Cato kicked things off in the 9/11 “Victim Compensation Act” thread.
Why are we paying claims, like an insurance company? Why are we acting as if the government can use our money to make charitable donations after a monumentally tragic and emotional event?
It’s a bold question.
Then Left Coast Dan dropped this link—>
Constitution-
History’s immortals sometimes offer a glimpse of their greatness in events other than those that granted them immortality.
Tennessee militia colonel David Crockett, perhaps best known for his role in the 1836 defense of the Alamo, also served three terms in the United States Congress between 1827 and 1835. Nationally known during his lifetime as a political representative of the frontier, Crockett apparently came by that reputation honestly, inasmuch as he was not above listening to his constituents. The following excerpt from an 1884 biography by Edward Sylvester Ellis, The Life of Colonel David Crockett, if accurate, might reveal how his own rural electorate taught him the importance of adhering to the Constitution and the perils of ignoring its restrictions.
Crockett was then the lion of Washington. I was a great admirer of his character, and, having several friends who were intimate with him, I found no difficulty in making his acquaintance. I was fascinated with him, and he seemed to take a fancy to me.
I was one day in the lobby of the House of Representatives when a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support, rather, as I thought, because it afforded the speakers a fine opportunity for display than from the necessity of convincing anybody, for it seemed to me that everybody favored it. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose. Everybody expected, of course, that he was going to make one of his characteristic speeches in support of the bill. He commenced:
“Mr. Speaker — I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it.
We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.
Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.
This government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the War of 1812 precisely the same amount.
There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor; but if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died.
I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much of our own money as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.”
He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.
Because our politicians are so bursting with goodness, they are compelled to play Santa, day in and day out. And they love lavishing presents on themselves and their families the most.
Buy friends and influence people.
If “What is NOT explicitly allowed is forbidden” (and, some of us recall, our Constitution is a CONSTRAINT on government) then MOST of the Legislation of the past 150 years is un-Constitutional.
And the Supremes and the House and the Senate and the Executive are aware of that fact.
They don’t care.
They shit on our Flag, on our Constitution, on our Sovereignty, on our Laws, on our Civilization, and on our Foundational Principles.
We have been measured; and found wanting.
(paraphrasing)
There are 3 things to do with sheep: shear them, make mutton, and/or … well … y’know … perform an izlamic act on them.
How did the FedGov get into “guaranteeing” loans?
How did the FedGov get into “guaranteeing” Union Pensions?
How did the FedGov get into “guaranteeing” “insurances?”
How did the FedGov get into “guaranteeing” states’ extravagances?
How did the FedGov become a repository for corruption?
How did the FedGov become the owner of the railroads?
How did the FedGov become the owner of vast tracts of land?
&c.
Greed. Greed for power. Greed for money.
The willingness of those elected to “serve” the people to wrest the peoples’ sovereignty and wield it against them, as a cudgel.
The greed of many of the people for the crumbs which fall from the greedy mouths of those so elected.
izlamo delenda est …
I’ve read a couple stories like that of Davey Crockett. He was a hell of a guy.
I guess virtue signaling was a thing even in the 1830’s.
I remember my aversion to the original 9-11 compensation fund passed by Congress, the giving of over $2 million to each of the 2,700 families. Bad things happen to good people every day in this country, it’s not part of our heritage for the taxpayer to be an insurer or the duty of public representative to assuage their conscience with tax payer funds.
I’m retired now but had a 30 year career in LE. We had a Widows and Orphans fund that provided assistance to the families of fallen officers, most of us had a monthly deduction that went to this fund. We took care of our own, but never in a million years would we think that tax money would feed into this fund.
“‘Well, Colonel, where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in charity?’
Noble statement and legally precise………….but not in today’s environment. Medicaid, food stamps, SNAP, public housing assistance, earned income tax credits, and a gaggle of individual state programs, Pandoras Box has already been opened.
Can you imagine Col. Crockett making that statement on the House floor today? I sure can’t.
Davy Crockett is my favorite politician of all time, and this story is the reason why. Good chance I first heard of it on this site a few years ago.
The story of this speech came out decades after his death, and there is no certainty that he said it, but regardless the truth is clear.
Davey, Davey Crockett King of the wild frontier. Every aging baby boomer knows that by heart thanks to Walt Disney.
Pretty eloquent for a guy with no more than an eighth grade education. What a long way (down) we’ve come.
“There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a week’s pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men — men who think nothing of spending a week’s pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased — a debt which could not be paid by money — and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when weighed against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it.”
Ain’t that the truth!!!!
The left knows nothing of charity, they pat themselves on the back when the rich are forced to pay more in taxes somehow equating this new found honor and courage as them being charitable.
That is why the right gives way more to charities, and Christians give even more. But the left is godless, unable to factor in the true sources of providing for the disadvantaged, churches and Christian based charities, they view government as daddy, their lord and savior, and the giver of all things charitable.
This is also the man who at the end of his term said “you can all go to hell, I’m going to Texas”.
He was a true Son of Liberty.
Killed a bar’ when he was only three.
Read the story how Crockett “grinned” a coon out of a tree.
Funny stuff.
izlamo delenda est …
Well said, Davy
Billy, I’ll bet you 6 that was Daniel Boone.
There are all kinds of conditions for these Victims Compensation Funds which are summarily ignored when the mood hits.
For example, there is supposed to be about a two year process and review for disbursement of any funds.
But after that black church shooting, Obama and Lynch appropriated $30,000,000.00 from that fund in less than 30 days to personally give to surviving family members, no matter how estranged.