Regionalism and the Federal Takeover of the 50 States

Congress Unlikely to Extend Hand to Ailing States

GOP takeover in Congress means states will have to count on less federal help with deficits

January 6, 2011

AP - Cut spending, raise taxes and fees, and accept billions of dollars from Congress. That's been the formula for states trying to survive the worst economy since the 1930s.

As Republicans prepare to take control of the House and exert more influence in the Senate, it's clear that option No. 3 will soon wither. States will continue to face substantial deficits over the next few years, but they will have to get by with the end of stimulus spending and less financial help from the federal government. In recent interviews, top GOP lawmakers made clear it will be much less.

"We've got to put our fiscal house in order in Washington, D.C.," said Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana. "It's going to be essential that leaders at the state level roll their sleeves up, make the hard choices and put their fiscal health in order, as well."

Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the new House majority whip, said GOP lawmakers will try to provide states with relief by cutting their expenses, not by giving them more money. For example, he advocates repeal of the national health care reforms enacted last year.

"More importantly, what the states can really hope for is that we turn the economy around so revenues will pick up," he said. "But Washington is in very bad financial shape itself."

McCarthy said the GOP would be focused on cutting mandates and giving states more flexibility on how they spend federal money.

The $814 billion stimulus program, passed by a Democratic Congress and championed by President Barack Obama, was designed to help states provide essential services and give a boost to the economy. Most of the money will run out this year.

States spent the bulk of their money on public schools, higher education and health care, so those programs likely will take a hit this year. But transportation, prisons and services such as early education programs also will not be spared the budget ax, said Todd Haggerty, a policy analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"Anything and everything is going to be affected," he said.

As of June 30, 2011, the federal government will have spent about $165 billion on temporary aid to the states to help them weather the recession. The states have used most of that money on education and health care -- keeping teachers in the classroom and reimbursing doctors and hospitals for treating the growing number of people eligible for Medicaid.

States will continue to get some stimulus money for road, energy and high-speed rail projects, but that money helps fund specific projects and wasn't intended to plug holes in a state's operating budget.

California has benefited substantially from federal assistance that will soon run out. It is expected to receive a total of $85 billion from the Recovery Act, with about $51 billion awarded to date, according to the state website monitoring the spending. About half of the amount spent so far is for Medi-Cal payments, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other safety-net programs.

California state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat from Sacramento, said it's disappointing but not surprising that states are not likely to receive more federal help.

"The economy is not going to improve as fast by increasing the unemployment rate. And whether in the public sector or private sector, a job is a job is a job," Steinberg said. "We know that's what the Republicans ran on in part during the national campaign, so we recognize we're going to have do deal with reality, and we will."

A slowly improving economy means many states should see an uptick in tax revenue in the coming year, but it will not be enough to replace the stimulus money. Without federal aid, the majority of legislatures around the country will not have enough money to maintain current services and face another round of budget cutting.

States closed a cumulative budget gap of nearly $84 billion in the last fiscal year. In the coming year, 31 states and Puerto Rico face budget shortfalls totaling $82.1 billion, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"You have the federal money running out, but very deep state budget problems are lingering," said Phil Oliff, a policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank based in Washington. "That's why we say the coming fiscal year could actually be the worst budget year states have faced since the start of the recession."

There also is a sense among many governors that seeking more temporary aid would delay tough decisions about what the states can afford in the long-term.

Governors are facing an era of slow economic growth combined with growing pension liabilities, said Ray Sheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association. Most know they must get spending down to a sustainable level, he said.

Illinois' spending is so out of whack that Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn wants to borrow at least $3.7 billion to cover this year's payment for the state's public pension systems, and state contractors are being forced to wait six months or more to get paid. Its $15 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year is 58 percent of the state's entire general fund.

Federal stimulus money provided a big boost to the state -- some $13 billion total, with more than 40 percent of that going to unemployment insurance and more than $3 billion to education.

Quinn's budget spokeswoman, Kelly Kraft, said the state has received 92 percent of what it's owed in stimulus money and that it's too early to say whether it will receive more in the coming fiscal year.

"There's an unspoken hope among a lot of people that the federal government will come in and help out the states again," said Rep. John Bradley, a Democratic Illinois state lawmaker who chairs a finance committee. "I'm not part of that group."

Bradley said he is not convinced that Congress would ease any requirements to lessen the states' burden for mandated programs, and said economic recovery programs already had relieved states of many traditional mandates.

"We don't have the tax base we once had. The loss of American manufacturing has caught up to us," he said. "We have to cut back on services or tax the reduced base at a higher rate."

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Destroying the American System of Government

Gary Allen, in The Rockefeller File, states that the CFR is behind the many regional government plans, which would abolish city, county, and state lines, leaving us at the mercy of federal bureaucrats; and that the CFR is behind the push for "land use" controls. They want "federal control of everything since they intend to control the federal government."

• By Executive Order No. 11647 on February 10, 1972, President Nixon officially abolished through regionalism the American system of government. Regionalism is the consolidation of local and state governments into large regional units and the centralization of power in bureaucratic authorities, boards and commissions, whose primary function is to administer plans and programs dictated by Washington.


• Executive Order No. 11647 divided the United States into 10 Federal Regional Councils, each controlled by an appointed bureaucrat for the stated purpose of improving coordination of the activities of all levels of government. The 10 federal regions were to be empowered to control all forms of regionalism within the United States. Regional divisions supplementing the 10 federal regions include state subregions, Federal Reserve regions, population regions, and regions to control the land, water and natural resources of America. [Executive Order 11647 was replaced by Executive Order 12149, Federal Regional Councils, on July 20, 1979.]


• Executive Order No. 11490 assigned numerous emergency preparedness functions to federal departments. Financing of regional governments is acquired through federal revenue sharing. Revenue sharing is a mechanism whereby the state and local governments become financially dependent upon the federal government. Pressure can then be applied to any level of state government that refuses to comply with the dictates of the regional government rulers. All but one of the 10 federal regional capitals is either a Federal Reserve Bank or branch bank city.

The goal of regional or metropolitan government is to eventually merge the U.S. into the "New World Order" (NWO): a one-world totalitarian goverment under the United Nations (UN). The global elite's agenda is nothing less than the complete revolutionizing of the very foundations of not only America but the entire world. Such a plan calls for the total restructuring of planetary civilization into an enlightened one world federation in which national boundaries and sovereignty are secondary and "planetary citizenship" in the "global village" is the order of the day.

The United States Was Officially Abolished in 1972 (Maps of the 10 U.S. Regions)

President Nixon, through an Executive Order, quietly reorganized the United States' 50 individual states with a 10-region plan. The implementation of this regional plan, unbeknownst to the masses, has occurred. It needed a crisis: 9/11 provided that globalist opportunity. (Deanna Spingola)

The 10 Federal Regions:

• Region 1 - Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont
• Region 2 - New Jersey, New York, the territory of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands
• Region 3 - Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia
• Region 4 - Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, N. Carolina, S. Carolina and Tennessee
  Region 5 - Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin
• Region 6 - Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas
• Region 7 - Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska
• Region 8 - Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming
• Region 9 - Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, and the territories of Guam and American Samoa
• Region 10 - Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington

The above map shows the 10 regions under which the United States has actually been operating since 1972. These 10 regions are Administrative Units of the United Nations. All the people of the United States, including Hawaii and Alaska, were placed under the control of the above 10 regions.

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Council of Governors Takes Shape (Excerpt)

February 9, 2010

Chuck Baldwin - Regular readers of this column will doubtless recall my recent column in which I reported on the new Council of Governors (CG) that President Barack Obama has created. See my column at:

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2010/cbarchive_20100119.html

Well, Obama's CG is quickly beginning to take shape. According to the Associated Press (AP),

"President Barack Obama has selected Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to serve on an advisory council for defense and national security issues.

"Nixon was one of 10 governors named Thursday [February 4, 2009] by Obama to the newly created Council of Governors."

The 10 governors (and one of them is not even a State governor) selected by Obama are:

• Governor James Douglas (R-Vermont) *Co-chair
• Governor Chris Gregoire (D-Washington) *Co-chair
• Governor Brad Henry (D-Oklahoma)
• Governor Jay Nixon (D-Missouri)
• Governor Martin O'Malley (D-Maryland)
• Governor Janice Brewer (R-Arizona)
• Governor Bob McDonnell (R-Virginia)
• Governor Michael Rounds (R-South Dakota)
• Governor Beverly Perdue (D-North Carolina)
• Governor Luis G. Fortuno (R-Puerto Rico)

As I have already written, the creation of a CG should be of serious concern to all liberty loving Americans. That more of us are not as concerned as we should be can be traced to the mistaken belief that the American people have nothing to fear from an overreaching federal government. This is pure folly! As I have said many times, we have far more to fear from Washington, D.C., than from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, or any other potential terrorist state. It is Washington, D.C., — and Washington, D.C., alone — that has the power, opportunity, and propensity to squash our freedom and sell us into tyranny.

As Kurt Nimmo reports,

"In other words, with the stroke of a pen, Obama significantly increased the ongoing effort to federalize the states and take control of the National Guard in violation of the now more or less moribund Posse Comitatus Act. Posse Comitatus was effectively annulled by the 2006 John Warner National Defense Authorization Act. The act provides the president with power to declare martial law under revisions to the Insurrection Act and take charge of United States National Guard troops without state governor authorization. Parts of the act were repealed in 2008."

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