“The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.” — Frederic Bastiat, The Law
In his treatise on the law Frederic Bastiat wrote:
“This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:
- 1. The few plunder the many.
- 2. Everybody plunders everybody.
- 3. Nobody plunders anybody.
- We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three.
WIBC News in Indiana reports that Planned Parenthood of Indiana returns to business as usual as a federal court ruling restores state funding:
“Planned Parenthood clinics in Indiana are back to business as usual, following Friday's court order requiring the state to honor its contracts with the group.
Two HIV specialists laid off last Tuesday after funding ran dry are back on the job. And Planned Parenthood has shelved plans to limit clinic hours, as it did last week.
"We had contingency plans going into this preliminary injunction request because we didn't know how we would fare," Planned Parenthood of Indiana president Betty Cockrum says. "Those will remain in place, and, happily, on the back burner."
Planned Parenthood sued to block a new state law banning state funding for groups which perform abortions. Federal Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled late Friday that federal Medicaid rules prohibit the state from picking and choosing among family-planning providers.
The agency which administers Medicaid had already advised Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration it couldn't restrict funding, but FSSA officials say without a court order, they would have no choice but to follow the law, even if it jeopardized some or all of the state's federal Medicaid dollars.
Attorney General Greg Zoeller contends Planned Parenthood had no right to go to court because the state has not yet exhausted its administrative appeals of the agency ruling. A spokesman says the state will appeal Pratt's ruling.
Cockrum says it's the first time all year Planned Parenthood has been able to pause for breath. The organization fought successfully against Sixth District Congressman Mike Pence's attempt to push a defunding law through Congress, then unsuccessfully against the parallel measure at the statehouse.”
According to a report in Yahoo News:
“This is a positive step in what likely will be a long legal battle," said Ken Falk, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. "We are encouraged by the judge's ruling, but know our work is not yet done."
Planned Parenthood said the judge's ruling noted that public interest "tilts in favor" of granting the injunction because federal officials threatened partial or total withdrawal of all Medicaid dollars to the state, a loss of as much as $5 million if the law was enforced.
"If dogma trumps pragmatism and neither side budges, Indiana's most vulnerable citizens could end up paying the price as the collateral damage of a partisan battle," the judge said in the opinion quoted by Planned Parenthood.”
This is yet another example where the law is being used to plunder the people of Indiana. The Indiana legislature, acting in behalf of the voters that elected them cut of state funding for Planned Parenthood’s abortion mills. Because of the coercive power of the law, acting on the basis of the loss of Medicaid funding, Federal Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled late Friday that federal Medicaid rules prohibit the state from picking and choosing among family-planning providers.
Planned Parenthood argues that these federal Medicaid dollars do not go to fund abortions, as the federal laws prohibits under the Hyde Amendment. But herein lays the issue of merging of federal and state dollars with private contributions, something called opportunity costs. Suppose I get $100 dollars from the federal government, $100 dollars from the state government and $200 dollars from private sources to run my business. I offer a selection of family planning and health care services allowed under the law, but my abortion services do not get enough from the private donors to support the number of abortions I offer. This means I would have to curtail the abortion part of my business by laying-off staff that does the abortions. So what do I do? Simple, I mix all of the dollars into one pot and subsidize my overhead with the federal and state dollars thus allowing my private funds to continue with the federal and state prohibited abortions and claim that no federal or state dollars are going for abortions. This is called opportunity costs. In essence I am running an abortion business with virtually no overhead by using the people’s money to run my business. This is also called plunder.
Federal Judge Tanya Walton Pratt just abused her power under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution and spit in the face of the Tenth Amendment by using the coercive power of federal dollars to enforce the tyranny of the federal government on the people of Indiana. The Tenth Amendment states:
“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 Article III, Section 2 states:
“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.”
Where is it stated in the Constitution that the federal government has the authority to intervene in an issue of state funding of a private business? In the past seven decades activists federal judges have been exerting more and more plunder on our lives, Bastiat warned us of this 160 years ago. Economist Walter Williams writes in his forward to the revised translation of Bastiat’s The Law:
If Bastiat were alive today, he would be disappointed with our failure to keep the law within its proper domain. Over the course of a century and a half, we have created more than 50,000 laws. Most of them permit the state to initiate violence against those who have not initiated violence against others. These laws range from anti-smoking laws for private establishments and Social Security “contributions” to licensure laws and minimum wage laws. In each case, the person who resolutely demands and defends his God-given right to be left alone can ultimately suffer death at the hands of our government Bastiat explains the call for laws that restrict peaceable, voluntary exchange and punish the desire to be left alone by saying that socialists want to play God. Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations. To them — the elite —“the relationship between persons and the legislator appears to be the same as the relationship between the clay and the potter.” And for people who have this vision, Bastiat displays the only anger I find in The Law when he lashes out at do-gooders and would-be rulers of mankind, “Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.”
The progressive left, who believe plunder in the name of the greater good, want to take total control of the federal judiciary system. They believe what they can’t accomplish though our democratic republican form of government they can bring about through the courts. Now they have the financial support of George Soros — the spooky dude — to do just that. Fox News reports that billionaire George Soros is trying to stack the courts:
“Billionaire George Soros spends tens of millions each year supporting a range of liberal social and political causes, from drug legalization to immigration reform to gay marriage to abolishing the death penalty.
But a less well-known Soros priority -- replacing elections for judges with selection-by-committee -- now has critics accusing him of trying to stack the courts.
Most non-federal judges around the country are selected by voters in elections. But some states use a process called “merit selection” in which a committee – often made up of lawyers – appoints judges to the bench instead.
Soros has spent several million dollars in the past decade in an attempt to get more states to scrap elections and adopt the merit method. Supporters say it would allow judges to focus on interpreting the law rather than on raising campaign funds and winning elections.
“Merit selection would end the money race and get judges out of the fundraising business,” Lynn Marks, executive director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts -- a group that has received money from Soros’ Open Society Institute -- told FoxNews.com.
But critics say that if judges are picked by committee -- often, a committee of lawyers -- that will give left-wing judges the upper hand.
“The left can’t get their agenda through the legislatures anymore … so they think they can get their agenda through by taking over the courts,” attorney Colleen Pero, author of a new report titled "Hijacking Justice," told FoxNews.com.
Pero’s report found that Soros, through his Open Society Institute fund, has given $45 million over the last decade to “a campaign to reshape the judiciary.” But that number is hotly contested by Justice at Stake, the group that got the most Soros money.”
Soros and his Open Society organization has funded numerous media outlets including NPR, Media Matters and MoveOn.org, in order to control the public
Soros is also funding liberal groups seeking top election posts in battleground states. The Washington Times reports:
A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican “political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted.”
Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not.
The group’s website said it wants to stop Republicans from “manipulating” election results.
“Any serious commitment to wresting control of the country from the Republican Party must include removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count,” the group said on its website, accusing some Republican secretaries of state of making “partisan decisions.”
SOSP has sought donations by describing the contributions as a “modest political investment” to elect “clean candidates” to the secretary of state posts.”
In a 2008 poll conducted by Helium online 27% percent of those responding to the poll stated that the United States would not exist 100 years from today. That’s 1 in 4 of those responding to this unscientific poll who believe we will not be the nation our founders envisioned. Thirty years ago I am sure this would not have been the result. More and more Americans are becoming less optimistic about the future of our Republic and our ability to live free lives and preserve our right to property.
As Ronald Reagan stated at his speech in front of the Statue of Liberty on September 1, 1980:
“But restoring the American dream requires more than restoring a sound, productive economy, vitally important as that is. It requires a return to spiritual and moral values. Values so deeply held by those who came here to build a new life. We need to restore those values in our daily life, in our neighborhoods, and in our government’s dealings with other nations of the world”
Or as Benjamin Franklin said outside of Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended when Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked him, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it." If George Soros has his way we will have a monarchy of the progressive Left.
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