This is the thing that makes liberals so scarey. They spent 20 Million doing all the groundwork to ram this bill through the Nevada Legislature and nobody thought to ask, “Is this Legal?” Bloomberg-blows-20-million-on-busted-bg-check-bill.
The main stream media will tell you Bloomberg et al, have our best interests at heart. How, by ignoring the Constitution at its most basic level? None of those smart people could see this coming? What else did they miss? How did this happen?
Go back to high school civics. Those rights and responsibilities reserved for the sovereign (Federal Government) belong to the sovereign alone. Those rights and responsibilities reserved for the states are for the states. Maybe you’ve seen it stated this way: 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. Tenth Amendment. What this means is that the state (Nevada) cannot enact legislation that commits the Federal government to paying the bills. In this instance, the FBI a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States government, is required by the State of Nevada, to perform services at FBI expense.
Well isn’t the Tenth Amendment a two way street? Yes, except when it isn’t. The United States government has ceded much of its lawmaking authority to government agencies who substitute administrative rules for actual laws. These various agencies not only legislate largely without oversight and input they also control vast amounts of money. This money is theirs to divvy out. If all the participants were civilian actors you might be more familiar with the concept if I started using civilian terms; bribery, extortion, and blackmail.
One of the things that the Federal government does is collect taxes. It returns a portion of those taxes to the States, usually for specific purposes. But the money comes with strings attached. Want to finish those highway projects? We couldn’t help but notice that you don’t have a mandatory seat belt law, the blood alcohol limit is 10% instead of the more fashionable .08% and the drinking age in your state is 18, but we’d rather it be 21. Sorry, there isn’t one crying dime available, ever. Need 10 million for a guaranteed cure for cancer? Nope, sorry couldn’t help but notice that the girls tiddlywink team doesn’t have equal funding with the football team. No money available, ever. States were schooled, you can do whatever you want but when it comes time to pass out bucks this is how the priorities shake out.
In the current climate I must admit I feel sorry for our legislators in D.C. They spend every waking minute of every day engaged in conduct that would get the average taxpayer thrown in jail. But they carry on in good weather and bad (wait that’s the post office) doing the people’s work. Then some malcontent come along and points out that that last bit of cash they stole didn’t follow accepted guidelines for theft by a public servant. Suddenly, they’re the bad guy, doing the perp walk for the six O’clock news. How’s a guy supposed t get ahead in this town. At least the pension is safe.