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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, October 31, 2022

P&D Today

De Omnibus Dubitandum

By Rich Kozlovich

Quote of the Day:  They lie, then lie about lying, then lie about lying about their lie, then they pretend they never said anything at all.  So I’m just going to skip the first three steps and pretend they didn’t say anything at all.  Unknown

Joe Biden has got to be the oddest of the odd.  I wonder if it's possible he believes the things he says, including just how great the economy is doing, and how he inherited a bad economy caused by Trump and his policies.  Well, here's a thought for the day for you.  As of October 27, 2022, in the real world it's possible the story is somewhat different.

Big list today with eight commentaries and eighteen linked pieces I think are worth exploring. Enjoy!

Commentaries

Links

Pandemic Lies, Myths and Reality

Deep State Corruption

Economic Tyranny: Leftism is a Mental Disorder

Education

Energy

Islam

Media Collapse

Scientific Integrity is an Oxymoron

Voter Fraud

  Free North Star Clipart, Download Free North Star Clipart ... 
Constant as the North Star

 

 

Somalia: Two months after president vowed ‘all-out war’ against jihadis, jihadis murder 100 people in twin bombings

Oct 31, 2022 By

The jihadis have ongoing sources of funding from people and groups who believe that they embody true Islam and are doing the work of Allah.“Death toll from Somalia twin bombings climbs to 100,” AFP, October 30, 2022: 

MOGADISHU: The number of people killed in an attack on Saturday (Oct 29) at a busy intersection in the Somali capital Mogadishu has risen to 100, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said on Sunday.

“So far, people who died have reached 100 and 300 are wounded, and the number for both the death and wounded continues to increase,” he said after visiting the bombing location.

Two cars packed with explosives were detonated minutes apart near the busy Zobe junction, followed by gunfire in an attack targeting Somalia’s education ministry….To Read More...

 

Muslims Worship Allah Atop 2,400 Decapitated Christian Heads

by 1 Comment

 

This week in history, a battle that radical Muslims of the ISIS variety all but venerate took place between Muslims and Christians in Spain, or al-Andalus.

Context: in 1085, Alfonso VI of Leon-Castile captured the Muslim city of Toledo, thereby formally initiating the Reconquista.  Great was the lamentation among Muslims and great the rejoicing among Christians.  The Muslim emirs of al-Andalus—notorious for their disunity, dissipated lifestyles, and disinterest in jihad—had to act fast, for “the arrogance of the Christian dogs,” to quote one Muslim, had “waxed so great.”

So they called on their fanatical coreligionists in North Africa, the Almorivades, a sect devoted to waging jihad and enforcing sharia.  Their elderly leader was Yusuf bin Tashfin, “a wise and shrewd man,” who had “passed the greater part of his life in his native deserts; exposed to hunger and privation, he had no taste for the life of pleasure.” Dressed all in black with a veil covering everything but the zeal in his eyes, the 76-year-old sheikh accepted the invitation and entered al-Andalus........To Read More...

Judge threatens '2000 Mules' investigators with jail

Ordered to ID confidential source in probe of China election-data breach

A federal judge has ordered True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht and researcher Gregg Phillips to identify their source in their investigation of the election software company Konnech by Monday or face jail.  Earlier this month, the CEO of Michigan-based Konnech, Eugene Yu, was arrested and charged by Los Angeles County prosecutors for allegedly storing election worker data on servers based in China. Engelbrecht and Phillips had been investigating Konnech since January 2021, and last month, prior to Yu's arrest, the CEO filed a defamation lawsuit against them.

The lawsuit has continued, despite Yu's arrest, and in Houston on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt gave Engelbrecht and Phillips a deadline of Monday to turn over any Konnech data it possessed and disclose the name of their source.  True the Vote has characterized the lawsuit as an effort to try to silence the organization. Konnech obtained an ex-parte temporary restraining order in secret, True the Vote said, so the election integrity group would have no opportunity to contest it.

Phillips, in a message on Truth Social, said he and Engelbrecht "were held in contempt of court because we refused to burn a confidential informant or our researchers." "We will go to jail Monday unless we comply."...............To Read More......

BREAKING: True the Vote leaders arrested after refusing to reveal confidential informant - Hannah Nightingale - Hoyt ordered that Engelbrcht and Phillips be held in custody for at least a day, until they divulge that information.  On Monday, US Marshalls took into custody Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips of True the Vote for refusing to identify a confidential informant.  Federal Judge Kenneth Hoyt delivered the order, holding the two in contempt of court for refusing to identify the informant, according to independent journalist Ivory Hecker..............  According to the Houston Chronicle, Engelbrecht and Phillips testified that identifying the confidential informant would put his life at risk. "Every name I give you gets doxxed and harassed," Engelbrecht said..............



 

Michael Walsh Explains the World Economic Forum’s Vision for the “Great Reset”: Live in a Box, Don’t Move, Be Surveilled, Shut Up, Eat Bugs

Michael Walsh, author of Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order, noted on Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow that the World Economic Forum’s [WEF] Great Reset program seeks to reduce the human population while restricting freedoms under the auspices of what the leftist organization describes as “climate change” and “public health” pursuits.

Walsh recalled how the WEF’s Great Reset operation was widely dismissed by leftists as a “conspiracy theory,” despite the WEF regularly promoting its Malthusian vision on its website, at its hosted discussion panels, and on its podcast titled The Great Reset. “[The Great Reset] is a conspiracy that’s actually on the website of the people who are conspiring,” Walsh remarked. He described the WEF as “a consortium of plutocrats, fascists, and governmental apparatchiks.”.........To Read More....

New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Humiliating Defeat of Covid Vaccine Mandates: “I Would Do It All Over Again”

by

A New York Judge on Monday delivered good news for city workers who were fired over New York City’s “arbitrary and capricious” Covid vaccine mandates. The judge ruled on Monday that the New York City Sanitation Department had to cease enforcing proof of vaccination, and furthermore, that the workers had to be reinstated and given back pay on Tuesday......To Read More....

 

The Deep State’s Crumbling Fantasies

Craige McMillan By Craige McMillan October 28, 2022 

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a sensible man who builds his house on the rock. Down came the rain and up came the floods, while the winds blew and roared upon that house – and it did not fall because its foundations were on the rock" (Matthew 7:24 Phillips).

Hubris doesn't seem to be a problem amongst the secular-prone "intellectual" world that has governed America for ages. But then, why would it be?They have had free rein in directing America's thought processes. Public "education" was designed to indoctrinate leftist ideas into the nation's population at an early age.

  • Colleges and universities went from "tenure" to protect free thought, to "tenure" to enforce groupthink among the faculty.
  • Big Tech required a well-indoctrinated workforce to code, but proved unable to comprehend intellectual diversity.
  • Government became the Deep State's god, because they could use it to control people they disagreed with.
  • Fake elections took until now to be exposed, another Big Tech gift to the nation.

I guess they liked the Bible quote, "Start children off in the way they should go and even when they are old they will not turn from it" (Proverbs 22:6 NIV)..................To Read More.....


BREAKING: Marxist Medical Boards Strip Top Dr. Peter McCullough’s Medical Credentials for Speaking the Truth About COVID Vaccine

By Jim Hoft October 29, 2022 682 Comments

McCullough, who’s also an epidemiologist, isn’t just spouting off wild baseless claims. He explained his reasoning behind his shocking conclusion by walking through the “Bradford Hill Tenets of Causality,” in order to demonstrate the link between the vaccines and the current wave of excess deaths.

The Bradford Hill Tenets are widely considered to be the standard when evaluating cause and effect. It is regularly used in public health research and is defined as “a group of nine principles that can be useful in establishing epidemiologic evidence of a causal relationship between a presumed cause and an observed effect, according to Wikipedia.

On Saturday, Dr. McCullough informed Steve Kirsch that he was terminated as the Editor-In-Chief of Cardiorenal Medicine and Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine on Friday.   One of the most respected doctors in the world and top cardiologists and epidemiologist in the country had his license revoked for speaking the truth about the danger of COVID vaccines........To Read More....

The Covid Regime Still Clings to Power

A remnant of deep blue America refuses to leave the March 2020 state of emergency. 

 

I was checking out on Wednesday night at the Georgetown Trader Joe’s here in D.C. I paid for my eggs and had started to walk out when a little old lady, maybe 60 years old, shuffled up to the cash register as I moved away. Loudly—I think, intentionally loudly—she gushed to the cashier and to everyone else in the store: “Thank you for wearing a mask.”

I chuckled at the throwback. It was so emphatic, so sincere, and so clearly contained a jab at everyone in the store who elected not to wear a mask. This woman was Georgetown to her core, which means I could probably tell you who she voted for in every election of the last few decades. So I chuckled, because what does one crazy rich hippie matter when all the rest of us have gone back to normal?............ To Read More....

 

‘Waiting with Our Heads Laying in a Guillotine’: Special Forces Soldier Speaks Out on Vaccine Mandate

Kristina Wong

An Army National Guard Special Forces soldier recently spoke out against the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate and its negative effects on morale and recruiting, saying that unvaccinated soldiers feel as though they are “waiting with our heads laying in a guillotine.”

“Nobody can give us an answer on anything. And we’re just kind of waiting with our heads laying in a guillotine and unable to serve in a full time capacity. And it’s extremely frustrating,” Army Sgt. Lonny Posey recently told Fox News Digital in a video interview.

Posey said although the deadline for National Guard soldiers passed on June 30, those who requested accommodation cannot get an answer to their requests but have been forced to sit on the sidelines and not train, which was atrophying their skills and the military’s readiness. He said:...........To Read More...

CDC Pushed for COVID-19 Boosters Without Clinical Trials

Zachary Stieber Zachary Stieber

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pressured U.S. regulators to clear COVID-19 boosters without clinical trial data, according to newly released emails. CDC officials relayed to counterparts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early August 2021 that they wanted authorization for Moderna and Pfizer boosters as data began showing that the vaccines weren’t working as well as initially promoted. The conversation took place on a call that was described by Dr. Phil Krause, a top FDA official, to several other FDA workers. “Take a deep breath before reading this next paragraph. On that call, the CDC evidently stated that they will assemble all the data they are aware of on third dosing in this setting and send it to us in the hope that we will (very soon) authorize the third dose for immunocompromised as part of the EUA,” Krause wrote in the Aug. 5, 2021, email (pdf). EUA stands for emergency use authorization..........To Read More.....

The Updated mRNA COVID Boosters Are a Bust, Two New Studies Show By Debra Heine - The new, heavily promoted mRNA booster shots from Pfizer and Moderna are not all they’re cracked up to be, according to two new preprint studies.  The boosters perform no better against Omicron than the fourth jab with the original formulation,” a new study from scientists at Columbia University in New York City found. The updated Covid-19 booster shots have been advertised as “bivalent,” meaning they target the original coronavirus strain as well as the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants.  However, the Columbia paper found that the newer Omicron variants easily evade both types of boosters, Alex Berenson reported on Substack................

First Time in History, Experimental Genetic Injections Recommended for Routine Childhood Vaccine Schedule

by | Oct 29, 2022 |

With a series of 15-0 votes, academic physician-advisors to the CDC recommended the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines be added to the pediatric routine childhood vaccine schedule. These votes provided the CDC with advice to make the shots available to low-income children free of charge. Additionally, they are now on the schedule with measles, mumps, rubella, polio, etc., as routine vaccinations that most states will adopt for their public school systems.

In the US, these decisions represent many “firsts”: 

  1. First pandemic illness to be permanently added — what happens when COVID-19 essentially goes away?
  2. First emergency use authorized products to join — what happens if they are not fully FDA approved in the future?
  3. First products added without clarity on the dose, interval, and how to administer?

For example, does an unvaccinated child start with the obsolete Pfizer or Moderna products from two years ago and then two months later get a bivalent booster for a total of three shots in four months? What about a fully vaccinated child — does this mean annual boosters when the theoretical benefit, if any, only last six months?......To Read More....

 

Air Force Pilot, Dr. Miarecki Replaces Tyranny with Truth on Military COVID Policies

After retiring from the Air Force in 2007 after 20 years in the Air Force, Lt. Col. Miarecki earned a Ph.D. in Particle Physics and became an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School. Dr. Miarecki has been one of the few who stood up and supported students and fellow staff with religious and medical concerns with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate and associated policies.

Once hopeful of joining the astronaut program, Dr. Miarecki was injured in 1992 by a vaccine administered by the military, which made her unable to pursue her dream. Committed to continuing serving her nation after retiring from active duty, she attended U.C. Berkeley for her Ph.D. in particle physics. The Air Force hired her as an instructor in 2016, where she was serving when the illegal COVID-19 mandates were declared.…To Read More...


Sunday Schadenfreude: Chris Wallace ratings far worse than show he replaced as CNN braces for holiday season layoffs

Chris Wallace left Fox News in a huff and signed a contract with CNN to be the point man on the cable network’s streaming service, CNN+. That venture lasted only days before the new owners pulled the plug, leaving the network stuck with finding some use for its expensive (“more than $6 million a year”) new employee. They came up with a Sunday evening interview program, titled Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace.”  As Radar Online reports, the results are dismal:................  To Read More....

My Take - Chris Wallace is a loser because I think he's a duplicitous arrogant snot.  His salary is a loser because he's not drawing an audience of any size.  CNN is a loser because the new owners aren't aggressive enough in changing the direction of the network because I think they're not conservatives, they're liberals in sheep's clothing.  Otherwise they'd have come out and emphatically said the network was corrupted with leftist ideologues that were dishonest in their representation of the news and fired each and every one of their talking heads, along with the management people.  They didn't.  If this continues, and I think it will, CNN will be sold, at a bargain price, if it can be sold.  
 
Companies that deliver "news" have nothing to sell except their access to an audience, and they're fast running out of that asset.    Schadenfreude!
 

 

Enemies of Humanity

I remember a boast from Carl Sagan, many years ago, that it would only be a matter of time that science would have everything about the world explained. He considered “spiritual” explanations “baloney” (his word). Countless others who consider science the one and only path to ultimate enlightenment have obviously not been living in the same world that billions of other people have been living in since the dawn of time.

As for Sagan’s prediction, it is a conviction of many since the Age of Reason.  Has the time of the ultimate enlightenment arrived? Looking around, we can see that those scientists, theologians, philosophers, and think-tank experts in every major field have not all come to the same conclusion. Far from it, in fact, which everyone who is not addicted to mainstream information knows. And who is able to trust experts like Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and associated masters of science (and wisdom?).

Why do millions vigorously protest a so-called “Great Reset” of the world based on “ultimate scientific findings”? Could it be that this vast assemblage of souls notices that plans for a Godless, essentially nonhuman world are as nutty as the globalists who make them and promote them – and, what is dictatorial, to say the least, making such a world mandatory?

What to make of such utter global disconnect with the minds, hearts, and loyalties of the world’s people? I think a good start to understanding this global conundrum is the awareness that  manipulating science for nonscientific ends is not science but wisdom-defying scientism............To Read More....


Wind farm dismantled to expand coal mine as Germany faces its green reckoning

Nothing could better symbolize the deflating bubble of green madness that gripped Germany than the following from Lawrence Richard of Fox Business:

A German energy company is dismantling a wind farm to allow for an adjacent coal mine to expand its operations, officials said.

The German coal mine Garzweiler, operated by energy company RWE, admits the situation appears to be "paradoxical" — sacrificing one energy source for another — but defended the decision as necessary to strengthen supplies amid the ongoing energy crisis, Oilprice.com reported. 

"We realize this comes across as paradoxical," RWE spokesperson Guido Steffen said in a statement. "But that is as matters stand.

It’s not “paradoxical” at all, it is practical. Germany needs reliable energy now that the comfortable reserve capacity supplied by massive Russian natural gas imports is no longer available to pick up the slack when the wind isn’t blowing, or is blowing so hard that the windmills need to shut down.

The practical necessity of hydrocarbon-based power (I like to call it “organic power,” not “fossil fuel” because it is based on organic chemistry) is obvious now that freezing to death is in prospect for huge numbers of Europeans this winter.  Dr. Johnson’s immortal epigram could be updated to substitute freezing to death for hanging”......To Read More....

 

Federalism and the Great Reset

Governments, international organizations, and multinational businesses increasingly advance elements of the Great Reset, including, DEI, ESG, and ending use of fossil fuels. The Biden administration’s actions since January 2021 demonstrate significant support among U.S. elites for the Great Reset.

What can be done about it? Glenn Beck and Justin Haskins offer suggestions in Summary of the Great Reset.  These include regulatory changes, a balanced budget amendment for Washington, educational choice, and defunding global institutions.  They also recommend “Community First,” with economic, social, and political elements, like getting to know neighbors and supporting locally owned businesses.  On politics, they recommend, “If you’re politically active, don’t spend all your time and money on congressional and presidential elections.”  Building on this, I contend that a reinvigorated federalism offers protection against Great Reset policies.

(Source: World Eceonomic Forum)

We can hope for and welcome political pushback.  The Trump administration took helpful measures, like enacting the Fair Access to Financial Services rule to prevent discrimination in lending.  Many more Americans are now aware of the Great Reset thanks to the efforts of folks like Haskins, Donald Kendal, and the Heartland Institute.  A successor can undo President Biden’s executive orders. .........To Read More.....


Oops: The federal government (illegally) gave China this $15 million technology… for free

Real Clear Politics

The U.S. Department of Energy illegally gave China $15 million in taxpayer-funded, groundbreaking technology for a powerful rechargeable battery used for grid energy storage.  It took six years and more than $15 million from taxpayers to develop a vanadium redox flow battery that scientists thought could power a house and could be charged and recharged for up to 30 years, according to an investigation by NPR and the Northwest News Network. But the DOE gave the technology to the Chinese in 2017 as part of a sublicence, and in 2021 as part of a license transfer..........To Read More..

My Take - How does anyone in government "accidentally" give a foreign power technology?  Technology they don't have, can't develop and will use against us!  And who's been fired over this?  No one as far as I can tell.  Another good reason to dump the Energy Department.

The Power of the Mob was our Founding Fathers’ Greatest Fear

There is a never-ending effort to fool us all into believing that we are a Democracy. That was never the intention of the great men who envisioned a nation like none other. Happily, we are not a Democracy of any kind. We are a Republic. The difference is distinct and important to Democrats and Republicans, and indeed all of our youth. 

A Democracy is a form of government that is designed and managed by the majority. Political philosophers have identified its weakness and dangers for over 2,000 years. It is a government that can only fail.

The men who wrote our Constitution made great efforts to ensure that we do not become a democracy. Some of our readers may be shocked to learn this, but a study of the Constitution Convention journals makes it clear. 

They knew a democracy was dangerous for any nation because it gave too much power to the poor. Readers are quickly thinking about what is wrong with that. What snobs we must be. But the poor will always outnumber the rich, so the poor eventually use their numbers to take the homes, money, and assets from the rich, and society eventually collapses. This isnt opinion; it is recorded in history. 

The father of our Constitution,” James Madison, addressed the problems of democracy, which he called the popular form of government in Federalist #10. In our opinion, it is the most important of all the Federalist papers. He wrote in Federalist #10, one of many essays intended to further explain the importance of various portions of the Constitution:

Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or property rights, and have generally been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

Our Constitutional Republic is different. We have a foundation of government set by our Constitution. All laws created by the government must be in consonance with its constitutional design. The Constitution is purposefully difficult to change because an amendment requires the approval of a two-thirds vote of both the Senate and House of Representatives, plus the ratification of three-fourths of the state legislatures to succeed.  

The philosophy of our Constitution was to bind the states together in a very limited measure, with the federal government having little control over the internal operations of each state. Still, it would represent them in a national scope and international affairs.  

Within our original Constitution, we find an area of popular input: the House of Representatives. Its members are elected to short, two-year terms to reflect the popular pressures of the people.But the Senate was far different in its design. The State Legislatures initially appointed its members, so the States officially had influence in Federal legislation and the appointment processes of the Federal Government.

We have long maintained that the state-appointed senators were the guardians of the Tenth Amendment. But sadly, those state-appointed senators disappeared when the wrong-headed 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913. From then on, senators were elected by a popular vote rather than than being selected by the desires of the state leadership. The difference became that we now have political party senators instead of state-appointed senators.

That change set forces in motion that, over time, gained enough power to vandalize our republic. All presidential appointments, all nominations for the judiciary, all treaties, and all legislation must receive Senate approval. Party politics had become more important than our Constitution with the new amendment. Because of this, we now have SCOTUS justices who ignore the Tenth Amendment, despite their swearing an oath to our laws and our Constitution.  

The 17th Amendment was a massive strike against our republican form of government.

There remains one substantial element of our Republican form of government, and that is the Electoral College. It was designed to have our States decide who was to serve as president rather than by the popular vote. This, too, was to avoid the power of the mob. The leftist masses in control today have their sights set on eliminating the Electoral College and the Constitution.  

If we lose the Electoral College, it will empower the SWAMP, which is composed of the current government bureaus across the nation, the politicians, attorneys, educators, and other services” that have prospered with the incredible growth of our government, to become more powerful.  

When doing the research for the senior author’s book, The Real Constitution and its real enemies.” We found a quote by Richard Hofstadter that best describes the designs of the men who wrote our Constitution:

“The men who drew up the Constitution in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 had a vivid Calvinistic sense of human evil and damnation and believed with Hobbes that men are selfish and contentious. They [the delegates] were men of affairs, merchants, lawyers, planter-businessmen, speculators, and investors. Having seen human nature on display in the marketplace, the courtroom, the legislative chamber, and every secret path and alleyway where wealth and power are courted, they felt they knew it in all its frailty. To them, a human being was an atom of self-interest. They did not believe in man, but they did believe in the power of a good political Constitution to guide him.”

So that brings us to the bottom line: the Founding Fathers designed a republic that makes it difficult to change and difficult for corruption to take hold. But, as their government takes on more features of a democracy and submits itself to the power of the mob, it encourages change and corruption with it. 

Note: Steven Maikoski is an essayist and author of the book, The Real Constitution: and its real enemies.

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Steven Maikoski is an essayist and author of the book, The Real Constitution: and its real enemies.

Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute.

 

Proposition 12, the Constitution, and Good Government

Gary M. Galles Gary M. Galles  – October 25, 2022 @ American Institute for Economic Research

our years ago, California voters approved Proposition 12, in which a “yes” vote was promoted to “establish minimum space requirements based on square feet for calves raised for veal, breeding pigs, and egg-laying hens and to ban the sale of (a) veal from calves, (b) pork from breeding pigs, and (c) eggs from hens when the animals are confined to areas below minimum square-feet requirements.”

That proposition has been challenged, however, as unconstitutional on the basis of something missing from that proposition, namely, where it would apply. A California state law would have to apply to those industries nationwide, for producers who wish to sell anything to California consumers. And the Supreme Court has agreed to hear that challenge, based on what is called the “Dormant Commerce Clause” (because it gives exclusive jurisdiction over interstate commerce to the federal government, which excludes state interference with such commerce, even if no federal law has been passed on a topic). Oral arguments in National Pork Producers Council v Karen Ross will take place October 11.

It is important to note that there would be no federal constitutional violation if the proposition applied solely to producers of those products located in California, as one might well have expected was the case, given the lack of attention to that detail in the “yes” campaign. But California does not have the right to legislate for producers located in other states, which almost all of them are. 

While the state comprises a substantial proportion of the U.S. market for pork, California imports 99.87 percent of its pork. That would mean Proposition 12 would have virtually no effect on the California producers they have legitimate jurisdiction over, and a massive effect on producers nationwide, over whom it has no legitimate jurisdiction. Very few of those producers meet the standards promulgated, which have cost those producers around $300 million. Because pork production and distribution is highly integrated, and California is a major market, the effects would extend to virtually every pork product sold everywhere in the country. The state would even send California Department of Food and Agriculture agents throughout the country to enforce those regulations. Further, 15 other states opposed Proposition 12 as a violation of their sovereignty.

It is hard to think of a more blatant violation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause’s denial of state power over interstate commerce. That is why Elizabeth B. Prologar, the Solicitor General of the United States, “has come down on the side of the Interstate Commerce Clause and the pork producers.” That clause arose from many state regulations that had burdened interstate commerce under the Articles of Confederation, abuses which led to a call to the Constitutional Convention. Further, overturning state restrictions on interstate commerce (following the traditional meaning of regulate as “to make regular” or “to remove impediments”) were the sole applications of the Commerce Clause for America’s first century. And given the very tenuous bases under which the Supreme Court has invoked the Commerce Clause as a source of federal supremacy in the past, such as in Wickard v. Filburn, any sort of judicial consistency would put Proposition 12 well outside constitutional limits.

The Federalist Papers also support this interpretation. Federalist 11 describes the proposed federal power as a “prohibitory regulation, extending… throughout the states.” Federalist 42 describes its purpose as “the relief of the States…from the improper contributions levied on them by [other states].” Further, in 1785, a committee headed by James Monroe recommended amending the Articles of Confederation to give Congress “sole and exclusive” power to regulate commerce. James Madison in his Journal made clear that nationwide regulations on commerce (which Proposition 12 would impose) were a power solely granted to Congress.

Proposition 12 not only oversteps California’s regulatory powers under the U.S. Constitution, it also violates the political principle that those who will be forced to abide by laws should have a voice in them. Pork producers, as well as related producers and workers, in every other state would be forced to abide by laws that they had no say in, because a majority of voters in California, where its burdens would be virtually insignificant, approved forcing others to pay the price to give them what they want. What it most brings to mind is its inconsistency with an important phrase that played a big role in the creation of America: “No taxation [or regulation] without representation.”

Gary M. Galles

Gary M. Galles

Dr. Gary Galles is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine.

His research focuses on public finance, public choice, the theory of the firm, the organization of industry and the role of liberty including the views of many classical liberals and America’s founders­.

His books include Pathways to Policy Failure, Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies, Apostle of Peace, and Lines of Liberty.

Books by Gary Galles