America's Most Seminal Years

By Rich Kozlovich 

First, many of the years before the 20th century were pivotal for the nation, especially the Civil War period and right after, because they were the foundational formative years creating a brand new nation that was unmistakably a grand republican experiment, with all the warts that go along with that.  Not a democracy, a republic.  Nothing like it ever occurred in human history before or since.  Not the Roman Republic, nor Greek Democracy, nor any other government.  American government was created from the bottom up, by the people, and for the people, so, rightly or wrongly, I'm bypassing those years and sticking to everything after the 19th century. 

If you ask people what year in American history was the most seminal in the 20th century you'll probably get a blank stare, and if they're college students there's no telling what kind of insanity they'll offer.  But some will choose dates that are meaningful, and most will get it wrong.  The correct answer is 1913!  Why?

In 1913 the federal government passed the 16th Amendment, income tax, the 17th Amendment, changing how Senators were chosen, and they created the FED.  Those actions are foundational to all the crises we're facing right now.   

The 16th Amendment created a system of legal extortion, and abuse by a thuggish out of control IRS, both of which grew massively over the years, and negatively impacting the nation's economy, and the 17th Amendment changed how senators were chosen.  Senators were supposed to be de facto ambassadors from the states to the central government representing the interests of their states, not the people, that was the job of the House of Representatives, which is why all tax bills must originate in the House.  The founders wanted Senators to be chosen by the state's governments to keep the central government from getting out of control, and we now see the consequences of both those Amendments.  

Both need repealed, and neither will be.  That leaves the FED which was created in 1913, and turned over to an unelected body control of the nation's economy.  Alexander W. Salter in his article, Why Fed Reform Could Be the Biggest Sleeper Issue of 2024 states:

The Fed’s institutional flaws and failures trashed its credibility. It’s time to rein in the central bank.

Quoting Joseph Sternberg he states:

“The next president will inherit a Federal Reserve staffed by economists — and their intellectual helpmates in academia — who still don’t fully understand what has happened over the past few years, let alone over the past few decades”...........

Salter goes on to say:

The Fed is a flawed institution at best, and a failed institution at worst. Sternberg suggests several reforms. While potentially helpful, none go far enough...........Sternberg laments Fed decision-makers’ “groupthink,” explained in part by the concentration of authority in the “Washington-based Board of Governors in thrall to the central bank’s research department.” The “Fed’s independence from the rest of the government” amplifies its irresponsibility. .... It “means politicians and voters can’t enforce accountability.” In other words, it’s a judge in its own cause. That’s unacceptable for anyone who cares about the rule of law.

Just like the IRS, out of control, and powers unto themselves.   

He then goes on to make suggestions for reform.  How about abolishment?  Also I don't agree with him on this issue of tariffs, and while tariffs can impact prices, they can also impact how governments act, like China.  And that's a part of the package all these economist refuse to understand.  One more thing.  If tariffs are so bad, then why do all these nations who decry American tariffs have them?  I'll tell you what, we'll come back to that.

Then came 1916, and Woodrow Wilson, America's first fascist President, was re-elected, a President who, just like Teddy Roosevelt, believed the Constitution was and impediment to human progress and became America's first fascist President "revolutionizing the way the federal government works creating the foundation for the modern administrative state."  We'll come back to that also. 

The next seminal year was 1928.  

Calvin Coolidge became President after Harding died.  He finished Harding's term and ran for his own in 1924.  Coolidge hated being President and refused to run in 1928 for his second term, and Hoover, who Coolidge thought was an idiot, was elected and whose failures led to FDR, the , and a massive expansion of Wilson's administrative state FDR called the New Deal, which wasn't new, nor was it a deal. 

Then Kennedy was elected via voter fraud in 1960, a failure as President, but who's assassination led to Johnson's Great Society programs which has been massively expensive and arguably a failure, all of which expanded government all the more.   This led to the 1968 election of Richard Nixon, who was one of the worst presidents to ever sit behind the Resolute Desk, with his passage of the The National Environmental Policy Act, the creation of the EPA, and a host of other abusive and economically suicidal regulations, but worst of all, was his opening China up to world trade, saving China from Mao's disastrous economy.  As a result China has thrived economically, and western civilization is now funding it's own demise. 

Everything else since then has been nothing more than variations of those themes, including Obama's election, until 2016 when Trump was elected, and he set things into motion that's rattled the entire political culture in America.  I'm not deliberately ignoring Reagan, but he was still facing a loyal opposition, Trump was, and is, facing a disloyal opposition called the Party of Treason, and 2024 may become the most seminal year of all in American history, and may be the end of America as we know it.

Supreme Court’s WOTUS ruling will shake things up across the board

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. June 23rd, 2023 44 Comments @ CFACT

Editor's Note:  As you can see this was published a little over a year ago, but in light of the SCOTUS ruling on the Chevron Doctrine, and Trump's almost sure election, I think it's a good idea to remind everyone why his efforts to dismantle the deep state and their corrupt and disgusting schemes they've employed to destroy Americans and the Constitution.  RK 

Last month’s landmark Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA not only narrowed the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate wetlands, but it will also have reverberations far beyond the Clean Water Act (CWA).

What began as an effort by Michael and Chantell Sackett to build their dream home on their 0.63-acre lot near Priest Lake in northern Idaho morphed into a 16-year legal battle that ended in a victory for the couple and a defeat for EPA when the High Court ruled that their property was not a wetland and thus not subject to EPA regulation under the 1972 CWA. But in decreeing that the only wetlands EPA could regulate were those with a “continuous surface flow” to a navigable water, such as a lake or river, the court rendered a judgment that will affect other federal environmental statutes as well.

Removing the need for many projects to obtain permits under Section 404 of the CWA, which governs dredge-and-fill discharges, will erase important triggers for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Endangered Species Act (ESA) reviews, according to George Glicksman, a law professor at George Washington University.

Effects on NEPA and the ESA

“The programs are intertwined in ways that aren’t immediately obvious,” he told Greenwire (June 15). As Greenwire explained:

“Both NEPA and the ESA require federal action to trigger a review, which in turn forces developers to consider their project’s effect on the environment and vulnerable species. Otherwise, a Section 404 forms this federal connection. But without a Clean Water Act permit, that federal nexus – in some cases – disappears.

Depending on the complexity of the project, NEPA, for example, can require either an environmental assessment or a much more comprehensive environmental impact statement (EIS). It can take years for federal officials to complete an EIS, prompting some developers to walk away from a proposed project out of sheer frustration. Before the Supreme Court’s May 25 ruling, an EIS, which included a project’s effect on a wetland with no continuous surface connection to a navigable body of water, prolonged the permitting process. With wetlands lacking that continuous surface connection no longer subject to CWA Section 404 permits, some environmental reviews will be shorter.

As it happens, the court’s ruling coincided with the enactment of a debt-ceiling agreement, which put time limits on the issuance of some federal permits. The result of both developments is less red tape.

Similarly, determining what constitutes a threatened or endangered plant or animal’s “critical habitat” under the ESA will become simpler in some cases because the types of wetlands subject to federal authority have been reduced.

By declaring the Sacketts’ bone-dry property a wetland, and then putting the couple through 16 years of litigation hell, EPA ultimately wound up diminishing its own authority under the CWA. As Professor Glicksman points out, the Supreme Court’s decision also affected two other environmental statutes. For decades, provisions of the CWA, NEPA, and ESA were skillfully used by regulators and special interest groups as a form of federal zoning to snuff out development not to their liking.

To be sure, the ESA is still a hopelessly cumbersome law with a terrible record of recovering vulnerable species. And NEPA still makes it difficult for the United States to carry out much-needed infrastructure projects. But the administrative regulatory state has been dealt a setback, and the country has moved a few steps closer to restoring the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Author

• Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

  Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.