Pyramids Are Naturally Upside-Down

Originally Written on December 29^th, 2014

Edited and Expanded on December 3^rd, 2015

Title Borrowed from Andrew Napolitano

Thanks to the 1942 U.S. Supreme Court case Wickard v. Filburn, private intrastate non-commerce is now regarded as public interstate commerce. You read that correctly; if you refuse to sell your property, keep it on your own land, and you don’t move it into another state, that is legally the same as going into another state in order to sell your property.

Thanks to the 1964 case Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, private intrastate commerce is regarded as interstate commerce affecting the public. You read that correctly; if you set up a business in one state, and you don’t set up any branches in any other states, you are engaged in interstate commerce, because you might serve people from out-of-state. Actually, you might even be required to do so. Additionally, as a result of that case, the distinction between what is public property versus what is private property is blurred and virtually non-existent.

Thanks to the 2005 case Kelo v. City of New London, private “economic development” projects satisfy the Public Use Clause of the Fifth Amendment. You read that correctly; not only has the Supreme Court long since rendered moot the issue of whether you are allowed to refuse government “offers” to buy your property and compensate you for it; now the government can use Eminent Domain to transfer your private property – your home or business – to another private owner, and pay you whatever it damn well pleases.

Thanks to the 2012 case National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius (the Obamacare case), non-commerce is commerce. You read that correctly; refraining to engage in commerce (in this case, to purchase health insurance) is engaging in commerce. Also, a penalty is now regarded as a tax; the government can fine you a “tax” upon the zero-dollar “transaction” of not buying a health insurance policy. Not only has the Supreme Court long since abandoned the idea that a tax on a good must be modest, and not levied in egregious disproportion to the original value of the good; it now says that an infinity-percent “tax” can be levied upon something that does not even exist?

How long can a civil society survive, when it believes that “public” means “private”, “in-state” means “between states”, not buying something is commerce, and taking someone’s money because they did nothing, is a “tax”, rather than a fine, a penalty, or pure and simple theft?

How long can a civil society survive believing that words have no meaning, or that two plus two equals five?

Cue calliope music.

Questions About the Roads, Eminent Domain, and Citizenship

Written on September 10th, 2011

   Say a person is a sovereign individual, and not a citizen of the U.S.. Say he doesn't have a driver's license, and is operating a vehicle that he purchased himself. Say he is driving on a public road, and is not harming anyone (say he cannot be punished unless he harms another person and/or damages their property).

   Say a police officer pulls him over. Does the sovereign individual have the right to resist arrest? Does the fact that he is using roadways which were paid for by the public mean that he must submit to the officer, being that he is taking advantage of government-provided services without contributing to their funding? Should he be obligated to pay road tolls?

   Through the Takings Clause and eminent domain, the government has authority to purchase private property for use and collective ownership by the public. But what are "public" roads anyway; is "public" use only intended for citizens? Why has the notion of "the commons" been abstracted from the notion of the "public"? How can we ensure that citizens and non-citizens alike have free access to the same roads?

   Is the solution to privatize the roads, i.e., by having the government sell off the roads to those who would bid to purchase them? Would the profit incentive which results from such private ownership cause quality to decrease (i.e., poor maintenance of roads)? Would the quality of the roads decrease any more than it has under government management, being that there is an incentive to profit because citizens do not want their tax money tied to failing enterprises which lose money?

   Rather than to privatize the roads (i.e., have the government sell the roads to companies or other private entities which have exclusive, monopolistic right to supervise who uses them), is the solution instead to allow free competition (free competition being antithetical to monopoly, rather than its inevitable result, as so many are apt to claim)?

   How may such free competition arise, while ensuring that citizens and non-citizens alike have free access to the same roads? Should the government only sell the roads to enterprises which agree to allow universal access to them, and also to fairly compete with other road-building, road-maintenance, and road-supervision agencies?

   Do the users of roads have enough vital interest in the relative safety and fiscal responsibility of such agencies as compared to one another to ensure that (through contribution) the agency which has proven itself most capable of being both safe and fiscally responsible is also the agency which builds, maintains, and supervises more sections of American roadways than its competitors?

For more entries on Fifth Amendment property takings, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/private-beachfront-property-takings.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/slavery-civil-war-and-fifth-amendment.html

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/municipal-services-fifth-amendment-and.html

For more entries on transportation, transit, travel, and the automobile industry, please visit:

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/sovereignty-and-secrecy-freedoms-of.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/spencer-stuart-recruited-executives-for.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/economic-policy-for-2012-us-house.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-transportation-security.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/identification-and-travel-documents.html

Slavery, the Civil War, and the Fifth Amendment

Originally written in October 2010,

Re-published 1-5-2014

At the beginning of the Civil War, the taking of slaves had been outlawed in the United States for about half a century. Ongoing possession of slaves, however, had not yet been outlawed.

In the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant's Union military forces fought a seceding Confederate army formed by the several Southern states. States may secede either when a majority of the states consent, or unilaterally through revolution.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation executive orders of 1862-1863 freed slaves in the Southern states. This amounts to ineffectual action, since the law ostensibly affected territories which were not under the control of Lincoln's Union government. Many neglect to mention that slavery still existed in the North even after the proclamation.

The Civil War lasted four years and resulted in over 640,000 deaths, the majority of which were on the Union side.

This begs the question: Could the Civil War and the resulting deaths have been prevented, and if so, could they have been prevented through action which was completely legal?

Considering that slaves were still legally the private property of their owners as of the beginning of the war, the North could have reimbursed slave owners on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line for the market value of their slaves. In fact, if, before the war had broken out, the United States had resolved to end slavery only through legal means, they would have acknowledged that this meant they were constitutionally obligated to do just that, and would have preceded with this legal route to abolition.

The North didn't seek this legal route because it was envious of how much wealth the South stood to generate thanks to the capital it possessed in the form of slaves and plantations. The North also would have had to pay an additional 50% tariff on all goods coming from the South as a foreign country. The Union knew it had the military might necessary to accomplish Southern slavery abolition through force, and the apportioned taxes it levied stood to disproportionately under-favor the South due to the three-fifths clause.

During the Civil War, a slave was defined as three-fifths of a person, and thus not entitled as a full person to due process or just compensation for the taking of his liberty or property, i.e.; his status as an unpaid, coerced laborer was constitutionally justified.

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that “no person shall… be deprived of… property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The Fifth Amendment certainly applies to this case because these slaves were "private property... taken for public use". First, the slaves were, indisputably, privately-owned property possessed by their white plantation-owner masters. Second, slaves were taken for public use, as evidenced by the many cases in which black children have been taken from their families by social services and made into practically orphaned wards of the state, as well as the obvious example of all the coerced prison labor performed by black inmates (whom are disproportionately jailed) throughout the history of this country.

Whatever your view of secessionism and states' rights, it seems that both the Union and the Confederacy had in mind the same goal: to own blacks as property, be it publicly or privately, in order to generate wealth for those who possess them.

For more entries on civil rights, slavery, segregation, and discrimination, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/06/title-ii-of-civil-rights-act-of-1964.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2012/02/barry-goldwater-and-conservative.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2013/11/response-to-exposing-racist-history-of.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-role-of-aswpl-and-christian.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-cherokee-freedmen-controversy.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/02/zionism-images.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/on-civil-rights-and-jim-crow-laws.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/social-policies-for-2012-us-house.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/bundy-cows-better-off-as-slaves.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/sen-cliven-bundy-harry-reid-owes-feds.html

For more entries on Fifth Amendment property takings, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/private-beachfront-property-takings.html

http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/questions-about-roads-eminent-domain.html

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/municipal-services-fifth-amendment-and.html