The DisUnited States of America and the State Sovereignty Movement.

There is a growing state-level resistance to the federal government.

Tennesse Governor Phil Bredesen signed House Joint Resolution 108 (HJR0108), authored by State Representative Susan Lynn urging "Congress to recognize Tennessee's sovereignty under the tenth amendment to the Constitution."

Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Louisiana have had both houses of their legislature pass similar resolutions - but Tennessee is the first to have had such a resolution signed by the Governor.

Similar 10th Amendment resolutions have been introduced in 36 states around the country, and various states are considering single-issue legislation in direct contravention to federal laws.

Arizona, for example, passed a measure for public approval on the 2010 state ballot that would give Arizona voters the opportunity to nullify, or opt out, of any potential national health care legislation.

Here is the final version of the Tennessee resolution:

WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment to the Consttution of the United States reads as follows: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"; and

WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and

WHEREAS, the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and

WHEREAS, today, in 2009, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government; and

Whereas, the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE, THE SENATE

CONCURRING, that we hereby affirm Tennessee's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that a committee of conference and correspondence be appointed by the Speaker of the House and of the Senate, which shall have as its charge to communicate the preceding resolution to the legislatures of the several states, to assure them that this State continues in the same esteem of their friendship and to call for a joint working group between the states to enumerate the abuses of authority by the federal government and to seek repeal of the assumption of powers and the imposed mandates.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that a certified copy of this resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker and the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives, and to each member of Tennessee's Congressional delegation.

As at the time of this post, 42 out of the 50 states have introduced, are introducing, or have passed individual state sovereignty resolutions under the tenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Should Washington D.C., Resident's Move To Iraq?

What the heck is the Cantankerous one talking about now? Well I think that you might find the following statistics to be interesting.

Over the past 22 months there have been 2,112 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.

Considering that during that same time period there have been an average of 160,000 troops on the ground, the firearm death rate works out to be 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

Meanwhile back in Washington DC, the firearm death rate was 81 per 100,000 residents for the same time period.

The bottom-line is that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in Washington than you would be in Iraq!

Interesting when you consider that Washington has some of the strictest gun control laws in the U.S.

Premier McGuinty should be Ashamed of Himself ... but then again He's a Politician!

Here we go again ... another government scandal .... another cabinet shuffle ... some more platitudinal damage control .... some more media frenzy ... and after the passage of time all of this is forgotten and life goes on at the public trough for the "porkers" at Queen's Park.

There's no point in re-hashing or re-analyzing the misadventures of now former Health Minister David Caplan, who can be likened to a man riding backward in a carriage, never seeing a thing until it has passed him by.

It is more than fair to say that he is a man of dubious judgement who presided over a ministry run amok with unconscionable indulgence during a time of historic economic turbulence in our country.

On his watch at least $16 million dollars were doled-out in untendered eHealth contracts. And let's not forget that under his watch David Caplan presided over the insider wins fiasco at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation.

What was Dalton McGuinty thinking when he appointed Mr. Caplan as Health Minister?

My problem in all of this is not David Caplan for he delivered just about what you would expect from an incompetant minister. My problem is with Dalton McGuinty himself.

In politics there is one simple rule .... it isn't whether you win or lose but how you place the blame and Mr. McGuinty fired the first salvo in the "blame game" by stating that this is not a "new problem" but something which stretches back 10 years to the the time when the Conservatives were running the Province. Interesting comment.

Let's assume that what Mr. McGuinty says is true. The Liberals came to power in 2003 so by logical extension Dalton McGuinty has had 6 years to clean-up what he himself acknowledges to be an untoward system.

What has he done other than a "song and dance" as Mr. Caplan fell on his own sword. I can not help but to call into question Mr. McGuinty's character and decision making capabilities in light of the current fiasco and all of his broken promises since being elected.

Mr. McGuinty should be ashamed of himself, but then again he's a politician, a profession which tends to ruin one's character!

By the way, this past summer, Mr. McGuinty stated that the buck stopped with him for shoddy oversight.

Well Dalton, apparently the buck didn't stop with you, it simply found its way into the pockets of consultants.

Common Sense - Rest In Peace

The following is an Obituary that was printed in the London Times ..... sadly rather true!

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

Knowing when to come out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn't always fair; and maybe it was my fault.

Common sense lived by simple, sound financial policies of don't spend more than you can earn and reliable strategies such as adults, not children, are in charge.

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

Common Sense declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an Aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a women failed to grasp the concept that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, his wife, Discretion, his daughter, Responsibility and his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;

I Know My Rights

I Want It Now

Someone Else Is To Blame

I'm A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized that he was gone. If you still remember him, tell your friends about Common Sense. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

How's This as a Stimulation Package?

Like the rest of you I have been closely following the Obama Team's proposed solutions for America's economic woes. And like many of you I'm not so sure that the Stimulous Package will accomplish President Obama's goals.

If the Cantankerous Conservative was the President of the United States, here is what my stimulous package would look like:

(1) I would take all 1000+ pages of the current package and recycle them into something more useful.

(2) I would suspend ALL Federal personal income taxes for the next 12 months ... period ... end of story.

(3) For those folks who do not pay Federal personal income taxes I would give them a subsidy from the TARP funds. Better that Main street receives a bailout than the psychopaths in suits that slither around on Wall Street.

(4) Suspending all personal taxes would cost the same trillion dollars as the stimulous package is going to cost.

(5) The government would save boatloads of cash by not having to hire teams of bureaucrats to monitor and ensure that bailout funds are not spent on pork, earmarks or find their way into the pockets of those who seem to always profit from a crisis. Is this transparency or what?

(6) The government would not have to go to the Fed and Treasury to crank up the presses to print money which America does not have and which will only devalue the greenback and contribute to inflation.

(7) The interest which the government would save on borrowing an additional trillion dollars to float President Obama's Stimulous Package could be directed right back into infrastructure and job creation projects.

(8) Best of all .... every American will now have some serious cash which will then be injected into the economy in one form or another.

Is this all too simple? Sometimes simple is all that you need!

PS: My stimulation package is less than one page in length.

Oh Oh Canada!

Bank of Canada governor Mike Carney feels that Canada's "economy is in good shape to weather a global recession." Well, let's look at some of the facts!

• Canada's S&P/TSX composite has tumbled 22% since June, and in the U.S. the DOW has been falling for a year declining more than 25% so far.
• Ordinary Canadian's rely heavily on the spending of ordinary American's to prop up our economy, with 76% of Canada's exports flowing to the U.S. in 2007.
• Every 1% decline in cross-border trade with the U.S. pulls about $3.5 billion out of Canada's economy. Spending by Americans declined this summer - the first time that has happened since 1991.
• Already manufacturers in Ontario and Quebec are hurting from the slowdown.
• Forestry firms in the West are hurting from the slowdown.
• Economists Douglas Porter at BMO Nesbitt Burns and Benjamin Tal at CIBC World Markets have warned seperately that a deep U.S. recession will drag down Canadian real estate prices.
• Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University, in a note to his clients this past Monday, stated that "we are in a generalized panic mode, and back to the risk of a systematic meltdown of the entire financial system."
• Already banks around the world have written off more than US$350 billion in bad loans and Roubini projects that number could rise as high as US$1.5 trillion.
• Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital in Connecticut predicts that the current financial crisis will be worse than anything we've faced in our lifetimes. He describes a depression so severe that it would forge a "new economic order", with sharply higher interest rates, a weaker American dollar, surging prices and shortages of consumer basics.
• Canada's GDP will shrink at a 0.4% annualized pace this quarter compared to a July prediction of 1.8% growth. There is very little or absolutely no expansion predicted in the first quarter of 2009.
• In Toronto, at 10:42am on Oct 23/08 the Canadian dollar weakened to C$1.257U.S. Earlier the currency dropped as much as 1.6%.
• Falling prices for crude oil.
• Tighter consumer lending.
• The gap between the yield on 1 month commercial paper and BOC's key rate was 55 basis points on Oct 22/08 down from a peak of 78 basis points on Oct 03/08.
• BOC's projection for 2009 consumer spending growth has been revised from 2.3% (July/08 forecast) to 1.5%.
• Business investment will decline 0.2% next year instead of growing 0.5% as predicted in July/08.
• Total inflation increased 3.3% in Sept./08 from a year earlier.
• The inflation rate was 3.5% in August/08, the fastest in more than 5 years.

Don't automatically drink the Bank of Canada's and Ottawa's Kool-Aid! Become informed ...get the real story yourself and then take whatever action you can to protect yourselves and your families as best you can!

Pay particular attention to the so called "Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Deathstar." There is a wealth of good information available on this impending financial Armageddon.

Bank of Canada Babble.

This past Tuesday, Bank of Canada governor Mike Carney, made the statement that "the economy is in good shape to weather a global recession, although growth will be anemic for the next six months."

What a breathtaking statement to make, when in fact a steadily increasing number of the world's most knowledgeable financial analysts and economists are making a solid case for a total world-wide economic meltdown and collapse. This is a far cry from a recession!

What insight, based on the present and anticipated continuing future financial crises, does Mr. Carney have that would lead him to be speaking in terms of a recession rather than a full-blown depression?

I would argue that Canada's economy will not be strong enough to weather the coming "perfect financial storm." I will address this in my next series of posts.

Perhaps Mr. Carney would care to let us know just how Canada will survive the anticipated imminent implosion of what, in investment circles, is now being dubbed as "The Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Deathstar" which when it blows, its toxicity will send every major economy into the abyss.

By the way, prior to Mr. Carney's appointment, he had a 13 year career with Goldman Sachs (remember them) eventually becoming a Managing Director of the firm.

I, for one, am not drinking any of Mr. Carney's Kool-Aid anytime soon!