International Child Support

THE LEGISLATURE AND THE SOB SISTER CIRCUS Posted on May 22, 2015 Written by Vicky Davis, channelingreality.com

Yes­ter­day (May 19) was an expe­ri­ence.  It was never on my bucket list to tes­tify to a state leg­is­la­ture on leg­is­la­tion but I did it.  And I learned a lot.

HB 1 was the replace­ment bill for S.1067 – the bill that inte­grates the Hague Con­ven­tion on Inter­na­tional Recov­ery of Child Sup­port etc. into state law.   The leg­is­la­ture met in spe­cial ses­sion to pass it and they did even though it is clearly and unequiv­o­cally uncon­sti­tu­tional.   And you don’t need to be a lawyer to fig­ure that out.   You don’t even need to read beyond a sixth grade level.

Arti­cle 1, Sec­tion 10 – No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation;

The vote to approve HB 1 (S.1067) did exactly that.   The state became a party to the Hague Con­ven­tion by ref­er­ence to it in the HB 1 legislation.

(Side Note:  the fact that the bill num­ber is HB 1 is an irony too rich not to share.   H1-B is the num­ber of the visa used by for­eign­ers who come into the coun­try on visas for pro­fes­sional IT worker.   The sub­ject mat­ter of HB 1 is a com­puter sys­tem that will oper­ate inter­na­tion­ally to han­dle cross-border child sup­port cases.)

The first event at the capi­tol was the pro forma bill print­ing which was done – as I under­stand it, not fol­low­ing proper pro­to­col.   I didn’t attend that event because there was noth­ing to see.  Instead, I attended the joint com­mit­tee hear­ing in which I was signed up to tes­tify.   To keep it brief, the first hour was taken up with a pre­sen­ta­tion by Health and Wel­fare on the child sup­port enforce­ment sys­tem that was com­pletely irrel­e­vant because it was about the cur­rent sys­tem except for the men­tion of Ger­many as an exam­ple of an inter­na­tional case.  It was unin­for­ma­tive dri­vel but it did chew up an hour of time.

The wit­nesses who signed up were in two camps – the peo­ple oppos­ing HB 1, were cit­i­zens for whom there was no per­sonal ben­e­fit to be had by the defeat of the bill.  The peo­ple sup­port­ing HB1 were peo­ple who per­son­ally and/or orga­ni­za­tion­ally ben­e­fit from Health & Wel­fare money spent on social program.

The cry­ing and moan­ing from these spe­cial inter­est groups all of whom ben­e­fit from fed­eral money would have been over­whelm­ing had it not been for the arrange­ment of pro and con order of the wit­nesses.  What was strik­ingly obvi­ous was that all of the tes­ti­mony from the H&W sob sis­ters was a non sequitur to the actual bill being con­sid­ered.   Their tes­ti­mony was directly related to the uncon­sti­tu­tional fed­eral extor­tion demand to pass the bill.    The only pur­pose it served was to chew up a lot of time which meant that oppos­ing wit­nesses had only a brief 3 min­utes to tes­tify on what is in fact, a com­plex bill with com­plex issues.

Here is what I didn’t get to say: The attempted extor­tion of the state to vio­late Arti­cle 1, Sec­tion 10 is being done through the prin­ci­ples of coop­er­a­tive fed­er­al­ism.  In a paper writ­ten by Eric Fish, Leg­isla­tive Coun­sel for the Uni­form Law Com­mis­sion, he cited a Supreme Court case – South Dakota v Dole, when he wrote that a fed­eral man­date is con­sti­tu­tional only if it meets the fol­low­ing tests:

1.  The exer­cise of the spend­ing power must be in pur­suit of the gen­eral welfare Is the man­date to pass S.1067 in pur­suit of the gen­eral wel­fare?   No it isn’t.  It serves a frac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion so small as to be sta­tis­ti­cally insignif­i­cant – less than 1 per­cent of the child sup­port enforce­ment cases and those cases are an infin­i­tes­i­mally small per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion at large.

2.  Con­gress must exer­cise the spend­ing power unam­bigu­ously, allow­ing states to exer­cise their choice inde­pen­dently but with full cog­nizance of the reper­cus­sions of the choice. Are you being given the choice independently?   No.  You are being told to pass it and the feds are hold­ing chil­dren hostage.  

3.  The con­di­tions must be related to the fed­eral inter­est in par­tic­u­lar national projects and programs. Is the inter­na­tional child sup­port enforce­ment sys­tem a national project or pro­gram?    No – obvi­ously not.   It’s inter­na­tional by def­i­n­i­tion.   

4.  The terms of con­di­tional spend­ing must not run afoul of other con­sti­tu­tional provisions. Does the fed­eral man­date to inte­grate the Hague Con­ven­tion into Idaho law run afoul of other con­sti­tu­tional pro­vi­sions?   Yes it does.  It runs afoul of Arti­cle 1, Sec­tion 10.

These are his­toric times and there is no place for busi­ness as usual.   You are on cen­ter stage and the world is watch­ing.   What we need today are lead­ers – not weak-knee’d collaborators.

You’re not vot­ing on a child sup­port enforce­ment sys­tem.  You are vot­ing on the struc­tural frame­work of our gov­ern­ment.  The ques­tion is – will it be a legit­i­mate, con­sti­tu­tional gov­ern­ment or will you de-legitimize your­selves and the gov­ern­ment of the State of Idaho.

It was clear that the fix was in on this bill. Even though the time given to the oppo­nents of the bill was so brief, there was enough meat for the mem­bers of the leg­is­la­ture to post­pone action. The most glar­ing error they made was when the Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral, Scott Keim who obvi­ously got his law degree out of a box from Crack­er­jack Uni­ver­sity, was asked about the man­date and his response was essen­tially that the leg­is­la­ture had no recourse other than to accept the man­date or lose fund­ing. That was wrong and mis­lead­ing advice and it went down­hill from there for him. Watch for the video of his testimony.

Hav­ing a lit­tle bit of math fun – ((neg­a­tive uncon­sti­tu­tional man­date)  + (neg­a­tive uncon­sti­tu­tional bill)  equals a pos­i­tive… we’re going to fry your asses)).

If some­one were to have designed a test to deter­mine the loy­alty and integrity of a pub­lic body like the leg­is­la­ture of Idaho, they could not have designed a bet­ter test than S.1067 and the spe­cial ses­sion of the leg­is­la­ture to pass the revised edi­tion, HB1. It proved the case.  Idaho Pub­lic Offi­cials failed at every step.      Thanks, Butch.

Related Posts

• The Empty Chair
  Filed Under: Federalism/State Sovereignty, New World Order, United Nations
  http://agenda21news.com/2015/05/the-legislature-and-the-sob-sister-circus/#more-5871