Osler's Razor

Oh, the Cato Institute. My favorite!

That aside, what kind of asininity would it be to not have the federal government enact drug policy? So pot is legal in California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, but not Utah, Nebraska, Arizona and Texas? Well, what if a lawful pot grower in northern Mexico wants to ship some lawful (in CA, NV, NM and CO) product through interstate highways that happen to pass through Texas, Arizona, Nebraska and Utah?

Or perhaps all California pot has to be grown in California, and Colorado pot in Colorado, etc. But that acts as a de facto federal regulation because it limits what can and can't be sold across state lines, and prohibits the trafficking of legal product on the channels of interstate commerce.

Or, what about drug seizures that happen in federal jurisdiction? When CBP picks up a guy trying to ferry a cart load of cocaine across the river here, it's not like they (well, always) call up the local PD and say, "hey, you'd better get a move on over here to catch this guy!" They catch him and ship him over to the AUSAs (and occasionally we get their cast-offs).

We don't need less federal involvement in drug policy, just better federal laws, starting with decriminalization of personal/recreational use amounts, abolishing mandatory minimums, and legalization of US-based manufacturing operations (to undercut foreign-based drugs coming in and funding money to foreign criminal organizations).
 

Yeah. What Lane said.
 

"Oh, the Cato Institute. My favorite!"

I detect a hint of sarcasm.

"So pot is legal in California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, but not Utah, Nebraska, Arizona and Texas? Well, what if a lawful pot grower in northern Mexico wants to ship some lawful (in CA, NV, NM and CO) product through interstate highways that happen to pass through Texas, Arizona, Nebraska and Utah?"

How do federal laws solve this? Lets imagine a world in which the federal government legalizes drugs. All of them. That doesn't mean that Texas has to take their laws of the books. Drugs could still be illegal to grow, possess, transport, or sell in this state even though Oklahoma follows the federal lead and legalizes. So, a person that grows drugs in Oklahoma, and then transports them to Texas would be in violation of the law, and subject to arrest.

The beauty of federalism. Laboratories of democracy!

Hence, what the federal government does on drugs really only works to restrict state innovation. For example, California is liberalizing its laws, but the federal drug laws are still in place, and a business owner selling marijuana, and working completely within the laws of California could go to jail for breaking federal laws. Wouldn't it be better to allow states, and particularly states where trafficking across the border is a bigger issue, to develop there own policies, make their own choices?

"Or, what about drug seizures that happen in federal jurisdiction?"

In states where it is illegal, they will deal with it. In states where it is legal, according to the hippies that favor this kind of thing, they wont need to come across a river. I don't see why this is a problem.

"We don't need less federal involvement in drug policy, just better federal laws..."

I think this sentence pretty much perfectly sums up the difference between me and Lane, because I believe that we don't need better federal laws regarding ANYTHING, we just need less federal involvement.
 

"Wouldn't it be better to allow states, and particularly states where trafficking across the border is a bigger issue, to develop there own policies, make their own choices?"

No; this isn't an area where disparate regulations are a benefit. Standardized regulations are the best way to regulate an industry that would need to be highly regulated (given the nature of the products to be sold).

Here's the question I have for you (or any other federalist). You are very much in favor of state's rights, but what about federal rights? You decry federal involvement (though certainly Hamilton and Madison did not) in almost every area (business, drug policy, health care, education, morals regulations, taxation, etc.) and seemingly support it only in a few (defense, possibly immigration).

Why? What's the basis for disliking the federal government? Non-local control? Meaningless in an age where a jet can cross the nation in hours. Cultural differences? Again, meaningless in the era of instant communications and worldwide media. Efficiency? Centralization promotes efficiency by eliminating regional inconsistency.

Sheer ornery sour grapes bad feelings toward increased federal government powers following a deeply divisive civil conflict 140 years ago, necessitated by the fact that certain regional blocs wished to continue practices abandoned by the rest of the civilized world long before?

The Articles of Confederation should give one an idea of what an anemic federal government leads to; although disparate drug policies are not quite as severe as no national currency, given the nature of drugs and drug use, uniform treatment is better than the current system (which I agree is broken, for the reason you mentioned in regard to California).
 

Why? I've got a few reasons:

1.) I genuinely believe that the people best suited to solve the problems are the people closest to the problems. You're correct, that in a more interconnected world, there is a better understanding of the differences between various cities, regions, states, etc. However, it doesn't mean those differences don't exist. I think a teacher/student/parent/community member in Waco has a much better understanding of how to deal with the issues facing University High and Waco High than I think the Department of Education does. I don't think the State of Texas has as good an idea as the people of Waco, but it is a step in the right direction. I think that is true about a number of issues, including welfare, homelessness, health care, poverty in general, education, and yes morals regulations (to the extent they exist) because I don't think the people of San Fransisco want to be judged by the same standards as the people of Lorena, and I think that is ok. I genuinely believe that states should be laboratories of democracy, and if you like innovation then federalism is the way to get there because if one state tries it, and it works, then the rest will follow. With the federal government, if they try it, and it fails, we all suffer.

2.) Because I think centralized government is dangerous. I think that the more centralized our government becomes, the more it becomes detached from the people, and the more easily it is able to take freedoms away without anyone noticing. I think that when we have a decentralized, federalist type of government, the people are more connected with their government, are able to watch it and control it more effectively, and since I think the people should control the government, and not the other way around, I think it is best that we do what we can to make government responsive to the people.

3.) I'm from Texas, I want to be governed by Texans as much as possible. I'm sure this makes me a silly redneck, I really don't give a crap.

4.) I actually believe in the constitution. I know your reading of the constitution is broader than mine, and that is fine, reasonable people can disagree. But, while I don't agree with those that think the framers wanted a federal government that existed for no reason, I do think the framers wanted a federal government that was limited in ways no centralized government had been limited up to that time. That is what the whole revolutionary war thing was about. I think they were right. I think they would agree with me. And I think they would find it shocking that schools in Mart, Texas are forced to teach certain subjects certain ways at certain times because someone in Washington, D.C. says they have to.
Not that what the framers thought matters to this argument, because whether Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, or Adams agreed with me or you doesn't make us more right or wrong about whether it actually works.

"Sheer ornery sour grapes bad feelings toward increased federal government powers following a deeply divisive civil conflict 140 years ago, necessitated by the fact that certain regional blocs wished to continue practices abandoned by the rest of the civilized world long before?"

First, who do you consider 'civilized'? That seems to be a bit of an imperialist stance to me, dictating who is civilized and who is not. Chomsky would not be happy with you.

Second, no, it has nothing to do with slavery. I'm not a racist, nor someone that believes that people should be bought and sold as chattel under any circumstances. And I don't think that is the issue.
 

First, I wasn't driving at slavery. I doubt anyone (well, anyone sane) wants to return to the days of slavery. Most of us are quite fond of Amendments 13-15. I was speaking more in terms of the South's general discontent with being the loser in the civil war and thus being much more likely to invoke state's rights than people in the former North.

Second, I hate Chomsky probably as much as you do. He's a Cartesian lunatic.

Third, it's a question of striking the proper balance between local control of localized issues (makes sense) versus inconsistency on policies that are broader than local scope. Sticking with education, Washington would be a horrible place to decide school menus, when prom was going to be held, how much to charge on property taxes to support the schools, the bus routes, etc. But Washington is a much better place than state or local control to decide something like textbook standards or minimal criteria for grade levels.

Case in point, you've got a group of far-right ideologues on the Texas State Board of Education that have suggested absolutely ludicrous, ideology-based chanegs to curriculum (such as the removal of Thomas Jefferson from a list of Enlightenment era philosophers because he famously coined the phrase "separation of church and state"). Any time you let individual states control that policy, you risk setting up inequalities in how things that ought to be treated the same (school curricula) treated vastly different. And yes, I'm just as mindful that a group of leftists could create a similarly-unbalanced and ideological curriculum, and I would have the same objection: I think it's fine for students to be informed on many varying viewpoints, but only at a level when they're required to critically examine those viewpoints and choose among them (late high school, early university).

So it becomes a question of where do we draw the line. I think we probably interpret the Constitution rather similarly in most respects. I believe the Constitution creates (in terms of rights) a minimal "ground floor" of rights that States are bound to respect. It allows Congress to regulate those things that are national in scope: the general welfare and those articles placed in interstate commerce (like, say, drugs). It reserves to the States the powers of local administration, oversight, and enforcement of localized laws, like penal laws, licensing and regulations, etc. But like many early federalists, I realize (and choose the anti-Jeffersonian interpretation) that a strong central government is necessary for the efficient administration of a large nation. That government may still be limited in its power by the organic law of the Constitution in the same scope as it is limited by powers reserved to the people or the States without ceding rightful national authority to competing sovereigns.
 

That a centralized government is capable of authoritarianism is true, but it is also true that any government is so capable. Consider the case of something like abortion: if, as libertarians suggest, abortion should be a state-level issue, you can imagine that Texas would outlaw it while New York would likely permit it. Is Texas' freedom-denying government somehow less authoritarian because it's home-grown? Or, on the reverse side of the issue, consider the differences in doing business in very economically-regulated California versus a more laissez-faire approach likely present in Delaware. Is California's policy somehow more conducive to the economic freedom of large business association just because it's not national in scope?

The rejoinder might be that with so many choices in how one wants to live it is just a matter of moving to the appropriate state. When I was younger I thought that this was a marvelous idea: I could get the hell out of Texas and in to some place that already (mostly) agreed with my point of view. The problem with such an arrangement is that it ignores the central premise of democracy, that every citizen has an equal right to seek to change the government as she sees fit through the exercise of the vote. Rather than uproot my life and move far away, I could work for change at home, and the backdrop against which change can be worked is a federal government created by and governed by organic law that puts limitations on state laws as inferior in certain contexts.

In short, local, decentralized control is good when it is about purely local issues that are administratively burdensome to a central government. Local, decentralized control is good in that it prevents interference with one's personal life by an authoritarian government. But local, decentralized control can be bad when it works to deny or disparage rights secured on a broad, national level. To that end, a strong central government is necessary to ensure a certain minimal standard of governance, and to enforce compliance by localities with that standard. Localities are always free to increase rights and protections above that provided by the central government (as Texas does in several areas), but should not be allowed to subvert or drop below nationally-assured levels based on some notion of "local control is always better."
 

"Case in point, you've got a group of far-right ideologues on the Texas State Board of Education that have suggested absolutely ludicrous, ideology-based chanegs to curriculum"

Fair enough. Here is the problem. Imagine a group of far-right wing ideologues (the horror, bunch of knuckle dragging mouth breathers the lot of them) takes over the department of education and makes the same demands nationwide. Now, the effects are much more widespread and stopping it or reversing it is much harder. Also, whereas when it happens in YOUR town and YOUR PTA is going to vote on it, the likelihood of you hearing about it is pretty high, when it is part of a 10,000 page omnibus appropriations bill passed by Congress, the odds of you hearing about it go down.

"Consider the case of something like abortion"

Indeed lets do. You only like the federal regulation because it goes your way (and mine frankly). But, imagine it went the other way. Imagine the federal government had banned abortions in the late 70s. Now, even in states like New York and California, where the population would favor legalizing abortions, they can't.

For a current example, lets look at gay marriage. I think every state should do what they want. Vote on it. Pass a bill legalizing it. Ban it. Whatever. But, at the very least, as attitudes and culture changes, some states will quickly jump on the bandwagon and legalize gay marriage. Some won't. But at least they we have a broader spectrum of possibilities. What if the federal government gets involved and bans it? Constitutional amendment? What then. No hope. For anybody.

Centralized, disconnected government is fine, as long as it is on your side. I recognize that states can become authoritarian too. So could your local PTA board I suppose. But as we move down levels of government, as the government gets closer to the people, the government becomes easier to control, and therefore more responsive. For that reason alone, even though all forms of government are susceptible to some level of authoritarianism, localized government is certainly LESS susceptible, and that seems to be an advantage.

"every citizen has an equal right to seek to change the government as she sees fit through the exercise of the vote."

My point exactly. And it is much easier at a local level. If Texas outlawed abortion, and you wanted to make it legal, would it be easier to convince the Texas legislature and the citizens of Texas, or the US Congress and the citizens of these United States. Or, if Mexia outlawed Tom Sawyer, would it be easier to convince the school board and the citizens of Mexia that it was a bad idea, or the US Congress, the Department of Education, and the citizens of these United States. I'm all for the ability of any citizen to make changes in their government, which is precisely why I want to put power at the levels of government most susceptible to change, and most responsive to the people.

"I wasn't driving at slavery."

You said, "necessitated by the fact that certain regional blocs wished to continue practices abandoned by the rest of the civilized world long before?"

Were you driving at agrarian reforms? The South's desire to make everyone drink sweet tea? What were the "practices" you were referring to that had been abandoned by the rest of the "civilized world"?

And, I really still want to know what you mean by "civilized". Since you were talking about slavery, and it was really only the West that had abolished slavery at that time you must have been referring to them, I assume you mean the imperialist, colonialist, generally evil West was the "civilized world." But, I just wanna hear you say it outloud.

And we can at least agree that Chomsky is d. u. m. b. dumb.

p.s. - Texas Rangers win 1-0, on pace for 162 wins this year. Could be a record breaking year.
 

Re: the Federalism debate, I support the local control of education, but I sure as hell wouldn't educate my kids in the public schools of Texas, mostly due to the ideological idiots on the State Board of Education that Lane mentioned. They can fight over whether or not to teach intelligent design; I'll go somewhere where they teach actual science.
 

By civilized I meant the agragian trading societies of the Western world. The US was among the last to outlaw slavery. And you know as well as I do that while slavery was the catalyst for the civil war, it wasn't the cause. The issue was state's rights and whether certain things should be subject to local control, namely, whether the practice of slavery (among others) ought to be allowed to continue.

The evolution of the court's rulings since the inception of Amendments 13-15 has been something I largely agree with: certain issues are no longer amenable to purely local control, and a federal baseline must be established. That's why I think cases like Roe v. Wade (and Casey) are so important: they set a constitutional minimum at the federal level and leave the rest to the States (which is, incidentally, the sort of policy I'd like to see with drugs). Now, you're right: if in 2016 Sarah Palin and Co. are elected and pass a constitutional amendment banning abortion, the pro-choice crowd is SoL. That is the price of democracy, is that sometimes things you disagree with happen. A constitutional amendment is a large hurdle to overcome (not that it hasn't; see Prohibition) but it's also much more difficult to achieve than, say, a Texas Constitutional amendment. Getting Congress to do things when there is a near-supermajority has proven extraordinarily difficult. Things at the federal level move slowly and ploddingly, as they should. But for that reason, we can't cede too much authority to the states, where things are more heated, and much faster, because the possibility for error is higher.

I suppose the corrollary to that is that the possibility for correction is higher as well, but I'd rather have a slower process with a slimmer margin of error.

I also disagree, on that basis, that it's much easier to effect meaningful change at the local level. If I succeed in getting my local school board to teach that Thomas Jefferson, and not Thomas Aquinas, was a philosophical founder of the United States, what does it matter if two counties over they're being taught that Jesus and George Washington traveled through time to 1980 to have Ronald Reagan tell them how to write the Constitution? I can say, "Well, me and mine are OK" but that still leaves far too many people out.

The good and bad point of democracy is that there's possibility for radicals to take over and effect change based more on ideology than sound policy-making. But on a national level, there's more input, and therefore more moderating forces. You get your Michigans and Washingtons to balance out your Californias and Texases.

On the other hand, people have literally come to cannons over trying to settle the precise balance between state versus federal control. As I recall my history, Thomas Jefferson (a man I respect, even if he was the grandpappy of crazy libertarians everywhere) and Alexander Hamilton (an odious little royalist, even if I do happen to agree with his and Madison's Federalist Papers in an number of important respects) were quite famous for their, uh, spirited disagreements over this very topic.

What I'm trying to say is the great federalism debate has been going on since this country was founded, with the two camps changing position over a number of issues throughout the years, and is not likely to end any time soon. We've been on a strong national government kick since the Civil War and the end of World War II. I expect we'll go on a big state's rights kick over the next decade or so, and see how that turns out around 2020-2024.
 

OK. I read (tried to) most of Lane and RRL's debate. The conversations seems to have left the realm of drug and gone much broader.

Let me pose a question re state versus federal to those of you more versed in the matter than I.

Let's say you are a gay person and you get married in Cal, Mass or one of the many states that allow(s/ed) gay marriage BUT you live in a state that doesn't recognize such.

What happens when you file your taxes in a state where state taxes are filed (not an issue in FL). Are you married for the purpose of state taxes even though the state you legally reside in doesn't offer gay marriage/civil unions? If you have to file as individuals, then how do you file your federal taxes? Do you get to file a joint return or have to file individual returns?

The same situation would arise with regard to a life threatening illness and decision making. You are legally married but reside in a state that doesn't allow gay marriage. Does the hospital or care facility have to recognize your marriage status from another state?

Is there any uniformity in the system that contemplates these circumstances. We are one great nation with 50 different rule books!