Posted by
grad_1986 on Sunday, May 17, 2009 11:56:22 PM
Watching the movie Rocky (which I must have seen a dozen times now) and found it interesting in the scene where Rocky's love interest is arguing with her drunk and abusive brother. He argues that she is NOTHING without him, but she fires back at him and shows him who REALLY is in charge by pointing out all the things she does for him such as: cooking, cleaning, washing, paying the bills. She tells him, "You need ME!". This scene I believe plays out in many abusive homes across the country when the abused wake up and realize they have a lot more power than they are made to believe by their abusers.
Today, I believe our states are in a similar relationship with the Federal government. For years they have taken it on the lip from an out of control federal government which constantly orders them around with their unending lists of "mandates". Washington says "JUMP" and the states yell back "HOW HIGH?" But now there is hope that some states are beginning to wake up and fight back for their rights. Some states such as Montana are introducing gun laws to challenge the federal governments intra-state regulations. Even if such laws fail, having more states like Montana standing up against the Washington will send a chilling message to our inept lawmakers who today have ZERO understanding of the constitution and the founding fathers original intent that the federal government was to be small, limited and a PART-TIME-JOB!
Who knows where this will lead in the near future. Maybe states will wake up and see that without their help the federal government is incapable of implementing most of their so called mandates and federal regulations. Let's say, hypothetically, a state were to declare that a person not paying their federal taxes is a "federal issue" and therefore the federal government must be responsible for the job of collecting those taxes or prosecuting those individuals. The federal government would be incapable of enforcing even the most simplest of laws without the support of local law enforcement from those states and would quickly realize WHO REALLY NEEDS WHO in this relationship.
This may be the reset button our country has been needing for some time now. As I mentioned earlier, uur founding fathers vision of our country was one with a small limited federal government, followed by a larger state government and then ending with larger local governments. The idea was that local governments could raise their own revenues to tackle the issues that were plaguing them the most. Individual local governments would then be able to insure that corruption was limited to that locality and would be fixed by residents removing those who would misuse their tax dollars. They would also be able to tailor the solution to meet their specific problems and solve the problem in their own unique way.
But today, our federal government steals so much of our local revenue their is little left over for their use. Often money goes to Washington and trickles down to the states through various "agencies" who all take their small slice of the pie. By the time the money makes it to the local towns and cities it resembles the flow of the Colorado River by the time it reaches the Mexico border after it has passed a multitude of dams and dikes. Trickling like a stream instead of roaring like a river.
Finally, because so much power is concentrated in so few people, corporations, unions and other political manipulators wine, dine and bribe our officials. This corruption festers like an untreated flesh-eating bacteria eating the body of our country from the inside until there is nothing left. Often the American people just throw up their hands in frustration and say "That's Washington for ya". But had we stayed with our founding fathers original blue-print, there would be too many local governments to be wined and dined to make any progress by any one group or company.
Let's hope more states like Montana and Texas stand up their (and our) rights as a free people!