Advice for DOGE: Look at the Enumerated Powers

We’re within three weeks of the (hopefully) peaceful transfer of power. With the vacuum of leadership in the current administration, the world is already turning to President-Elect Donald Trump as the de facto leader, and change is underway. I expect there’s a lot more change to come.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not a new government agency or entity; it is to be a commission to make recommendations, which, as I understand it, would then have to be followed up by the legislative or executive branches, depending on what a particular recommendation pertains to. It is to be co-led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Both are really smart guys. And Vivek, at least what I’ve heard from him, understands the Constitution pretty well. Elon has shown his ability to do nearly impossible things, one of which was to turn Twitter into X, with most of the employees gone, and make it now a much freer-speech platform. Maybe they can do the job.

A tweet Elon Musk put out in November, embracing the Doge meme
image that predates the creation of DOGE by more than a decade.

Here's what Wikipedia says about DOGE:

Musk has suggested that the commission could help to cut the U.S. federal budget by up to US$2 trillion through measures such as reducing waste, abolishing redundant agencies, and downsizing the federal workforce. Ramaswamy also stated that DOGE may eliminate entire federal agencies and reduce the number of federal employees by as much as 75%. DOGE may attempt to do this through re-enacting Schedule F. Musk has also proposed consolidating the number of federal agencies from more than 400 to fewer than 100.

It looks like a complicated and difficult undertaking—at which I hope they succeed.

While I have little expectation that advice from me will get to them, I offer it anyway. I’d like to streamline their process by suggesting that they simply go by the Constitution. If the power wasn’t granted to the federal government in the Constitution, then do away with that function.

We’ve looked at the limits of the Constitution before (specifically here, here, and here): the purposes in the Preamble, the enumerated powers, and then the just-to-make-sure-these-aren’t-ignored limits spelled out in the Bill of Rights. But we haven’t done it in the context of an actual, possibly imminent, opportunity to make it happen. So let’s review.

The Constitution’s Preamble, in bulleted form, gives us the mission statement for the federal government:

We the People of the United States, in order to:

·         form a more perfect Union,

·         establish Justice,

·         insure domestic Tranquility,

·         provide for the common defence,

·         promote the general Welfare,

·         and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,

do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

You could sum up this mission as to protect the people as a whole: to secure their life, liberty, and property. So anything else in the Constitution will be to make those things happen. Most notably, there are the enumerated powers, from Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, spelling out for Congress what it can legislate, what the Executive can then administer and carry out, and what the Judiciary can then adjudicate on:

Article I, Section 8, is where you find most of the enumerated powers.

1.     The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

2.     To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

3.     To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

4.     To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

5.     To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

6.     To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

7.     To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

8.     To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

9.     To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

10.  To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

11.  To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

12.  To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

13.  To provide and maintain a Navy;

14.  To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

15.  To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

16.  To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

17.  To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And

18.  To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Article I, Sections 9, lists some limitations on the federal government, and Section 10 lists some limitations on the states.

Then there are a few more enumerated powers added as amendments to the Constitution:

19.  Thirteenth Amendment: To outlaw slavery and involuntary servitude (except as a punishment for crime), and to enforce this prohibition.

20.  Sixteenth Amendment: To lay and collect taxes on income—changing this from the original language in Article I, Section 8, which didn’t allow this type of direct tax.

21.  Fifteenth, Twenty-fourth, and Twenty-sixth Amendments: To enforce equal voting rights laws across all the states.

It undoubtedly doesn’t take 400 agencies (and probably not even 100 DOGE set as their goal) to do these 21 things. That means the federal government is doing a whole lot that it hasn’t been given power by the people to do—including things that the people can’t rightly give to government (for example, redistribution of wealth: if an individual does it, it's theft; and so it is when the government does it).

So, for the benefit of DOGE, here’s a list of powers the federal government has NOT been given:

ü  Power to govern education.

ü  Power to offer charitable services (welfare).

ü  Power to force purchase of a service or product (such as health insurance).

ü  Power to forbid purchase of a legal service or product (such as gas-powered vehicles).

ü  Power to require payment into a retirement supplement (Social Security).

ü  Power to interfere with commerce that doesn’t cross state lines.

ü  Power to redefine marriage in a way that is contrary to long-standing law and tradition, and to enforce acceptance of the new definition, even when it violates personal religious beliefs.

ü  Power to subsidize any industry (such as alternative “green” energy).

ü  Power to target industries in accordance with a social agenda (gun manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, nuclear energy, oil and gas, fast food, or sugary drinks).

ü  Power to use taxpayer funds to support abortion, nor power to claim abortion as a federal right.

ü  Power to subsidize or control (or forgive) student loans.

ü  Power to take over any industry (as when the Obama administration temporarily took over GM and banks).

ü  Power to favor or disfavor individuals or groups for hiring, educational opportunities, or other purposes based on their race, religion, or ESG or other invented social score or category.

ü  Power to coerce a person to subject themselves to a particular medical intervention.

ü  Power to censor legal speech, or encourage or allow censorship by businesses as censors-by-proxy for the government.

 ü  Power to partner with businesses to accomplish by proxy what the federal government is not lawfully allowed to do.

ü  Power to commit US military lives and US treasure to fight wars not declared by the US Congress.

 ü  Power to use regulatory agencies to legislate, execute, and adjudicate laws within a single branch of government.

I’m sure that list is not exhaustive. But it’s enough to get DOGE started. Anything the government is doing that it has not been specifically granted the power to do—has to go.

The question will be how to cut: swiftly and completely, or more gradually but on a definite timetable with the end in sight (so a future administration can’t revive it). Personally, right now, I’m in favor of swiftly and completely. It’s working for Argentina right now. And we have reason to believe, not only will cutting mean less government spending, but it will free up all kinds of resources to be used for creating value that's currently being blocked from being created.

Exceptions to swiftly and completely might be where long-standing promises have gone into financial planning, wherein the government has deprived people of alternatives. Taking money out of paychecks for Social Security would be an example; you can’t take it out all those years, depriving earners of the use and investment power of their money, and then take away the promised, albeit inadequate, benefit. (COLA for Social Security benefits this year is 0.2%, in a high-inflation environment, which is clearly inadequate.) Then the question will be how to get us from the current mess we’re in to a constitution-abiding state.

DOGE could keep in mind this Spherical Model axiom:

Whenever government attempts something beyond the proper role of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it causes unintended consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the interference.

What DOGE has been tasked with will not be easy; but it is simple: limit the federal government to its proper role by abiding by the Constitution. I pray for them to take this rare opportunity and make the radical changes necessary to rescue our constitutional republic.

Wrapping Up the Year

2024 has been quite a year.

It has become something of a tradition to end the year with an explanation of the Spherical Model, an alternative to the right/left model of ideas. The Spherical Model is three dimensional, with freedom in the northern hemisphere and tyranny in the southern hemisphere, with east and west divided into levels of interest, from very local, to state or region, to nation, and on up to world. You can find explanations at these links:

·        The basics (medium version) 

·        The website (long version) 

·        The video (short version) 

The Political, Economic, and Social Spheres of the Spherical Model

For the rest of this post, we’ll whoosh through some of what happened in this very strange year, within the political, economic, and social spheres—and the interrelationships among those spheres.

 

Early in 2024

Last winter we were looking at a lot of censorship, and things that were just wrong. Prisoners were still being held because of J6, even nonviolent “offenders.” The first three posts in January point out some of these injustices:

·        Predicting the Future: More Bad or Good at Last, January 5, 2024 

·        What We Know Now, Three Years Later, January 12, 2024 

·        Censor, Indict, Execute, January 18, 2024 

Then there’s concern over the border. Texas Governor Abbott wrote a letter calling out the Biden administration for dereliction of duty in failing to secure the southern border, and declaring Texas’s right to self-defense. The Biden administration went about thwarting Texas’s efforts, which included cutting razor wire fencing. 

 

Primaries and Conventions

The intensity of an election year got well underway in February, with the Primary Elections here being held the first Tuesday of March. I had to campaign to maintain my precinct chair position; I’d never had a challenger before:

·        Primaries and Conventions in Texas, February 9, 2024 

·        Primary Ballot Picks, February 17, 2024 

·        Lowest Level Primary Election Campaign Debrief, March 8, 2024  

Right after the Primary Election, the convention season started, first with precinct conventions, then district (or county) conventions, and state and national levels. After three convention cycles of editing the state platform, I passed that duty along this year, and only helped a bit before and after the convention. So I was just a regular delegate at the state convention. I walk through one idea, school choice, through our district convention. (I spoke, but not very well, on this issue in the state platform education subcommittee in May.)

 

Nature: Eclipse, Derecho, and Hurricane Beryl

We had some signs and wonders this year. In April was the total eclipse, which we got to experience in Waco, in the path of totality.

The derecho went west to east, and Hurrican Beryl
went south to north, both right over us.

In May, a derecho (tornadic, straight-wind storm that traveled hundreds of miles) passed right over us. And in July, Hurricane Beryl also passed right over us; X marked the spot right over our house. But, except for being without power for 6 days in May, we were essentially unaffected, while roofs, trees, and fences were down all around us. No AC, no freezer/refrigerator can be life threatening in Texas temperatures; we had a small generator for the appliances, and I slept with an ice pack for the heat—and then left town after 5 days, for the state convention.

 

Presidential Election Season

It was a very strange presidential election season. Biden chose to run again, even though four years ago signs of dementia were already present. (Naomi Wolf wrote about this in her book, Facing the Beast, in which she talks about her ostracism for doing her job as a journalist and noticing Biden’s decline, which I wrote about in April.) In late June, Biden debated Donald Trump, and performed disastrously badly. The debate was before either national convention nomination, and was late in the evening, making it possible to speculate he was set up to fail in time to allow a substitute. Despite concessions to make things easier for Biden, he was obviously cognitively impaired.

The iconic moment of Donald Trump, after being shot in the ear,
before being ushered offstage, photo credit to Evan Vucci/AP

Two weeks later, an assassination attempt grazed President Trump’s ear, but he was miraculously spared. (A second assassination attempt was thwarted on September 15.) And a week later, July 21, despite protestations up through just the night before, Biden stepped away from the race (but not the presidency, supposedly) and endorsed Kamala Harris. She had never been anyone’s choice. But the Dems made a go of it, and tried to make their convention exciting. There was a debate, in which she did badly, but maybe not as badly as expected, because expectations were so low. Meanwhile, Trump did long-form podcasts all over the place, allowing many new demographics to see him without the filter of the lying media.

Trump won, handily, in November, allowing so many of us tyrannized ones a sigh of relief, and he immediately began announcing his plans. The world is responding as though he is already the president. Biden, when not vacationing, continues to mess around in the background, but ineffectually. He has tried yet again, illegally, to forgive school debt. He has pardoned his son Hunter, and a long list of violent felons, and commuted the sentences of all but three federal death-row inmates. And we can reasonably speculate that he is trying to start WWIII before he leaves office.

 

Prophecy and the Beasts of Revelation 13

The sea beast and the land beast of Revelation 13.
This image is part of a larger illustration comparing
the beasts in Daniel and Revelation, found here.

There have been some events we might tie to prophecy—or, if not, then simply gain understanding through metaphor—from the book of Revelation and some other Bible prophecies. This list starts with one in March 2023, and then there are these:

·        The Propaganda Beast, August 10, 2024 

·        Concerning News, September 28, 2024 

·        The Propaganda Beast Is in a Doom Loop, October 31, 2024 

One hopeful point from this last days speculation is that we might be seeing better times, at least here in the near future. There are evidences for such hopefulness—besides the Trump win, and DOGE, and some other great cabinet picks. In Argentina and El Salvador, for example, things have gotten better suddenly.  And maybe that gives us courage to try those drastic but needed changes here.

 

Education

I’ve written a few times this year on education, including on our local school board, which is working hard and doing well under some trying circumstances:

·        The Short Answer Is Fear, March 28, 2024 (which I mentioned above) 

·        How’s That New School Board Doing? May 11, 2024 

·        The Costs of Standing Strong, June 21, 2024 

·        Real Education Choice, August 1, 2024 

 

SCOTUS

Supreme Court illustration from Epoch Times

I wrote only once (but it was long) on the Supreme Court’s session, in early July. It wasn’t a bad year overall. That’s probably why the Biden administration threatened to pack the court—adding justices to get up to 13, for “balance.” It does not appear they have the will or ability to make good on such a threat. There was a lot about lawfare this year, but I won't list them today.

 

Understanding the Constitution and Related Philosophy

There were a few posts related to philosophy, or understanding the Constitution:

·        What Does Populism Mean? (This includes some explanation about the Spherical Model), August 30, 2024 

·        Preserving the Constitution Includes Knowing What’s In It, September 12, 2024 

·        The False Prophet of the Great and Abominable Church, October 11, 2024 

·        Get Used to Living in Zion, November 7, 2024 

 

I Got Censored

I wrote earlier this month (December 7) about the House Subcommittee Report on that illness that was going around in 2020 and beyond. I got censored. Literally, this blogging platform removed the post. It seemed safe to talk about what a House subcommittee put into an official document. But that was deemed “Misleading Content.” Oddly, I have written on this topic literally dozens of times (55 previous times, by my count), and only now, when it is clear that I was telling the truth and the media and medical experts were the ones putting out “misleading content”—only now am I censored. I reread what I wrote. I don’t see where I was either misleading or untruthful—or even careless. I cannot, therefore, “review” the content and make it align with their policy, since their policy seems to me to be both arbitrary and averse to the truth.

I have not widely advertised this blog. It gets read, but I would assume mainly by friends and their friends (and some random people from around the globe who happen upon it). Obscurity has, I thought, kept me away from censoring eyes. I am not told why this post caught their attention—and just as we are going into a new Trump era, where we have hope that censorship will be done away. I was simply told by the Blogger Team that “it was flagged for us to review,” and they have “determined that it violates our guidelines,” so they deleted it.

I do not want to lose the 1400+ posts I’ve written on this platform. With that as a priority, I will be looking for alternatives in the coming year.

 

Looking Forward

One of my current prayers is that things will be made right soon. It looks possible now, that this prayer may be granted, or at least begin to be granted, in the coming year. I expect to continue chronicling things as they unfold. The writing helps me understand what’s happening more clearly, and I hope it helps readers as well.

Celebrating His Coming

I enjoyed watching an Unshaken video going through Handel’s Messiah and listing all the ways that Jesus is referred to in that work, along with the scripture verses the words come from. Surprisingly, Messiah is only used in the title. The many other names all come from scriptures, most often Isaiah, I believe. I took those names and made a word cloud in the shape of a star. There are so many names, they’re mostly small here, to all fit, but they are all beautiful.

Another tribute to the many names we use for our Savior is a video from the several of the cast of The Chosen, from three years ago, talking about the names of God and their meanings. Here are the ones I was able to capture:

Adonai El-Roi               The God Who Sees Me

Jehovah Shalom             The Lord Is Our Peace

Jehovah Raah                The Lord Is My Shepherd

El Shaddai                    Almighty God

Emmanuel                    God With Us

As I'm enjoying the Christmas season, I also listened to Jonathan Cahn talking about the Bethlehem story. Most of these details I have heard over the years, but he puts them together beautifully. Bethlehem itself means house of bread in Hebrew. This is appropriate as the place where the Bread of Life came down from heaven to earth.

Jesus was born in a manger—a place of eating, for the animals. It was likely of stone, rather than wood, as is often depicted. Ahead of Passover, the newborn sacrificial lambs—the firstborn males without blemish—would be placed carefully in the manger, where they were swaddled in consecrated temple cloths to be inspected for blemishes. Bethlehem was the place in particular that the sacrificial lambs for the temple were raised. It is likely that the shepherds who saw the angels and were directed to seek the babe in the manger were the shepherds tending to the temple lambs.

a stone manger, image from Stone Manger—The Untold Story
of the First Christmas, by Jeffrey R. Chadwick

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, was also the sacrificial lamb. It seems fitting that he would be born in Bethlehem, where the sacrificial lambs of Passover were born.

Bethlehem, just on the outskirts of Jerusalem, is still surrounded by shepherds and their flocks in the fields. It is where David watched over the sheep as a boy, and practiced his harp music, and honed his skill with a sling, which he’d used to protect the sheep, and later to protect the Israelites from the Philistine giant, Goliath. David became king, and it was through his lineage that Jesus Christ was born; if all had been right through the ages, Jesus would have been the literal heir to the throne and King of the Jews.

Bethlehem was small and insignificant, as was David, the youngest son of his righteous but mostly insignificant family. But as with David, we are told not to look on the outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7). Small and humble are qualities God works with to make great things come to pass.

Cahn also talks about the guell, or redeemer. There was a tradition that, if a man died childless, his brother or a close relative could marry his widow and provide a posterity for him. This was the case with Ruth and Boaz. Boaz, as well as the deceased husband of Ruth, the son of Naomi, to whom Boaz was a kinsman, was a descendant of King David. In the book of Ruth, we see that there is another kinsman who could have redeemed Ruth, but he chose not to and gave Boaz permission to be the redeemer. The place where Boaz redeemed Ruth happens to be Bethlehem.

As I understand it, another meaning of redeemer is one willing to pay the ransom price, if a wife is captured by an enemy. The promise to do this would be written in the betrothal contract, called the ketubah: the bridegroom would promise to redeem the bride if she were captured, because of his love and devotion to her.

Jesus Christ qualifies as the Redeemer of all of us, however you define it. He redeems us, to make our lives fruitful; He redeems us to save us from the captivity of sin.

I'd like to actually learn to paint someday, but in the meantime,
this is a little nativity painting I did for this year's Christmas card.

There’s a part, late in the video where Cahn talks about the Hebrew wedding tradition—one of my favorite things to study. He reminds us that the bridegroom needed to travel from his home to the home of the bride, to bring her back to his home with him. Christ came down from heaven, to our home here on earth, in order to bring us back to His home in heaven. I’m reminded of the second and third verses of the Christmas hymn “Once in Royal David’s City”:

2: He came down to earth from heaven,

Who is God and Lord of all,

And his shelter was a stable,

And his cradle was a stall;

With the poor, and mean, and lowly,

Lived on earth our Savior holy.

3: And our eyes at last shall see him,

Through his own redeeming love;

For that child so dear and gentle

Is our Lord in heav’n above,

And he leads his children on

To the place where he is gone.

            —words by Cecil Frances Alexander

May He lead us all home, to the place where He is gone.

Merry Christmas!