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The Character & Color of Authority - Part 2 By Dan Meador make what amount to end runs around constitutional limitations. The purpose of this composition is to bring the fruit of the best research into focus, and construct a reasonably comprehensive picture of the macabre scheme that undermines sovereignty and solvency of the nation. The Scheme & Its Effect Governments of the United States, the Union of several States, and possessions of the United States are embroiled in a scheme known as Cooperative Federalism, sometimes identified simply as Federalism. The nonconstitutional scheme presumes that each of the several States is an instrumentality of the United States on a par with insular possessions of the United States [End Note 1], rather than semi-independent State republics, (1) restricted only by constitutional prohibitions and mandates, and (2) subject only to constitutionally-enumerated powers of the United States. This scheme was made possible by emergence of a second government. Yet even today, those not familiar with the two capacities of United States government find it difficult to grasp implications. However, some who held responsible positions when the second or shadow government emerged saw the danger. Justice Harlan, a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, was among them. One of his more lucid criticisms was written in his dissenting opinion in Downes v. Bidwell (1901), the first of four insular tax cases that provided a conceptual platform for the current de facto (authority in fact, but without law) system that engulfs not only insular possessions of the United States, but State republics party to the Constitution: The idea prevails with some -- indeed, it found expression in arguments at the bar -- that we have in this country substantially or practically two national governments, one to be maintained under the constitution, with all its restrictions; the other to be maintained by Congress outside and independently of that instrument, by exercising such powers as other nations of the earth are accustomed to exercise. It is one thing to give such a latitudinarian construction to the Constitution as will bring the exercise of power by Congress, upon a particular occasion or upon a particular subject, within its provisions. It is quite a different thing to say that Congress may, if it so elects, proceed outside the Constitution. The glory of our American system of government is that it was created by a written constitution which protects the people against the exercise of arbitrary, unlimited power, and the limits of which instrument may not be passed by the government it created, or by any branch of it, or even by the people who ordained it, except by amendment or change of its provisions. [2]
The United States, via constitutionally-delegated powers which are statutorily activated by Congress, carries out certain responsibilities in relation to the several States party to the Constitution and the people of the several States, but Congress has what is described as plenary or near-absolute power in territory belonging to the United States. The insular tax cases, addressed a unique situation: Insular possessions ceded by Spain in 1898 following the Spanish-American War were the first territories acquired by the United States where the cession treaty did not incorporate the territory and people in the constitutional scheme. Consequently, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and other provinces ceded by Spain were to become more like British Crown colonies than territory previously acquired by the United States. This division, and limited application of the Constitution, was what alarmed Justice Harlan and others who clearl |