Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Social Security is Unconstitutional

Check it:

The Roosevelt Administration feared that the Court would rule that the Constitution did not permit federal tax-financed old-age insurance. While the Social Security bill was in Congress, the Court invalidated the Railroad Retirement Act, which resembled Social Security. So the Administration’s allies on the House Ways and Means Committee weeded the insurance language out of the bill and physically separated the tax and benefits titles in the text so they wouldn’t look like an insurance program.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court hammered the New Deal. On May 27, 1935, in a crushing defeat for Roosevelt, it voided the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act. It struck down the Agricultural Adjustment Act on January 6, 1936, the Guffey Coal Act on May 18, and the Municipal Bankruptcy Act and a New York state law setting minimum wages for women on May 25.

Enraged, Roosevelt decided to subdue the Court. His megalomania inflated by his 1936 landslide, on February 5, 1937 he abruptly asked Congress to enact a bill empowering him to appoint one additional Justice for every one who turned 70 and did not retire, for a maximum of six, thus enlarging the Supreme Court from nine Justices to up to fifteen.

If you're interested in Contitutional Law (and why wouldn't you be?) then read the whole thing. You will (I hope) come to the same conclusion I did, which is that most Federal welfare programs are unconstitutional and illegal. You would think Obama, a former professor of Constitutional Law, would already know this.

1 comment:

  1. Finally found you and followed you back!

    Your hopes are going to have to be dashed by me, I'm afraid. Unless you want and expect the constitution to freeze things the way they were in the 1700s, or before Andrew Jackson, or before the Civil War, or etc I think it's up to us to change and interpret it for the times and if we make a mess of it (and we both agree we have) it's nothing deeper than our doing what we were intended to do by the founding folks- except we're doing a terrible and shitty job of it.

    If someone finds a constitutional way of instituting a monarchy, or renaming us the "United Christian States" or allowing law enforcement to spy on whoever they want whenever they want without having to inform them or show evidence of wrongdoing, then I'll agree that we're blatantly ignoring the constitution!

    (oh wait...)

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