States Sell Out Rights For Thirty Pieces Of Silver

     This has been one of those weeks when the flurry of political activity is so great that it is extremely hard to focus on any one thing. From the historic speech by Israel's prime minister and the childish response to it by Democrats, to the revelation that Hillary Clinton had a private email server setup in her house that she used for all her correspondence during her four years as Secretary of State, in violation of the law. From a decision in the Ferguson Missouri case in which the Eric Holder Department of Justice supported officer Darren Wilson's account of the shooting death of Michael Brown, to Speaker of the House John Boehner's complicity with Barack Obama in the violation of the constitution with regards to immigration policy. It certainly has been a dangerous and busy week for our country.
     One of the less talked about issues that arose this week is the results of President Obama's commission on community policing. A commission formed in the looted-out rubble of Ferguson and several other "victim" deaths at the hands of police in New York and Cleveland. The report recommended "suggestions" for local police forces to implement to better serve their communities and be more sensitive to the plight of the populations therein.
     Of course these "suggestions" and "recommendations" are mandatorily enforced by the federal government by threatening the flow of federal tax money to any state that does not implement the commission's findings. Many on the Right have suggested that this is paramount to the Obama administration federalizing police forces across the country in direct violation of the constitution. But I think that over exaggeration for the sake of effect misses the larger point of who is to blame for the federal government having such powers of extortion.
     The federal government has absolutely no authority to tell states how to operate unless it involves inter-state commerce. The reason that the federal government has the power of extortion they do is the states' and voters' fault. States, and the populations within them, have become addicted to federal taxpayer funds. The voters in most states vote for the politicians who promise to bring the most federal tax dollars to their states. And in so doing the states have made themselves subservient to the federal government in matters that are strictly forbidden by the constitution of the federal authority.
     Like my mother always told me, "Whoever supports you, controls you." My brethren on the Right can complain all they want about states' rights being violated by the federal government, but that violation could not have occurred without the complicity of the states. They are the ones who have ceded their constitutional authority to the federal government and betrayed their citizens, all for the thirty pieces of silver from their big government masters.