Pirate's Cove

Well, in practical terms, no, because the Democratic Party is about power, and wanting full federal control over everything, but, it is cute how Leftist are suddenly thrilled by the notion of actually following the 10th Amendment

AS SCOTUS VEERS FURTHER RIGHT, COULD A STATES’ RIGHTS SHIFT BENEFIT THE LEFT?
While the expected confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett looks like a nightmare for liberal America, the court may give more power to states advocating progressive policies.

In broad historical terms, this week’s hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett may not precisely be the end of the liberal era in Washington that began with the Warren court and has continued in ever-shallower form to this day. But it’s close enough. Barrett’s seemingly inevitable ascension to the Supreme Court likely spells the end of Roe v. Wade and other decisions of the liberal legal architecture, greater constraints on administrative authority, and a new era of muscular states’ rights. For liberals, it’s all pretty gloomy stuff: a hostile Supreme Court stocked with young (at least comparatively) and uncompromising conservatives and what Gary Gerstle, a professor of American history at Cambridge, described to me as the “paralysis…of central government” that could spell the end of liberal ambitions in Washington for years, if not decades.(snip)

The mental link between federalism and regressive policies is understandable, but it’s not inevitable. Justice Louis Brandeis once touted the ability of states to “try novel social and economic experiments,” as Gerstle recently described in The Atlantic. More importantly, the largest and most powerful states in the country—California and New York among them—are increasingly shading blue, and increasingly aggressive in asserting progressive positions on climate change, workers’ rights, public health, and even immigration. Historically, liberals advocated for centralization of authority in Washington because states were obstacles to progress; now the opposite is true. There is no better example of this than climate policy and environmental regulation. David Uhlmann, a professor at the University of Michigan and the director of its Environmental Law and Policy Program, described a historical inversion: “The environmental law system in the United States was created in the 1970s, largely because state governments failed to prevent pollution and in dramatic ways, leading to the Cuyahoga River on fire, the Santa Barbara oil spill soiling the beaches of California, and hazardous waste sites in cities and towns across America. Today, the equation is reversed, with the federal government failing to act on climate and other pressing environmental issues, and states taking the lead.”

Liberal enthusiasm for local authority has increased exponentially in the Trump era. States have claimed the right to contest Washington on areas as diverse as immigration, environmental rules, drug enforcement, and the use of the national guard and federal police, and California has even claimed authority to regulate the conditions in federal immigration detention centers. All this has peaked during the pandemic, when states have relied on their inherent police powers to enact all sorts of public safety rules, banded together to procure emergency equipment and regulate travel, and in one of the more extraordinary moments of recent years, disputed the federal government’s oversight of food and drugs, as Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York did when he suggested that FDA-approved vaccines might be delayed in New York until the state made an independent judgment on safety. But the recent enthusiasm is a product of circumstances, rather than a philosophical shift. Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, told me that the Democratic dalliance with states’ rights would happily end with Democratic control of the White House and Congress—and a new era of progressive legislation. It is an enticing vision, but it overestimates Congress’s ability to get things done, even in periods of unitary control. Congress’s lawmaking ability has been on a steep decline for decades, from a peak of 1,028 bills passed by the 84th Congress in 1955–56, to 498 in the 108th (2003–04), and 329 in the 114th (2015–16). An increasingly ineffective Congress, Gerstle argued to me, isn’t just a product of our difficult political moment, but the result of a half-century conservative effort to hollow out the center.

Most all of this is supposed to be in the hands of the states. They’re called states for a reason, because the original states were mostly as big, size wise, as the old European nations at the time of the drafting of the Constitution. And nations were called states. What do they call the leader of a country coming to the US? Chief of State. A new term was devised, nation-states. The framers knew how big the U.S. could become, that’s why it is the United States Of America. Kinda like the European Union. Different states have their own concerns. Hence, 10th Amendment, and Los Federales being given specific powers which they aren’t supposed to exceed.

If California wants to implement all sorts of climate change crap, let them. If they want high taxes, let them. If they want to outlaw guns, nope, that’s in the federal constitution. They want to raise their own army? Nope. Run the mail? Nope. Ban fossil fueled vehicles in the state? Yes. It is hilarious that they suddenly love the notion of State’s Rights with Trump in the presidency, and, it sounds like they think Trump will win again.

Read: Say, Could A Shift To State’s Rights Benefit The Left? »