved in telling state and local governments what to do and how to do it.

Everyday decisions that should properly be made at the local level or by citizens and their businesses are routinely made in Washington. The Department of Education tells us how to educate our kids. The Department of Transportation tells us when and where to build roads or whether we should have a train instead of a road. The Department of Health and Human Services tells us what kind of welfare programs we must have. The Department of Commerce regulates our businesses, and the Department of Labor tells us whom we can hire at what wage.

Enough is enough. As governor, I will push back against this federal encroachment into our local affairs.

I believe that our Legislature should have a voice in whether federal laws should be made to apply to Minnesotans. Minnesotans should have a say in the laws that govern them.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/96684759.html?page=1&c=y


We need this man as Governor of Minnesota.