The dead have a life of their own in America. Whether receiving bonus bucks or applications to vote absentee, the dead are cashing-in on government incompetence. Some addresses receive multiple requests to vote where only two voters are living and the rest were dead or relocated. In a society lean on virtue, that is a big temptation to pass-up voting early and often for your favorite candidate.
Some states needed to be sued to remove the names of the dead from voter rolls. Millions of people left this world or the state for greener pastures but remained on the registry.
The Internal Revenue Service recently sent out 1.1 million stimulus checks to dead people totaling $1.4 billion to help them with the Covid Scamdemic. As the IRS rushed to get payments to those reeling from the national shutdown, the Government Accountability Office said the tax agency didn’t use Social Security death records to filter-out payments to the deceased. The $1.4 billion paid to the dead accounts for 0.5% of the total value of stimulus checks.
The government was shown how to avoid such a miscue after a botched stimulus pay-out in 2013 but did not employ the filtering mechanism. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that relatives of dead recipients needed to return the money. Good luck, this is 2020 virtue.
Coming into Independence Day weekend Americans find themselves dependent upon the government dole. So many justify their hand in the till that it is impossible to get any traction to reform ‘sugar daddy’ Uncle Sam. Even churches took stimulus hand-outs though claiming they are allergic to government entanglements.
Counties and cities, like compliant whores, do whatever the state tells them in order to protect their payday. Though leaders swear oaths to defend and uphold the Constitution the precious document is ignored or its meaning mangled to get available cash.
While the federal government has a role in maintaining voting integrity it was never intended to be charitable, that was the task of the people.
However, less than 20 years after the nation’s founding, the House debated providing $15,000 relief for Haitian refugees fleeing a civil war and coming to New England. James Madison’s dissent was clear: “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of government. It would puzzle any gentleman to lay his finger on any part of the Constitution which would authorize the government to interpose in the relief of…sufferers.” Madison was not heartless. The government was not intended for such work, is horrible at it, wastes trillions today and does much harm with its ‘charity.’
A few years later, Virginia Rep. William Giles condemned a relief measure for fire victims, saying it was neither the purpose nor the right of Congress to "attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require."
Franklin Pierce, our 14th president, vetoed a bill to assist the mentally ill, saying, "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity," adding that to approve such spending "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."
In 1887, the 22nd and 24th President Grover Cleveland said when he vetoed a bill to assist drought-inflicted counties in Texas, "I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds. . . . I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution."
Tennessee Rep. Col. Davy Crockett, spoke in the House of Representatives against a $10,000 appropriation for a widow of a distinguished naval officer, "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 to appropriate a dollar of the public money."
Charity is reaching into one's own pocket to assist a neighbor in need. Reaching into someone else's pocket to assist one's neighbor does not qualify as charity. When done privately, it is considered theft, and the perpetrator risks jail time.
Not seeing government as responsible for every need seems strange to people today – we now function as a socialist society. Our founders assigned few powers to the federal government and left the rest to each state and the people. Redistributing wealth was never intended as a role for the federal government.
(Get Lou’s podcast at “No Hostages Radio” and his articles at nohostagesradio.com)
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