The Founders and General Welfare

Lawrence attorney William Skepnek, who also taught Honors Western Civilization at the University of Kansas from 1991 to 2010, took to the op-ed page of the Lawrence Journal-World today to "inform" readers about the Founders' views about the government helping people.

According to Skepnek, "From what some politicians are saying you’d think the makers of our nation were a bunch of bare-knuckled libertarians. A nation of hardy individuals and the Founding Fathers, this narrative goes, thought government an evil — the politicians say — because Americans don’t want help and feel no particular obligation to give it to others."

Where would politicians get the idea that the Founders believed government is evil? Maybe from reading The Federalist Papers. Or perhaps from reading Thomas Paine's Common Sense. "Society in every state is a blessing," Paine wrote, "but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."

Skepnek then goes on to discuss "general welfare." "Article 8, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to provide for 'the general Welfare of the United States,'” he wrote.

Given that the U.S. Constitution has just seven articles, it's obvious that neither Skepnek nor the editor caught the "Article 8" error. Skepnek meant Article I, Section 8. However, he deserves credit for referring to Article I, Section 8, which uses the verb "provide," instead of the Preamble, which uses the verb "promote" regarding the general welfare. "Provide" goes further than "promote."

However, Skepnek misinterprets the meaning of "general welfare." That term does not refer to programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and education (the word "education" does not appear in the Constitution). 

Webster’s Dictionary in 1828 offered two definitions for the word “welfare”:

1. Exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity or evil; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; prosperity; happiness; applied to persons. 2. Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government; applied to states.

The words of the Founders make it clear that, by “welfare,” they meant the second definition, i.e., “applied to states.” By “general,” they meant “national.” According to Article III of the Articles of Confederation (1777), “The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.” 

Note the similarities between the words used in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and Article III of the Articles of Confederation. In fact, in a January 21, 1792 letter to Edmund Pendleton, James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution, noted that the general welfare clause in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution was copied from Article III of the Articles of Confederation. In that same letter, Madison wrote, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.”

The enumerated powers of Congress are listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Note that nothing resembling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, public education, farm subsidies, No Child Left Behind, or Obamacare can be found amongst those powers. There is also nothing in there about the federal government spending money on roads (with the exclusion of “post roads”) and bridges. In fact, the Constitutional Convention rejected an explicit attempt to authorize spending by the federal government for internal improvements.

As president, Madison vetoed a bill that authorized funding “for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses.” In a June 16, 1817 letter to Albert Gallatin, former President Thomas Jefferson expressed his support for Madison’s veto:

You will have learned that an act for internal improvement, after passing both Houses, was negatived by the President. The act was founded, avowedly, on the principle that the phrase in the Constitution which authorizes Congress “to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare,” was an extension of the powers specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general welfare; and this, you know, was the federal doctrine. Whereas, our tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. I think the passage and rejection of this bill a fortunate incident.

Would a strict and proper interpretation of the general welfare clause mean that no government can spend taxpayers’ dollars on bridges, roads, education, and social welfare programs? No. According to the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This means that a state such as Massachusetts could enact Romneycare, on which socialists claim Obamacare was based, while other states would be free to go in other directions. As U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in 1932, “A single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel and social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

No biased media? Think again, Journal-World

According to a January 18 editorial entitled “Biased media? Think again” in the Lawrence Journal-World, “media haters” need to get over the notion that there is a liberal bias in the media. Their evidence to support this contention? “There is a president named Trump.”

The Journal-World suggests the media could have prevented a Trump presidency If they had released a dossier compiled by someone claiming to be a former British intelligence official alleging that the Russians had compromising information about Donald Trump. “If the mainstream media’s goal was to see Hillary Clinton elected, why didn’t the mainstream media report voraciously about the dossier and its allegations?” the editorial asks.

There’s a good reason the media didn’t do that: The media, which had access to the dossier for months prior to the election, failed to verify the allegations. Even Buzzfeed, which released the dossier after the election, acknowledged the dossier contained errors.

Imagine if the mainstream media had released an error-riddled dossier full of unverified information just before the election. Would the voters have elected Clinton, as the Journal-World suggests? Or would they have been further angered by yet another example of the media working to help Clinton? The Journal-World has apparently forgotten WikiLeaks showed us how members of the media were assisting Clinton and the Democrats behind the scenes. The many examples of this collusion include the following:

• As a contributor to CNN, Donna Brazile emailed members of the Clinton campaign to tip them off about a debate question concerning the death penalty.
• CNBC correspondent and New York Times contributor John Harwood, who, as a moderator in one of the Republican primary debates, characterized Trump’s campaign as “a comic-book version of a presidential campaign,” emailed John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, several times to offer advice. “Ben Carson could give you real trouble in a general [election],” Harwood wrote in a May 8, 2015, email.
• New York Times reporter, Mark Leibovich, emailed Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri parts of an interview he did with Clinton, and then asked permission for the “option to use the following” portions. Palmieri offered editing suggestions, including that he cut a reference Clinton made to Sarah Palin and remove Clinton’s quote, “And gay rights has moved much faster than women’s rights or civil rights, which is an interesting phenomenon.” Palmieri ended one email: “Pleasure doing business!”
• In a January 13, 2015, email, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill wrote the following to Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and others: “As discussed on our call, we are all in agreement that the time is right to place a story with a friendly journalist in the coming days that positions us a little more transparently while achieving the above goals. For something like this, especially in the absence of us teasing things out to others, we feel that it’s important to go with what is safe and what has worked in the past, and to a publication that will reach industry people for recruitment purposes. We have had a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico over the last year. We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed.”

 The Journal-World also notes the “mainstream media is not made up of political strategists but rather of journalists.” That’s not always true. Many “journalists” have been political strategists or are closely related to one. For example, George Stephanopoulos, anchor with ABC’s This Week, was a political strategist with Bill Clinton's 1992 U.S. presidential campaign and, later, a member of the Clinton administration. He has no degree in journalism.

Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC's Meet the Press, is married to Kristian Denny Todd, "a veteran of numerous successful Democratic campaigns." After serving as senior communications strategist to U.S. Senator Jim Webb’s 2006 victory in Virginia, she "joined Steve Jarding and Jessica Vanden Berg in creating Maverick Strategies and Mail providing direct mail and consulting services for Democratic candidates and progressive causes." Chuck Todd himself worked for the 1992 presidential campaign of former Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). He didn’t earn a degree in journalism (or any other subject).

Chris Cuomo, co-host of CNN's New Day, is the brother of Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York. Their father, the late Mario Cuomo, was also a Democrat who served as governor of New York. Cuomo, who has no degree in journalism, used his family’s name to get into journalism, and often parrots Democratic Party talking points.
Last month CNN hired Laura Jarrett to report on the Trump Justice Department. Jarrett has little experience in journalism. However, her mother, Valerie Jarrett, was a senior adviser to Barack Obama.

The Journal-World itself is not free of liberal bias. It ran few, if any, pro-Trump opinion pieces during the weeks leading up to the November 8 election. Even its regular conservative writers, Charles Krauthammer and George Will, attacked Trump on a regular basis. The Journal-World made little effort to seek out and publish pro-Trump voices.

The Journal-World recently began running Connie Schultz’s syndicated column. Schultz regularly attacks Trump and Republicans in general. So does her husband, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who is a member of the Democratic leadership in the Senate. This relationship is not noted in her tagline, and few readers are aware of the fact that Schultz was forced to resign from The Cleveland Plain Dealer because of this conflict of interest.

This is not the first time the Journal-World has overlooked a conflict of interest. For years, Scott Rothschild served as the newspaper’s statehouse reporter. He simultaneously served as the president of a liberal organization in Topeka. Rothschild kept his job at the Journal-World even after he delivered a political message to the very lawmakers he was paid to cover.

The Journal-World also demonstrates a liberal bias by failing to report on certain stories or reluctantly reporting on these stories after national media did so first. For example, in April 2009 the Lawrence school district decided not to renew Tim Latham’s contract with the district. According to Latham, a history teacher, the director of human resources said he was not a good fit for the district. 

Why wasn’t Latham a good fit? According to Latham and several of his students, Latham’s conservative views had something to do with it. Jan Gentry, then assistant principal at Lawrence High School, seemed to have had several problems with Latham. According to Latham, Gentry called him into her office and said that his school-affiliated website was "too patriotic." The site had links to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Air Force, the U.S. Army, and other military- and history-related sites. His site also said he wanted students to love their country.

Gentry also allegedly asked Latham about his “McCain-Plain” bumper sticker. "She said, 'I don't know how you could support that woman,'" Latham said. "That was the beginning of what was going on. They were trying to find a reason to get rid of me."

Latham appeared on the Fox News Channel on June 15, 2009, with two of his former students.NewsBusters, a website of the Media Research Center, included an item on Latham’s story four days earlier. Latham was also interviewed on Kansas City’s KCMO. However, the Journal-World didn’t report on Latham’s story until June 18, after the district reversed course and renewed Latham’s contract.

In early October 2013, I shared evidence with the Journal-World concerning an Obamacare “navigator” in Lawrence who had legal issues. I didn’t hear back from a reporter, so, after several days, I sent the evidence to The Daily Caller, which is a conservative website. The Journal-World didn’t report on the navigator’s outstanding arrest warrant until after story headlined The Drudge Report.

Another story currently being ignored by the Journal-World is the controversy associated with the San Francisco-based Pacific Educational Group (PEG). Since 2009, the Lawrence school district has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with PEG with the goal of closing the achievement gaps between white and minority students. (The Topeka school district more recently began working with PEG). This is a laudable goal. However, in addition to other school districts throughout the country finding PEG’s program to be ineffective, some commentators have argued that PEG promotes socialism and even racism. The Journal-World has yet to report on these negative aspects.
"Most journalists, I have found, aren't that bothered that the typical newsroom is so liberal," Dr. Timothy Groseclose, whose research has quantified the general leftward bias of the media, wrote in Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. "One reason is that they often don't realize how liberal they are. As Bernard Goldberg has noted, journalists are like fish.  Having lived their entire lives in water, they don't realize they're wet."

No biased media? Think again, Journal-World. You’re all wet.