Crises, whether real or contrived, open opportunities for ignoring constitutional issues. With almost every state experiencing budget shortfalls, The Dow Jones newsletter Tomorrow's News Today predicts that states will be forced to lay off 900,000 employees to balance their budgets. Such conditions may well encourage leaders to act, without following due process.
New Mexico is facing a $600 million shortfall for the current fiscal year. A special session of the state legislature was called to make decisions about the budget. An agreement was hammered out on the last day of the session and forwarded to Governor Richardson for approval.
Governor Richardson delayed signing until the last day, then vetoed some provisions while accepting others. He and his advisors then produced their own program which was published as an executive order, rather than bringing the legislature back to produce acceptable legislation.
The purpose of having an Executive Branch, a Legislative Branch, and a Judicial Branch in our state government is to prevent excessive power being concentrated in one group or person. By issuing his executive order, Bill Richardson has usurped the legislatures authority to make the budget go his own way, thereby in effect negating all the votes of the citizens those legislators represent. They each represent smaller constituencies, and thus their decisions should be more representative of the people's desires.
Unfortunately, he is not the first politician to use a crisis to set aside legal restraints. George Bush did so several times using the 911 attack as an excuse. The CDC has used numerous health threats to se aside legal protections of businesses and individuals in the guise of resolving a health crisis. The Treasury Department has used the same principle in handing out bailout money without obeying congressional guidelines.
As state shortfalls increase, these types of over stepping authority are likely to become more common. It will be easy for constitutional authority to be usurped, in many cases unintentionally, but also deliberately. If such actions are ignored, we may well find most of our freedoms and protections taken away.
The book, The Tyranny of The Urgent, describes the pressure to take action on seemingly urgent affairs. As a result, people neglect more important issues in an effort to relieve the pressure. Claims of crisis produce a similar sense of urgency, and people become so focused on the crises they ignore other issues. It really doesn't matter whether the crisis is real, as long as people believe it to be. Con artists find it easier to invent crisis than to find a real one.
Former President Clinton said it would be better to pass even a bad bill than to do nothing in encouraging congress to pass the Healthcare reform bill. He failed to take into account the results of the Creditors Rights bill Congress just passed. Less than a month after passing, many credit card users found their interest tripled or more. Fees on almost all accounts were increased and new fees were imposed. A defective bill made the problem much worse.
The old saying "if you don't have time to do it right the first time, How will you ever get time to do it again?" is even more important in legislation than in many other areas, because it affects more people. Allowing a sense of urgency to rush into ill-conceived legislation is dangerous.
Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and many others have used Crises to gain power. To avoid losing our freedoms, we need to periodically step back and observe the other things that are happening, things which most people seem not to see because they have become equally focused. People, including reporters and politicians, find it easy to follow the crowd, but sometimes the crowd is wrong.
An example is the focus on Global warming. The media reported that two years ago farms in Sweden were discovered that had been covered with ice since the early 1700's. The so called "proofs" of Global warming actually showed that during the 1600's temperatures were warmer than they had been until the present time. The claims of urgency have distracted people from checking out the facts. If it continues, it will result in serious problems due to misguided decisions.
One principle is to follow the money. If Al Gore will make one hundred million Dollars by convincing people that Global warming is real, he has a vested interest in doing so. His claims need to be supported by other research. The same is true with the H1N1 swine flu crisis. The medical establishment makes $25 per shot. That's a lot of money if they can get half the population to get shots. It could well cause them to overlook evidence which doesn't support vaccinations. Does this mean that there is no problem? Obviously not, but it does indicate we need to examine the crises more carefully to determine what the real problem is.
When proposed actions ignore the constitution or peoples rights, they need to be especially closely examined as their effects are so serious, and difficult to undo once in place.
" by Milton and Rose Friedman in 1980.
