Rebuttal: Jesse Kelly is wrong, it’s not time for the US to divorce

I find it a bit ironic that the Federalist is no longer Federalist, or at least Jesse Kelly is promoting the idea that federalism has no hope of a resurgence in his latest article with the Federalist, titled, “It’s time for the United States to divorce before things get dangerous.”

Jesse thinks its time to split the country into two pieces and have two separate nations. He even provided a map, which he calls, “a peaceful solution.”

The peaceful solution. pic.twitter.com/LVZwP7h70b

— Jesse Kelly® (@JesseKellyDC) April 7, 2018

I agree with Jesse we have a problem with this country but even this split won’t help. Do you think Idaho, Montana, or even the Dakotas would be happy to be governed by progressive?

Here is the real problem, it’s not only that we have forgotten what Federalism is, but more importantly, we have forgotten about local control.

I want you to think about something. Do you think the Federalist or Anti-Federalist would be happy with how the federal and state governments operate? These people that fought a bloody revolution would be appalled to see what has happened to our country. If they were alive today, I would be confident they would be asking us, why the heck haven’t we overthrown the entire government.

I agree something must be done but this idea will not work, and I’m fairly certain it will not have a peaceful solution.

I live in California and happen to be the Republican candidate for California State Controller. If you want to talk about anger, we have the CalExit movement to secede from the US and become our own country. We have New California that wants to split the state in two, another proposed ballot initiative to try and break the state into three new states. Californians from both sides of the political spectrum are frustrated, and the biggest problem is we think we can solve it by establishing new overbearing centralized governments.

This type of thinking is what got us into the mess we are in. We need something that gets us back to local control and limits centralized government that controls every aspect of our lives.

My Solution

People want local control, but they are not sure how we can move from the dysfunction and division we currently see ourselves in, to genuine freedom and local control.

People cannot do a nationwide ballot initiative to remove power from the federal government and amend the Constitution, but people can strip power from the state government. Remember people created the states and the states created the federal government, therefore you must follow the same path. You start with the people taking power from the state and then the state taking power from the federal government.

So where do you attack to remove power? You do that by going after the power of taxation. The federal government was in check when it couldn’t tax people directly (16th Amendment). It’s the golden rule, “he who has the gold makes the rules.” Once they controlled most of the money, we saw the exponential growth of centralized government and the state government gladly followed suit.

So under my tax plan called Trickle-up-Taxation, we bypass the state legislature and put a ballot initiative straight to the people to remove most taxing authority and regulatory authority for local matters to the counties and cities. The state will be limited to things that only the state can do, and your local municipalities will handle all other issues. The state will no longer tax you directly but indirectly but by taking a portion of all tax dollars generated on the local level.

Progressive will have more money and greater control in their areas to establish their progressive utopia and conservatives can have low taxes and be left alone. If the state government tries to take a more significant percentage of tax dollars generated locally, you will have conservatives and progressive pushing back on the state government for trying to take money out of their local community.

States will want to grow their power, but since the People have restrained them, they will look to the only place they can take power and money from, the federal government.

There will be an incentive now for states to come together in an Article V Convention of States. The federal government might not like it, but they have no choice in the matter. They are powerless to stop the states.

This is how you get back to the original intent of self-government, local control and representation, and freedom to decide what is best for you and your family and not have every issue decided by a government institution far removed from your community.

Jesse, it’s not time for a divorce. It’s time we rise up and take our country back and finally break the shackles of overbearing centralized government and go back to our roots of self-government and self-determination. I believe we can and we will do this and I believe Trickle-up-Taxation is the key to our success.

Konstantinos Roditis is a candidate for California State Controller. You can learn more about his campaign at cacontroller.com, and you can follow him on Twitter & Facebook.