The People Grant Power, And The People Can Take Power Away

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – All authority is derived from the people.  The only way Nanny Bloomberg can do the things he’s doing is if the people have entrusted him with a measure of their own sovereignty.  This is a very good chance to teach the children out there a thing or two about republicanism and how things are supposed to work.  Check out today’s audio and transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Mark is in Pittsburgh, first up today, Mike Church Show, Sirius XM Patriot Channel.  Hello, Mark.

Caller Mark:  Hello, Mike.  Congratulations on your second decade.

Mike:  Thank you very much.  We’re two days into decade number two now.  Decade number two begins, I surmise, as inauspiciously as decade one began, in other words without any pomp, circumstance, fanfare.  No reporters came by to ask me any questions.  My own hometown newspaper skipped on the notice I sent to them.  So be it, sir.  I guess a decade of being on an internationally-heard radio platform is just not the kind of achievement it used to be.

Caller Mark:  I don’t know, I think it’s a pretty good achievement.  My son is 13 years old and in eighth grade.  He keeps going up against one of his liberal teachers.  He said: Boy, I wish I could get Mike Church up here to straighten her out.

Mike:  I’d be happy to do it.

Caller Mark:  You may have covered this already.  Mayor Bloomberg, by what authority does he get to say this?

Mike:  That’s a good question.

Caller Mark:  I agree with the judge who shut this down because it’s unenforceable.  Who gave him the say-so?

Mike:  Apparently the citizens of New York who elected him for a third term gave him the authority, don’t you think?

Caller Mark:  Where does it say where it goes just because he’s elected?  He’s sort of like a certain other person we know “I’m elected.  I can do whatever the hell I want.  I can bomb people with drones, even though I don’t have the authority.”  As you always say, there’s a lot of brown people out there we can still get rid of.

Mike:  Mayor Bloomberg is only concerned with brown people that are consuming sugary beverages that he doesn’t think they should, and of course yellow people, white people, all people.  No one should be consuming sugary beverages unless the mayor gives them his okay, his approbation.

Caller Mark:  The other thing you were saying about Harrisburg being bankrupt, so is Pittsburgh and a few other cities I can think of in Pennsylvania.

Mike:  The State of Pennsylvania is bankrupt.  It hasn’t admitted it yet, but it is.

Caller Mark:  The club meets on Monday mornings.  Come on down.

Mike:  I will consider that, sir.  Back to the question of authority, this is an intriguing line of thought.  Where does any legislative authority come from?

Caller Mark:  Legislative authority comes from, supposedly, the Constitution and the laws.

Mike:  No, no.  All authority is derived from the people.  The only way Nanny Bloomberg can do the things he’s doing is if the people have entrusted him with a measure of their own sovereignty.  This is a very good chance to teach the children out there a thing or two about republicanism and how things are supposed to work.  The question was, where does Bloomberg get off banning cookies, banning donuts and all the other things he does?  The people of the Island of Manhattan, or wherever the territory of New York City begins and ends, have, in their sovereign capacity as free people, decided to enumerate certain things they believe they are going to collectively benefit from if they have these things acted upon in a collective manner.  You can call it public or collective.  The words are interchangeable.

In doing so, in granting legislative authority, governmental authority, they then agree that we’ve granted you these certain powers and you can’t have any more.  The only way you can get any more is if you come back to us and you ask us.  Did anyone in New York City grant to the mayor the legislative or sovereign authority to micromanage their food intake?  I don’t live in New York, so I don’t know the answer to the question.  I’m going to assume that that power was not granted.  Therefore, it is reserved.  If it’s reserved, to whom is it reserved to?  It is reserved to the people.  They can grant to the nanny that authority should they choose.  Again, I have not seen that that power has been granted, but maybe I missed it.

AG:  Something that’s going on in the DC, Maryland, Virginia on a county-wide basis, at least in Maryland — it’s already in place in DC and in one of the nice counties in Maryland.  It’s a five-cent bag tax.  Is that something that would fall under — for grocery stores or convenience stores, if you use a plastic bag from the store, they charge you five cents per bag.  Would that fall under the same idea as Bloomberg’s soda ban?

Mike:  What’s the purpose of the tax?  Are they going to use if for education?  Are they going to use it for recycling, garbage pick-up?

AG:  Environmental reasons.

Mike:  This is just for one particular county?

AG:  Montgomery County is kind of the northern county of DC.  PG County, where I live now, doesn’t have it.  Montgomery County has it.  It’s on a count-by-county basis.  DC as a whole has it.  I guess it’s to make people be greener as well as raise money for environmental waterways, that sort of thing.  It seems to fall under the same kind of purview that Bloomberg has.  I guess my understanding is that depending on the county or city, some city councils have more power than mayors and vice versa.  It’s just how it’s written into the bylaws that something like a bag tax would be in the similar vein as this soda tax or soda ban by Bloomberg.

Mike:  Do the people of these counties, did they enumerate power to regulate and micromanage the environmental affairs of that county and vest it in the council, vest it in a mayor, vest it in some sort of a bureau or agency?  If they did and that agency needs money to discharge its duty, then I’d have to say yeah.  The question is, did they vest the power?  If they did not, are they free to reclaim it if the legislature claims or tries to claim that the power has been vested?  Is there resistance in some of the counties?

AG:  Considering PG County is a poorer county than Montgomery County, yeah, there’s a lot of resistance.

Mike:  Wait a minute, “Plead Guilty” County?

AG:  Yes, my county of residence, considered a much poorer county than Montgomery County.  There’s a lot of resistance for that.

Mike:  These are all great civics lessons.  It’s a good question.  I hope I answered it.  Where does all legislative authority derive from in any free system or free civilization?  It’s supposed to come from the people.  Only the people then have the right, sovereign people, to grant or enumerate that the power be used on their behalf.  If we look at many of these things — it’s a good question that you asked.  You could use the exact same formulation and the exact same political theory that I’m giving you, which is not my theory.  This goes back to David Hume and Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.  It probably goes all the way back to Aquinas.  Who can grant authority to act?  If only the people can grant authority to act, then who can un-grant authority to act?  Not a judge, not a legislature, not a president, not a mayor.  The people then can un-grant authority, just like this ridiculousness of Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act.  If the people wish to reclaim that authority in any individual state, and claim they never granted that power to the national legislature, that’s the end of the discussion.  They didn’t grant it.  You can’t assert it.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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