"The South Will Rise Again!"
CEO Magazine recently ranked Florida the third-best state for business in the country. Fellow Southern sisters of Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia held the other top four spots, with Virginia and South Carolina ranked seventh and eighth. The study polled 500 CEOs on three categories - taxation/regulation, quality of the workforce, and living environment. Each category was comprised of multiple variables which the CEOs were asked to rate on a five-point scale. The average score of the variables in each category served as the state's score for that category, and the average of all three categories was the state's final rating. The states were then ranked in order according to their ratings
Like most Southern states, Florida has a historical tradition of individual liberty which is the foundation of the state's strengths and success. The competitive advantages which spring from liberty welcome entrepreneurs, motivate productivity, and inspire innovation - all essential elements of economic growth. Especially attractive to businessmen is Florida's light tax and regulatory burden. In Florida, the state constitution bans a state income tax, and Governor Rick Scott plans to eliminate the low state corporate tax. Lower income taxes reward higher amounts of work at any given level of income, and lower corporate taxes leave more available for reinvestment or dividends. Furthermore, lower taxes place greater faith in the market, which synthesizes all the knowledge of individuals into an optimal allocation of economic resources. Lower taxes mean that more money will consumed and saved according to individual preferences. Accordingly, standards of living are higher, and markets are more efficient. In a country full of states which levy high taxes atop high federal taxes, Florida's low taxes give it an strong edge. In addition to low state taxes, Florida's light regulatory burden is also positive for business. For example, incorporating a business in Florida can be completed online in less than an hour, but in other states incorporation requires trips to the courthouse, weeks of waiting for approval, and bureaucratic scrutiny. Scott recently signed new legislation deregulating Florida's ports, and the legislature is currently debating more statewide deregulation.
With less than 7% of the workforce organized, the entitlement mindset and anti-capitalist strife of unions rarely beleaguers Florida businesses. Florida is a "right-to-work" state, which means employees must elect to join a union, and cannot be compelled simply because their workplace is organized. The labor movement never permeated the South the way it did in the rest of the country, not only because agriculture was less-suited to unionization than industry, but also because of a Southern spirit of independence which clashed with union collectivism. Furthermore, Southerners take pride in their work, make sure the job gets done right, and trust that hard work will be rewarded. Unions reject this work ethic, teaching members to value their own personal payoff above all else, fulfill only the minimum expectations of their employment, and relentlessly demand less work for more money. Without unions, employers and employees have a more harmonious and less adversarial relationship, which makes both sides more flexible and adaptive to the challenges of competition. Most importantly, however, unions restrict productivity and inflate wages above market-determined (i.e. free) levels, resulting in higher prices and unemployment. Florida is relatively free of these distortions.
Although Florida performed well in all categories, the Sunshine State received its highest ratings in living environment. State education reforms holding students and teachers more accountable have improved school performance. Specifically, schools receive funding as a function of their students' performance on annual statewide tests, and teachers must work harder to earn rewards like tenure. The higher-educated the workforce, the more competent and independent the employees, and thus the more efficient and inexpensive a business' operations. To make real strides in education, Florida should resist national standards from the federal government (e.g. "teaching the test"), stop subsidizing college (many so-called students would be better off learning a trade rather than a B.A.), and give the market a chance to accomplish what the experiment in public education has failed to achieve.
A depressed real-estate market is a double-edged sword for Florida, keeping prices low on one hand, but state unemployment high on the other. If the federal government ever allows the real-estate market to correct (e.g. ceases "quantitative easing"), these two conditions will balance in equilibrium. Real-estate costs will rise, but as resources are reallocated to other more productive investments in the course of the market correction, new opportunities for employment will ultimately emerge. Crime in Florida - especially its southern metropolitan areas - has been in decline for years, part of a general trend across the South. A thriving economy and improving public education creates positive opportunities for those who might have otherwise chosen to commit a crime. On a darker note, the threats of capital punishment (which although debatable in its justice, is no doubt a state right), and the freedom of citizens to defend themselves instills a fear of punishment into potential criminals which deters crime.
Texas defended its title as the top-ranked state, where it has held dominion since the study first began seven years ago. Texas has all the winning strengths of Florida, but as the saying goes, "Everything's bigger in Texas." Of course, if sunny beaches and beautiful women were counted under living conditions, Florida would give Texas a run for its money. As states like Texas and Florida grow, however, states like California and New York are collapsing from within. In fact, California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Michigan ranked the five worst states for business in the country. Quite simply, in these states the omnipotence of government prevails over the love of liberty. Taxes and regulations crush the economy, wasting money which the market would have utilized more effectively, lowering standards of living, and suppressing potential growth. The relationship between employers and employees is totally toxic, bureaucratic workplace controls preventing even the slightest bit of flexibility, and the extortion of unfair terms for unions overburdening employers and perpetuating artificial unemployment. Politically connected and corrupt teachers unions hold public education ransom, looting the taxpayers for lucrative compensation and benefits, insuring their careers against termination, indoctrinating students with a politically correct curriculum ("the Constitution created a nation," "Lincoln freed the slaves," "FDR ended the Great Depression," etc), and stifling any subversive forces of creativity or change. Many students are simply shoved through the system, and graduate half-indoctrinated, half-ignorant, certainly not prepared for the responsibilities of college or a career, but primed for a lifetime of government dependency. Crime runs rampant alongside artificially depressed economies and abysmal states of education, as the utter lack of opportunity drives those on the margin into despair. While the wealth of the progressive states wilts away under the storm of tyranny, Southern prosperity blooms like a beautiful magnolia under the sunshine of liberty.
Florida for Freedom
Immediately following the passage of ObamaCare, Florida stood up for liberty and filed a lawsuit against the federal government - Florida et al v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - claiming the newfound law was unconstitutional. Since then, twenty-five other states have taken Florida's lawsuit by the hand, ranging from Alaska to Texas and Maine to Washington. The states oppose ObamaCare for a multitude of reasons, but the Florida lawsuit focuses on the individual mandate and expansion of Medicaid eligibility.
Under ObamaCare, all U.S. citizens are ordered to purchase health insurance under penalty of taxation - the individual mandate. The federal government justifies the individual mandate under the "Commerce Clause" and "Necessary and Proper Clause," claiming that forcing citizens to engage in economic activity is a necessary and proper means of regulating interstate commerce. Since the decision to not purchase health insurance affects the health-insurance market, the federal government believes it has the right to regulate the decision-making of the people according to their objectives. Of course, this is outrageous, and the Florida lawsuit eviscerates the federal government's legal argument. Under any traditional understanding of the Constitution, nowhere is Congress authorized to force citizens into transactions. The original intent of the Commerce Clause was for Congress to create a simple system of laws to facilitate interstate commerce, but the Founding Fathers never imagined the clause would be twisted into a pretense for the federal government to reign supreme over the entire national economy.
Even under progressive jurisprudence, however, the Necessary-and-Proper Clause has never been interpreted to allow the federal government to regulate inactivity. Virtually any form of economic activity which has some conceivable effect on interstate commerce - such as a farmer growing crops for himself, as in Wickard v. Filburn - can be regulated under progressive doctrine, but the Necessary-and-Proper Clause has never been broadened to encompass economic inactivity. All forms of inactivity have some nebulous effect on economics, and to set a precedent for regulation of activity on this basis would justify any expansion of federal control over the minds of the people. As the libertarian Cato Institute notes in an amicus curae brief, "Doing nothing at all involves not entering into a literally infinite set of economic transactions." Indeed, even doing "something" still has an opportunity cost: there is still an array of choices which could have been, but were not, made. Interpreting the Necessary-and-Proper Clause as including the power to regulate inactivity as well as activity would grant Congress unlimited authority over all economic decisions, since virtually any decision can be construed as somehow affecting interstate commerce. Such a terrible precedent is antithetical to the concept of limited government and thus a dire threat to liberty.
Florida's lawsuit also disputes the constitutionality of ObamaCare's unilateral expansion of Medicaid eligibility. Medicaid is a federally mandated but state-administered social-welfare program, in which the federal government sets minimum standards for eligibility and coverage, provides funding based on an inverse function of state income, but leaves management to the states. State participation in Medicaid is voluntary, and all states agreed to participate under the belief that the program was a state-federal partnership which did not compromise states' rights. Although Congress does not have a constitutionally enumerated power to engage in such a scheme to provide a good/service, given the federal government's belief in its own supremacy, Medicaid's balance between the states and federal government is downright conservative. ObamaCare upsets this balance, however, expanding Medicaid's minimum standards of eligibility and coverage, imposing heavy costs onto states without the states' consent. Still suffering from the real-estate bust and recession, states like Florida are struggling just to balance their current budgets, and can hardly afford to expand their Medicaid costs. Yet that is precisely what ObamaCare has ordered them to do, and the Florida lawsuit rightly challenges this burden as unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment.
In ratifying the Constitution, the people of the states did not surrender their sovereignty, but only delegated the powers enumerated in the Constitution to the federal government. The states acceded to the Constitution as sovereigns, granted limited powers to the federal government, but as sovereigns kept all remaining powers for themselves. The Tenth Amendment codifies this relationship, stating, "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." Under ObamaCare, however, the federal government is arrogating the power to unilaterally encumber overburdened state budgets with new costs without the consent of the states. ObamaCare's expansion of Medicaid contradicts the original intent of the law, warping what was once a federal-state partnership into a one-sided federal regime which commandeers rather than cooperates with the states. Furthermore, nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to wield such control over state budgets, a power which would in effect override state legislatures. In Article IV.4 of the Constitution, the states are assured a republican form of government, but ObamaCare's top-down imposition of new costs violates the sovereignty necessary for states to exist as genuine republics. If states cannot even control their own budgets without federal interference, then they have lost their sovereignty. Since it cuts to the very core of state sovereignty as established in the Tenth Amendment, ObamaCare's unilateral increase of states' Medicaid costs is unconstitutional.
So far, Florida's lawsuit has fared well in the courts, and is currently in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. David Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey - former Reagan and H.W. Bush attorneys - have served admirably as lead counsel for the plaintiff. Oral arguments are scheduled for early June. Ultimately, however, the case will reach the Supreme Court, where it will all come down to the opinion of the notorious swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy. If Kennedy votes to uphold ObamaCare, then the federal government will have unprecedented control over Americans, and the Constitution's limits on federal power will be a dead letter.
Florida is fighting ObamaCare on other fronts, even dusting off the old states'-rights doctrines of nullification to thwart ObamaCare. The federal government and its cronies have crudely argued that "states cannot regulate the federal government," but Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would disagree. Granted, Jefferson and Madison lack the transcendent genius of Barack, but surely their opinion still counts for something these days. In the early days of the republic, Jefferson and Madison believed that the Alien & Sedition Acts unconstitutionally violated the First and Tenth amendments, and in 1798 wrote resolutions against the federal law on behalf of Virginia and Kentucky. Jefferson, representing Kentucky, wrote, "Whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." Furthermore, "Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy." Madison, representing Virginia, wrote, "The states...have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them." The Founding Fathers believed the sovereign states would fiercely defend their freedom from federal impulses to seize power beyond what was granted in the Constitution. Without strong states' rights, the federal government would be the only judge of the limits of its power, which Jefferson knew "would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers." Properly appreciating nullification - and its cousin, secession - requires understanding the principles for which the colonies originally declared independence and ratified the Constitution: liberty and self-government. In its preamble, the Constitution states that it was created "to secure the blessings of liberty," not protect the existence of the federal government at all costs. To the Founders, the federal government was a means, not an end in itself, often described in terms of "creature," "agent," or "servant" of the states, who were the "creators," "principals," or "masters." Asserting that the federal government takes precedence to states' rights is to put the cart before the horse. Jefferson, writing to Madison in the aftermath of the Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions, reflected those who love life and liberty should "sever [themselves] from that union we so much value, rather than give up the rights of self-government which we have reserved, and in which alone we see liberty, safety, and happiness." Nevertheless, the federal government has always silenced voices for states' rights with bullets rather than brains, but has never truly eradicated the power of this belief from the hearts and minds of the people of the states. Might does not make right. As V declared, however, "Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea...and ideas are bulletproof."
Coming out of the Closet
Charlie Crist, Florida's former governor and senatorial candidate, has found a new calling, and it is just as shameful as the last. Crist was the protege of Governor Jeb Bush, but once in office Crist veered sharply off to the left, shocking a state expecting a successor to Jeb. A self-styled "people's governor," Crist established a state-run property insurer (think a "public option" for property insurance) which ruined the state's private insurance business. Crist also lobbied the federal government to fund the construction of a pointless high-speed rail line, and even defended so-called stimulus spending against its conservative critics. Not surprisingly, Crist failed to win the GOP primary for Senate, but quickly declared that he would run as an independent. Unable to stake out a compelling identity in the center between the Tea-Party conservative Marco Rubio and the liberal Alex Sink, Crist's candidacy floundered. In a desperate gamble for political support from the teachers unions, Crist treacherously vetoed an education-reform bill he had earlier promised he would sign into law. Despite all his maneuvering, however, Floridians decisively rejected Crist at the polls, electing Rubio at a 20-point margin. Now, with nowhere left to go, Crist has continued his downward spiral leftward, taking roost in the Florida-based law firm of Morgan & Morgan. First, Crist pandered to the teachers unions. Second, Crist joined forces with the trial lawyers. All Crist has to do now is become a media pundit and his transformation to the dark side will be complete.
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