Economist: The Cracks are Showing (US infrastructure)

[SnyderShrugged]

That's the relevant clause when it comes to federal transportation infrastructure.

The constitution was written to be specific and without need for "reading in to" style of interpretation.

Nothing about regulating commerce indicates the right of congress to finance roads.

If that was the intent, the why was there a need for the writers to indicate a specific enumerated power of "Post roads"?

It;s simple, and I'll state it again, If it isnt a specific enumerated power, then it rightfully belongs to the states and local governments as a right and responsibility.

I absolutely hate when the wording of the constitution is read into rather than actually just reading what it says and following it. The founders wrote it so the common citizen could understand it.

[Zen-like Todd]

The constitution was written to be specific and without need for "reading in to" style of interpretation.

Nothing about regulating commerce indicates the right of congress to finance roads.

If that was the intent, the why was there a need for the writers to indicate a specific enumerated power of "Post roads"?

It;s simple, and I'll state it again, If it isnt a specific enumerated power, then it rightfully belongs to the states and local governments as a right and responsibility.

I absolutely hate when the wording of the constitution is read into rather than actually just reading what it says and following it. The founders wrote it so the common citizen could understand it.

Gibbons v. Ogden suggests otherwise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbons_v._Ogden

[DjTj]

I absolutely hate when the wording of the constitution is read into rather than actually just reading what it says and following it. The founders wrote it so the common citizen could understand it.

I don't think this is true at all. The Founders were not "common citizens" in the way we understand that word today. They were the educated elite, and nobody except for white male landowners were even allowed to vote. If they had so much trust in the common citizen's ability to understand the Constitution, they would have supported more universal suffrage, or at least a system that involved more direct democracy, and they wouldn't have entrusted Constitutional interpretation to Justices who were appointed for life.

Even the earliest Supreme Court decisions, from McCullough v. Maryland to Marbury v. Madison, were in no way easy to predict just by reading the Constitution.

The whole English tradition of law is based on the idea that cases are not easy to interpret simply by reading one document. Napoleonic Codes were designed to provide clear rules from direct reading of laws, but the English tradition relies on general rules from documents like the Constitution and a learned interpretation of those rules in light of precedent from earlier cases. Being a Judge in our legal system has never been a job for the common citizen.

[SnyderShrugged]

I don't think this is true at all. The Founders were not "common citizens" in the way we understand that word today. They were the educated elite, and nobody except for white male landowners were even allowed to vote. If they had so much trust in the common citizen's ability to understand the Constitution, they would have supported more universal suffrage, or at least a system that involved more direct democracy, and they wouldn't have entrusted Constitutional interpretation to Justices who were appointed for life.

Even the earliest Supreme Court decisions, from McCullough v. Maryland to Marbury v. Madison, were in no way easy to predict just by reading the Constitution.

The whole English tradition of law is based on the idea that cases are not easy to interpret simply by reading one document. Napoleonic Codes were designed to provide clear rules from direct reading of laws, but the English tradition relies on general rules from documents like the Constitution and a learned interpretation of those rules in light of precedent from earlier cases. Being a Judge in our legal system has never been a job for the common citizen.

Jefferson disagreed.

"In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793. ME 1:408

"When an instrument admits two constructions, the one safe, the other dangerous, the one precise, the other indefinite, I prefer that which is safe and precise. I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless." --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803. ME 10:418

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction." --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803. ME 10:419

"The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption--a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Address, 1801. ME 10:248

"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:449

"Strained constructions... loosen all the bands of the Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to George Ticknor, 1817. FE 10:81

and finally, back to the question of article 1, section 8..

"The construction applied... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States," and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof," goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to [the General Government's] power by the Constitution... Words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. ME 17:385

[ChocolateCitySkin]

Well this thread has derailed.

And since when did infrastructure only mean roads?

[Springfield]

Here's my complaint. We can't have a goddamn thunderstorm here without a power outage. Not your ordinary 5 minute outage, but a dumb ass 4 hour outage. It's rediculous.

Fix the power grid, is that too much to ask?

[ChocolateCitySkin]

Here's my complaint. We can't have a goddamn thunderstorm here without a power outage. Not your ordinary 5 minute outage, but a dumb ass 4 hour outage. It's rediculous.

Fix the power grid, is that too much to ask?

You have trees + above ground power lines. G' luck on that.

[Springfield]

You have trees + above ground power lines. G' luck on that.

You could maintain the trees properly and they wouldn't collapse onto the above ground power lines. When I see a tree that is hanging inches away from a power line, that just screams "fall onto me!".

I don't remember power outages like this. I remember outages for a few minutes and hours with bad storms (like tropical storms). Every single thunderstorm that comes through? We need to do something about that.

[DjTj]

Jefferson disagreed.

Well, I'm sure he disagreed, but he was on the losing end of almost every major early Supreme Court decision, so his interpretation of the Constitution lost out to the Federalist position.

...I also wonder if perhaps Jefferson's generally more Francophile sentiments made him more sympathetic to a civil law approach rather than the Anglo-American legal tradition established by John Marshall.

Maybe the important lesson is that the Founders disagreed greatly on this point ... and for better or worse, they went the more complicated route.

[twa]

Well this thread has derailed.

And since when did infrastructure only mean roads?

Drill Now ,build refineries and power plants :cool:

Hell they even stopped the new Solar plants for environmental review now