Hamilton and I agree on constitutional General Welfare

One of my favorite parts of a discussion with a GOP-ER is when her or she starts quoting the Federalist Papers, as if selected quotes were and are evidence of some constitutional intention of some Founding Father (s) ~ not true, I must tell them. 

In fact, the Federalist Papers were and are advertising for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and their irrelevancy went into effect the minute the Constitution was signed and President George Washington, with a stronger assist from Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton than most people know, took up their positions in the Executive Branch of the newly formed government.

It is a bit of information that usually leaves them speechless.

But, it is the discovery of the Codification of the General Welfare in the Constitution by Hamilton, under Washington's watchful eye, that really irritates them to no end while, at the same time, making voting a straight Democratic ticket in November a no-brainer for me.

I totally and completely support the constitution Common Good!

The General Welfare Clause is mentioned twice in the U.S. Constitution: First, in the preamble and second, in the Article 1, Section 8.

The preamble reads: 

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Article 1, Section 8 reads: 

The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. . .

(Please note in the preamble the word promote is used but in the Article/Section the word provide is used. I got caught up on that once in a discussion where the argument against mine — was that, based on the preamble, promoting was not providing and I accepted that argument without checking on it but ~ then I checked and I was correct, the Constitution provides for the General Welfare.)

Most of us know there was plenty of debate about every word in the Constitution and that we can all find as many Founding Fathers quotes as we’d like to bolster our own arguments from one side to the other just as they debated the issues from one side to another in their own time, but I believe there is a fairly straight line from the references of the General Welfare to settled law that demonstrates the law has been and can be interpreted broadly.

That line goes from the Constitution to its first implementer, the revered former President George Washington, whose right-hand man, Alexander Hamilton, was quite clear on his broad interpretation of the term without objection from his  (our) President, to the Supreme Court re U.S. vs. Butler when Justice Joseph Story supported a Hamiltonian reading of the clause on which the majority relied.

For Hamilton (also a big free market guy), no constitutional amendment was necessary to justify federal spending beyond these powers, provided that the funds were appropriated on behalf of the general welfare of the people, rather than the particular interests of a state or section.

In a report on manufactures, advocating for their encouragement (e.g. by bounties paid from surplus revenues amassed by tariff duties  —  His argument was based on the doctrine of “implied powers” in the Constitution, and on the application that Congress may do anything that can be made, through the medium of money, to subserve the “general welfare” of the United States  — doctrines that, through judicial interpretation, revolutionized the Constitution.

The decisions of the presidents who believed that a constitutional amendment was required to expand the scope of the general welfare clause (namely Thomas Jefferson, Madison, and James Monroe) to put nation building above political theory and constitutional interpretation in their sanctioning of federal funding of certain public works projects ensured that Hamilton’s reading of the clause would prevail.

Hamilton was an interesting guy, he had personal flaws, for sure, but he believed deeply that the success of the country was as tied into the success of its People as a strong national government, a free market and a balance budget were.

He argued for a near-monarchy form of government but that’s okay, finding the middle for a new government was the challenge and no thoughts were off the table in the heated discussions leading to the writing of the U.S. Constitution.

He was also not known as a popular leader. When his passions were not involved he was known to be far-sighted and his judgment of men was excellent. But as Hamilton himself once said, his heart was ever the master of his judgment.

Nonetheless, Washington’s confidence in his ability and integrity is considered to be most significant. Chief Justice Marshall ranked him second to Washington alone. No judgment is more justly measured than Madison’s (in 1831): That he possessed intellectual powers of the first order, and the moral qualities of integrity and honor in a captivating degree, has been awarded him by a suffrage now universal. If his theory of government deviated from the republican standard he had the candor to avow it, and the greater merit of cooperating faithfully in maturing and supporting a system which was not his choice.

Born a British subject in the West Indies, his mother was forbidden remarriage following a divorce, his father’s business went broke, his mother died, he was left in the care of relatives, began working at the age of 12 and was largely self-taught. In 1772, friends made it possible for him to go to New York to complete his education. His studies were interrupted by the War of American Independence and a visit to Boston confirmed he should cast in his fortunes with the colonists, to our benefit.

In 1774-1775 he wrote two influential anonymous pamphlets which were attributed to John Jay and ranked high among the political arguments of the time. He won the interest of Washington by the bravery he displayed, joined Washington’s staff in March 1777 with the rank of Lt. Col. and served as his private secretary and confidential aide.

In 1780 he married Elizabeth Schuyler and became allied with one of the most distinguished families in New York, beginning the political efforts upon which his fame principally rests. In letters of 1779-1780 he correctly diagnosed the ills of the Confederation, suggesting with admirable prescience the necessity of centralization in its governmental powers; he was, indeed, one of the first to suggest adequate checks on the anarchic tendencies of the time. After a frustrating year in Congress in 1782-1783 he settled down to legal practice.

The call for the Annapolis Convention (1786) was Hamilton’s opportunity. A delegate from New York, he supported James Madison in inducing the Convention to exceed its delegated powers and summon the Federal Convention of 1787 at Philadelphia (himself drafting the call); he secured a place on the New York delegation; and, when his anti-Federal colleagues withdrew from the Convention, he used his great talents to secure the adoption of the Constitution and he signed the Constitution for his state.

Sheer will and reasoning could hardly be more brilliantly and effectively exhibited than they were by Hamilton in the New York convention of 1788, whose vote he won, against the greatest odds, for the ratification of the Constitution. It was the judgment of Chancellor James Kent, the justice of which can hardly be disputed, that all the documentary proof and the current observation of the time lead us to the conclusion that he surpassed all his contemporaries in his exertions to create, recommend, adopt and defend the Constitution of the United States.

When the new government was inaugurated, Hamilton became Secretary Treasury in Washington’s cabinet. Congress immediately referred to him a press of queries and problems, and there came from his pen a succession of papers that have left the strongest imprint on the administrative organization of the national government — two reports on public credit, upholding an ideal of national honor higher than the prevalent popular principles; a report on manufactures, advocating their encouragement (e.g. by bounties paid from surplus revenues amassed by tariff duties) — a famous report that has served ever since as a storehouse of arguments for a national protective policy; a report favoring the establishment of a national bank, the argument being based on the doctrine of “implied powers” in the Constitution and, finally, a vast mass of detailed work by which order and efficiency were given to the national finances.

The success of his financial measures was immediate.They did not, as is often but loosely said, create economic prosperity; but they did prop it, in an all-important field, with order, hope and confidence. His ultimate purpose was always the strengthening of the union.

His activity in the cabinet was by no means confined to the finances. He regarded himself, apparently, as premier, and sometimes overstepped the limits of his office in interfering with other departments. The heterogeneous character of the duties placed upon his department by Congress seemed in fact to reflect the English idea of its primacy. Hamilton’s influence was in fact predominant with Washington (so far as any man could have predominant influence.)

On the 31st of January 1795 Hamilton resigned his position as secretary of the treasury and returned to the practice of law in New York, leaving it for public service only in 1798-1800, when he was the active head, under Washington (who insisted that Hamilton should be second only to himself), of the army organized for war against France. But though in private life he remained the continual and chief adviser of Washington — notably in the serious crisis of the Jay Treaty, of which Hamilton approved. Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) was written for him by Hamilton.

No emphasis, however strong, upon the mere consecutive personal successes of Hamilton’s life is sufficient to show the measure of his importance in American history. That importance lies, to a large extent, in the political ideas for which he stood. His mind was eminently “legal.” He was the unrivalled controversialist of the time. His writings, which are distinguished by clarity, vigour and rigid reasoning, rather than by any show of scholarship — in the extent of which, however solid in character Hamilton’s might have been, he was surpassed by several of his contemporaries — are in general strikingly empirical in basis.

He drew his theories from his experiences of the Revolutionary period, and he modified them hardly at all through life. In his earliest pamphlets (1774-1775) he started out with the ordinary pre-Revolutionary Whig doctrines of natural rights and liberty; but the first experience of semi-anarchic states’-rights and individualism ended his fervor for ideas so essentially alien to his practical, logical mind, and they have no place in his later writings. The feeble inadequacy of conception, infirmity of power, factional jealousy, disintegrating particularism, and vicious finance of the Confederation were realized by many others; but none other saw so clearly the concrete nationalistic remedies for these concrete ills, or pursued remedial ends so constantly, so ably, and so consistently.

An immigrant, Hamilton had no ties; he was by instinct a continentalist or federalist. He wanted a strong union and energetic government that should rest as much as possible on the shoulders of the people and as little as possible on those of the state legislatures; that should have the support of wealth and class; and that should curb the states to such an “entire subordination” as nowise to be hindered by those bodies.

At these ends he aimed with extraordinary skill in all his financial measures. As early as 1776 he urged the direct collection of federal taxes by federal agents. From 1779 onward we trace the idea of supporting government by the interest of the propertied classes; from 1781 onward the idea that a not-excessive public debt would be a blessing in giving cohesiveness to the union: hence his device by which the federal government, assuming the war debts of the states, secured greater resources, based itself on a high ideal of nationalism, strengthened its hold on the individual citizen, and gained the support of property. In his report on manufactures his chief avowed motive was to strengthen the union. 

To the same end he conceived the constitutional doctrines of liberal construction, implied powers” and the general welfare, which were later embodied in the decisions of John Marshall. The idea of nationalism pervaded and quickened all his life and works. With one great exception, the dictum of Guizot is hardly an exaggeration, that “there is not in the Constitution of the United States an element of order, of force, of duration, which he did not powerfully contribute to introduce into it and to cause to predominate.”

The personal is political.

G.


(* All information used here, mixed with my personal commentary, is, to my knowledge, gleaned from sources that allow the free use of their historical materials. Any primary sources utillized are noted below except for the Supremacy Clause link, that is purely informational.)

Michael R. Adamson, “Review of Theodore Sky, To Provide for the General Welfare: A History of the Federal Spending Power.” EH.Net Economic History Services, Jan 14 2005. URL: http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/0887

And, from NNDB, "tracking the entire world":

http://www.nndb.com/people/183/000022117/

As always, in case of any missed attributions please contact me and I will rectify that immediately...

Taking Poetic License: The King (Scott Walker) Is Dead But The Queen (Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz) Is Alive

^^^ Two top Democrats: This morning Secretary Kerry is testifying before the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign operations to discuss the State Department's budget. 

According to Politico, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz invoked strong language Wednesday to attack Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on women’s issues, saying the Republican “has given women the back of his hand.”

“Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality,” Wasserman Schultz said at a round-table discussion in Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Florida Democratic representative continued, extending her comments to the GOP.

“What Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back. It is not going to happen on our watch,” Wasserman Schultz said.

According to the paper, Wasserman Schultz also criticized Walker for his stance on the minimum wage and abortion restrictions….

When I first heard that I laughed out loud and then the lyrics to one of my favorite Pink songs, The Kind Is Dead But The Queen Is Alive, ran through me head:

Rah rah rah,
Sis boom fuckin' blah
There's a party in your honour, but you won't be there whatever...

And then, of course, as the GOP swarmed and distorted the truth of what she said, actually trying to turn the tables on her and make her look anti-women, she walked it back ~ sort of and said, according to her statement as reported in the Miami Herald:

"I shouldn’t have used the words I used. But that shouldn't detract from the broader point that I was making that Scott Walker’s policies have been bad for Wisconsin women, whether it's mandating ultrasounds, repealing an equal pay law, or rejecting federal funding for preventative health care, Walker's record speaks for itself.  As for the issue of domestic violence, it's unacceptable that a majority of Congressional Republicans opposed this critical legislation, of which I was a proud cosponsor, after blocking its reauthorization for more than a year.”

I am not upset at the Congresswoman for her decision to re-assess the language she used, in fact, I suspect her strategy to take the ability of a GOP that can dish it out but can’t take it is exactly why she is a successful Congresswoman and the Chair of the DNC and I am not ~ she’s a smart woman.

I first saw the Congresswoman in a 2010 clip of a Fort Lauderdale, Florida Town Hall where she was talking to an audience filled with rabid GOP-ERS flipped out over the Affordable Health Care Act.

One rabid audience member, and I’m going on memory here, stood up and made some wild accusation about her being in favor of the Act because of her own cancer. She handled it calmly and professionally. She also peaked my curiosity so I Googled her.

I found out that the Congresswoman had BRCA1 and BRCA2 issues that put her at an increased risk for breast and ovarian cancers.  As a result, she had gone through a year of procedures, treatments and recovery AND she had hardly missed a day’s work for us while doing so.

I have been an admirer of her and her work ever since.

But, let’s not get caught up in the venomous party politics of the GOP ~ let’s be more constructive than and let’s take our lead from the Congresswoman and take a look at the broader point that she was making which really was, as I interpret it, a call out to women and those who love women to vote the entire GOP Neanderthal Party out of office in November based on their real #waronwomen policies.

Fortunately for you and me PoliticusUSA developed a  list of legislation to prove that the GOP war on women is real:

Conservatives like to pretend there is no war on women, so PoliticusUSA developed a running list of legislation to prove that there is indeed a war on women. The proof is in the policy, and policy trumps words.

Included in Hrafnkell Haraldsson’s monthly updates to the “Dirty Thirty”  (a list of egregious legislation proposed or passed) is a surreal list of legislation that proves the war on women is very real…

Let’s give a shout out to one of my personal favorites first ~ the GOP effort to nullify a woman’s constitutional right to privacy because party members cannot stand the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision that said at least in the first trimester a woman’s private life is none of their business. There’s a good summary of that here.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the other areas of policy where the GOP is slowly working to disconnect the middle-class on down from any government services ~ disconnects that will hit women the hardest. 

We can support the Congresswoman and give Walker and his ilk the back of our hand by hearing her message and by voting accordingly.

Don't forget:

G.

There is so much more information to be found on the GOP #waronwomen ~ Here are a couple more links to some of my reading material if you'd like to know more:

http://www.nwlc.org/tags/ryan-budget

http://www.nwlc.org/resource/cutting-programs-low-income-people-especially-hurts-women-and-their-families

(Gratitude to http://copyranter.blogspot.com/2011/01/fascinating-anti-womens-suffrage-ad.html for the 1915 ad!)

End Of Month FAV Posts ~ Shareable And/Or Actionable:

For my End Of Month Fav Posts ~ Shareable And/Or Actionable I’m going to focus on women getting out to vote, specifically, in this case, single women getting out to vote, because I really cannot understand single Democratic women not pro-actively taking charge of ending the GOP #waronwomen, much of which is directed at them and/or their children, and, as an aside, I really, really cannot understand GOP women pro-actively voting Republican!

(FYI. It is your choice whether or not to take action and/or share the information provided with everyone you know with a call for them to encourage single moms to get out and vote Democrat in November!)

Having said all of that, based on my professional work with single moms and based on my knowledge of their needs re becoming active citizens on behalf of themselves, their children and their communities, I am particularly concerned about single women falling down on the job and not registering to vote and/or not voting Democrats in and Republicans out!

I am not going to get into the statistical weeds here to make the point that if more single women voted and voted in their own best interests they could end the GOP #waronwomen. Suffice it to say, based on fabulous research by The Voter Participation Center we know in 2012 more than 55 million unmarried women were eligible to vote and 31.4% of them were not registered to vote (17.3 million). It seems pretty clear to me that single women (which includes single moms!) have the power to provide the winning margin for Democrats in November IF they act.

^^^ This is what that looked like in 2010 and it hasn't changed much since then...

^^^ This is just plain a point of interest.

^^^ And this just gives you an idea of how much information is available to you via The Voter Participation Center study referenced above. 


I feel certain there are some who will be shaking their heads at my partisan nerve to imply that one political party (Democrat) is better than the other (Republican) for single women and their families (i.e., the nation) but if you understand the constitutional general welfare concept of this country then you understand that our Founding Fathers believed the health and welfare of the nation, including single moms and their children, to be so critical to the survival of the nation that they codified it in the United States Constitution and that is a value/principle Democrats subscribe to NOT Republicans.





^^^ The relevant snippet of Article 1 Section 8 of the United States Constitution.


As previously noted, the Republican Party does not agree with the Democratic Party's assessment of the General Welfare Clause so we've got what we've got and this is what the GOP is looking to add in 2014. The message could not be more clear ~ there really is a GOP #waronwomen:






^^^ In the event the chart is not clear enough, please click here ~ there is much more extensive information provided as well. 

(And I didn't even touch on how GOP voter suppression efforts are/will impacting women!)

Adding to consideration of their own benefit re voting women need to also consider the history of women who came before them to fight for the right of all women to vote as they wonder if  they should register to vote and/or vote or not. Women like Susan B. Anthony were arrested for voting November 5, 1872. History matters.

Once women decide they are a go, this link will provide the information needed to get it done.


Enough said.

G.

* (I believe credit for the voter of the GOP women hitting herself in the face can be attributed to If I'm wrong about that, please let me know and I will make the correction immediately. TY)