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Title: The Federal Government's Achilles Heel
Published: 2018-03-30
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px7-dF6PjaY
Title: The Federal Government's Achilles Heel
Published: 2018-03-30
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px7-dF6PjaY
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Welcome to probable cause with new Spuds Founder and Editor, Sebel Edmonds. Today, Sebel's guest is Michael Maheri, who has a degree in mass communications and media studies, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting. He's a journalist who has written and reported for several newspapers and has authored three books on nullification. He serves as the National Communications Director for the 10th Amendment Center. Newsbud2/127
welcomes Michael Maheri to probable cause with Sebel Edmonds. Welcome to our show and thank you very much for joining us on this extremely important topic with the top notch website. And before I start with my first question, this is going to be very unusual for our viewers because they are used to listening to me, talking about mainstream media, pseudo alternative media outlets, criticizing them in terms3/127
of their bias coverage, whether based on partisanship or as ideologues, etc. or highly influenced outlets of influence whether by special interest or the governments. Well, this is going to be a change because I'm going to start talking about a site that I have been a huge fan of for years. Since the day I discovered the website and I was going to make a list of all4/127
the reasons why I love 10th Amendment Center, including the blog section of 10th Amendment Center. I didn't have a time to do that, but I can start by some general elements and then from there will move to the detailed elements. Number one, just when you go to the site, you see that the site is at this advertiser. It's just to me, it's extremely important. This is5/127
when I know that the site is independent from these mega corporations and their interests. So it's a clean website. None of those gunky junky ads in and I know you're funded by donations and I don't see any infamous foundations such as Rockefeller's or Carnegie. And I'm sure George Soros would like to see you ban from the internet. So I don't see any foundation, that type of6/127
money influence, which is a game. General level is perfect. The other great elements that is very, very rare to find, and I'm out there every day for hours. Researching reading constantly is the fact that this site for all these years has been consistently nonpartisan. It's not a site that you say, oh, it's the right wing site. Oh, no, it's the left wing site. It is not7/127
an ideal site. And that is extremely important to us because that's what we try to be, because we are independent and we are 100% nonpartisan. Then the topic, the general premise and what you put out day after day, which every single one of them, if I were to mark the sale, well, make sure you read this or read that. On any given day, I would say8/127
make sure you read every single one of these posts. The great element, another great element about the site is, you know how with the media outlets, every day, we are bombarded with so many awful news. And there are, you know, factual most of them about how police estate is expanding and how surveillance estate is expanding, the wars, their realities, but it gives the sense of powerlessness9/127
when you read it. You're like, all these things are happening. And I as an individual can't do anything. I don't want to even look at it because it makes me frustrated. One of the great things about 10th Amendment Center as an organization, as a website, as a news analysis information source is, every day, it's also in addition to the organization to giving some of these fact-based10/127
bad news, it's filled with good news. And that makes me feel good. I go to your site every morning and I see, oh, here's a state that just passed the bill on not allowing warrantless stingray drones, for example. Or here's the state that said, no, we are not going to comply with common core. The reason I love this is saying, look, of all the things that11/127
are happening and it's going, unfortunately, upwards, the police estate, surveillance state, the government overreach, there are some good things happening within local level, within the state level, because it is so much easier. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's relatively speaking easier to tackle some of these obstacles that many of us and our viewers is like preaching to the choir, they are all against, they don't12/127
like it, but they feel frustrated, they're like, look, we sent petition to the National Congress, nothing happens. Or the media exposes this and this and nothing happens. Yet your website says, actually, things are happening. And guess what? Things are not happening from top to bottom, it's a bottom-up situation. Things are happening at the local level. With that and having all this talk, I want to turn13/127
to you and how has explained to you, have you explained to us why temperamentment and what is the number one reason for the existence of the temperamentment center? Well, first I just want to thank you for all of those kind words and it makes me feel good because... Man, everyone. You have expressed really a lot of our goals. I mean, a lot of the things that14/127
you've said are things that we've really endeavored to do as an organization to avoid being tied up with these big corporations or the big influential donors and trying to keep things positive and trying to be nonpartisan. All of those things are goals of the organization. So I'm glad that that comes across when you read the website and see the material that we're putting out on a15/127
daily basis. So the 10th Amendment, I think, is probably the most important and most overlooked aspect of the Constitution. It's what they call a rule of construction. It really tells us how to read the Constitution. And essentially what it says is that all of the powers that were not delegated to the federal government, which are most all powers, those are supposed to remain with the states16/127
and with the people themselves. And in that shell, the federal government shouldn't be doing about 90% of what it's doing on a daily basis. And from a broader perspective, I think it's important because it gives us a structure of decentralization. And that's really, I think, the key and thrust of what we're trying to do. We do not think that centralized power is healthy in a political17/127
society. When you have too much power in the hands of too few people, you have a lot of potential for tyranny, a lot of potential for abuse, abuse of individual rights, abuses of minorities. All of these things come from centralizing power. The Constitution actually created a very decentralized system where most decision making was left to the state and local level, where you'd have the 50 laboratories18/127
of ideas as it's been described. What we have today effectively is a unitary state. And we've monopolized power. It's like having Walmart be the only place you can buy your groceries. Nobody would want that. And yet we have that in government. We have the monopoly government. And it's not healthy. Our goal is to try to return to what the founders envisioned. A decentralized system, and we19/127
use this process of nullification that you mentioned, to use state power to block overreach of the federal government. So that's what we do in a nutshell. Our monitor is this. Follow the Constitution every issue, every time, no exceptions, no excuses. That's really what we're all about. So we do have an agenda. It's just not a partisan agenda. The origin is the Constitution. Now I totally understand20/127
why the federal government and the connected interests to the federal governments hate the tantamendment and this whole notion. That's understandable. I went through years of academic studies collecting older, useless degrees that I collected along the way. One of them being a master's degree in public policy and throughout my education in the United States, I came to the States in 1988 after I finished high school in21/127
Turkey. A very noticeable attitude or stand on tantamendment. You go through all these studies with the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and it seems like in every one of the courses I took, there's one amendment that they skip over. There's like a one-liner there. And I talked to various professors, the teachers, asking about some of these tantamendment-related issues. They usually shaked their head and said, well, especially22/127
after civil war and everything, that amendment is moot. And there is this attitude that they really wish it didn't exist and if they could. And I'm sure one of these days is going to happen, they are going to basically erase it from the Constitution and say, that, you know what, doesn't exist. So I even understand that, not that that is justified from the left liberal point23/127
of view that has been shaped much of it by misinformation. Next I want to come to the media. With any time that tantamendment center comes up, whether it's with nullification, whether it's with common core, there is this unanimous. And I have to say unanimous with the major, especially mainstream outlets, media outlets. And what I refer to, well-funded pseudo-alternatives with the Carnegie's and Soros and Rockefeller foundations,24/127
immediately, tantamendment gets to be linked, falsely, to gender issues, to the race issues, to the religion issues, and anybody who wants to delve into the activism at the local level targeting the state's politicians and the state's rights immediately, they are categorized as the racist, sexist, skinhead. And that includes me. You know, I come from all of race, you know, I'm Caucasian, but you know, I'm really,25/127
really yellowish olive. And I come from a Muslim country, my background comes from that country. I'm a woman. And yet I actually have been called as a Nazi fascist KKK supporter. It gets so ridiculous because you can't even have constructive discussion with many of these people because they can't back it. All they do is they repeat like parrots what they read with the mainstream media, everything26/127
goes to the articles on this issue, which is they want to bring the plantations back. That's why they want the tantamendment center. If you are pro-tent amendment, you want to see those plantations back and they're going to be back in the South. And then people are going to be turned into slaves, you know, and it has been very successful unfortunately because it has become the systematic27/127
brainwash. People parroting it, what is your take on that? And considering that even some really good conservative sites they stay away from it, how do you go about challenging it? Because I know you're challenging it on daily basis. I think there's two kind of things that come to mind as you mentioned this. And the first thing is I think it's a lot of it's by design.28/127
You know, they don't want to have the debate about whether or not the federal government should run education. They don't want to have the debate about whether we should have a surveillance state. They don't want to have a debate about whether Washington DC should run healthcare. So it's easier to just say, well, they're all just a bunch of racist, a bunch of sexist, a bunch of29/127
horrible people and they want slavery because then nobody has to listen to our ideas. It's a way to marginalize everything that we're saying. And it makes it easier for them because they know they're going to lose the debate when it comes down to policy making and centralization and all of these other issues. So it's easier to say, well, he's a racist and we'll just write him30/127
off. But I think there's also an element of bad education in this. And you know, the truth of the matter is when it comes to nullification, it was actually most effective historically when Northern states attempted and successfully blocked implementation and enforcement of the fugitive slave act. So these were Northern states asserting state sovereignty, saying we're not going to cooperate with slave rendition. They actually used the31/127
arguments of John C. Calhoun to back up their position. William Lloyd Garrison, one of the famous abolitionists said, you know, I'm a nullifier. So the history is actually much more diverse when you talk about states rights and nullification than anybody understands. But that's a failure of the education system. And that's one of the things that we try to do at the 10th Amendment Center. And I32/127
think we've been successful to a large degree because in the last two or three years, we're starting to see less and less of this race baiting and this accusation of being racist and all of this foolishness. And we're seeing more and more people beginning to debate the actual issues at hand. So, you know, I consider that a success and we're just going to continue teaching the33/127
actual history and trying to open up people's eyes. After living in Washington, DC for 25 years, I got so disgusted. That's the place I consider a sensitive, the real sensitive is not Vegas, is Washington, DC. I moved to central Oregon, we are based in Bend, Oregon. And a couple of years ago, we had this whole issue of malhoor incident here, which we did provide some coverage.34/127
And we were attacked because when we tried to line up the facts on the federal land grab and the case of, for example, Hammond's case, which is extremely important, is one of the biggest, recent miscarriage of justice that has really gone truly uncovered by the mainstream media. We were told basically that covering this issue equates. So, you know, I know you're saying that it's getting a35/127
little bit better and I really hope you're right. But two years ago, seeing, watching, witnessing, Minicom shooting, seeing the treatments of this case and the false info, the propaganda being put by mainstream media, I really felt that I mean, it was becoming this no-win situation. So I hope you're right. I hope it's becoming less and less, you know, with this approach by the mainstream media, by36/127
the academia. And I have to say I was also surprised to see that during that entire incidents with Hammond case, there are some really, I call conservative, you know, Republican doesn't equate conservative to me or libertarians, for example. Like the libertarian party has become, I don't know, how to describe it. It's, and then you witness infighting, et cetera. But I was surprised that there was not37/127
even backing from some of the major sites, organizations, NGOs that considered themselves old-fashioned conservatives and constitutionalists. It was this attitude that if I touch this, I'm going to comment on their attack. So these constitutionalists and these ranchers, such as Hammond, they were left without any support from any side. Which was devastating, devastating to witness. One of the arguments people make, and after reading, and I'm going38/127
to read your books as well on nullification, after reading Tom Wood's saying how he defeated that argument was that the fact that they basically have 100% lost their cheat and their power because so much money they are getting from the federal government, whether from the education side and it started with the highways, et cetera, they are so indebted to the federal government that they would never,39/127
ever dare challenging the federal government because we hand over our share of tax and they are basically like bufflers, they have to each one of them bow to the federal government. Can you tell us, in your opinion, is this a true statement, the fact that states being so dependent on federal government for funding, is there is no way for them to stand up being indebted? Or40/127
do you believe that no? This is not a correct statement and if that's the case, why? Well, I think it is a huge problem, all of the funding that flows in. I think that there is, again, some positive signs though, a couple of years ago, the HUD had changed some of the rules regarding the money that was being sent into cities for city improvements and not41/127
type of things. They attached a whole bunch of new strings. A lot of it had to do with having affordable housing and certain areas and just a lot more regulatory structure in order to get these HUD grants and this was under the Obama administration. And interestingly, we saw a number of cities that actually rejected the money that had been taking this money for a number of42/127
years and then said, you know what, this is too much. So there actually is a point that the federal government can reach where at least local governments will say, whoa, we're going to put the brakes on this because we're losing way too much of our own power over our own communities. But I think that this is an important thing for people to do at this state43/127
level is to encourage their states to become more independent from the federal government. And at times to be willing to just say, you know what, you guys keep your money, we're going to handle this here at the state level. And another good thing that we've seen develop and this was kind of a result of a court case. And I don't talk a whole lot about court44/127
cases because I'm not a real big fan of the Supreme Court because I don't think they usually pay any attention to the Constitution. But in the Sibelius ruling, which was part of the Obama care case, they actually did hold that the federal government could not coerce states by using existing Medicaid funding to force them to expand, not Medicaid Medicare, to enforce them to expand. So there45/127
actually is an evolving legal environment where the federal government is more limited in how it can utilize funding to coerce states into doing things that they want them to do. So for instance, if there's some law enforcement issue, unless there are a highway issue, the federal government can take away funding that's related to that issue if the state isn't taking that action, but they can't take46/127
away unrelated funding. So they can't take away highway funding because the state refuses to do something in the realm of education. So the states actually have a lot more leeway than a lot of people believe. And I think it's just important for the states to continue to push those boundaries to free themselves from the federal money and become more and more willing to say, you know47/127
what, we don't need your money. We can handle this on our own. We'd rather have control over what we're doing with our own policies. One of the positive developments have been the legalization of marijuana and started with the state of Colorado. So a lot of people have gotten informed about the fact that with these kinds of issues, the state can become independent and people can have48/127
a say in, let's say, legalization or decriminalization of marijuana. They are also familiar with the concept, let's say, with issues such as Common Core. One of the great things that I have been reading constantly on your website goes to even more macro issues that most people believe it has nothing to do with the states and the federal governments rules and once they make the rule and49/127
implement those kinds of practices, that's it. There's no say that any state has. For example, you have been covering the issue of NDA and rendition. And it has become topically gained with North Carolina, these courageous, incredible persistent activists saying this, the fact that some of these planes took off from this particular Air Force Base CIA planes and they were used in these rendition program is unacceptable50/127
to us in the state of North Carolina. Tell us, how is it possible for states? And I will go through some of these topics such as, let's say, rendition. What can people do at state level and what kind of things states can do to at least for the state thing? We will not participate and here are the things we will do and nobody can force us.51/127
Well the dirty little secret is that the federal government depends on state and local resources and personnel to do almost everything that they do. So we see this in the war on drugs specifically and this is why the state movement to legalize marijuana has been so effective because 99% of the marijuana arrest actually occur under state law, not federal. So when the state legalizes it, the52/127
state law enforcement quits enforcing these laws, the federal government is left with virtually no way to enforce their will within the borders of that state. And this is true on a variety of issues. It takes federal, it takes state and local resources to implement Obamacare. It takes state and local resources to enforce federal gun laws. It takes state and local resources to implement education programs. That's53/127
everything the federal government does requires state and local resources. And this actually extends as you mentioned to things that we don't really think of as being state and local issues. This North Carolina rendition was fascinating to me and I just learned about it about a month ago. And as it turns out, there was a private aviation company that was based in North Carolina. It's a North54/127
Carolina corporation that was utilizing two regional airports in the state of North Carolina. And they were using those aircraft to do these rendition flights. So they were taking these prisoners, some of whom is it turns out weren't guilty of anything at all. And moving them to black sites in other countries where they could be questioned and tortured. And as it turns out, the state of North55/127
Carolina was providing support for the airport, this aviation company got tax benefits. One of the counties helped it build a hangar. So there was all kinds of state and local resources that were going into this company that was really a CIA front for rendition. So what can a state do about that? James Madison gave us the advice in federalist 46. He said when the federal government56/127
does an unwarranted action, one of the things that a state can do is refuse to cooperate with officers of the union. Those were the exact words that Madison used. So we've taken this model, refuse cooperation, and we've applied it to all of these different issues. And by refusing that cooperation, by withdrawing those resources in personnel, it takes away this vital support network that the federal government57/127
needs to accomplish all of the things that it wants to do. So imagine in North Carolina, if North Carolina had known that this was a rendition was going on, and I'm almost certain that somebody in the government did know, they could have passed the law and said, you know what, we're not going to allow our state and local resources to be used for this purpose. And