Rubicon in our rear-view

Show of hands: Who remembers a federal government agency that has decreased its budget or cut its operation. Ever?

Yes, sir, you in the back. Oh ... you were stretching.

Ronald Reagan's 'A Time for Choosing' Speech in 1964 contained the sentence: "Federal bureaus are the closest thing we will ever see to eternal life on this planet." That line is funny; the truth it espouses is anything but.

Yesterday a couple of news outlets reported that state governments are receiving more money from federal grants than from state property or income taxes, or from any other source.

I encourage you to ask a handful of public school teachers about No Child Left Behind. Or a pharmacist about Medicare. I suspect you will find that, when the federal government starts doling out cash it also starts grabbing powers for itself. And, far too often, it creates burdens that don't achieve anything good, don't make any sense, and are just as likely to run people out of their business as they are to help anyone.

I fear we have Crossed the Rubicon on federalism. Without dramatic, revolutionary change on a scale not managed by American politicians since the Constitution was written, federalism is dead. And it is us who have killed it.

We would not accept radical encroachments on our privacy and our personal decisions if they came in one grand sweep. But they have come in many small nibbles at our liberty, and we have gone along with them without complaint.

About a month ago I wrote about the government's creeping way of taking over our lives. The feds don't have Constitutional authority to set drinking age laws or to administer public schools. But they pass out trillions of dollars a year, and they attach any strings they want to along with it.

We have to start electing legislators and executives to national office who will say, "no more money from the federal government for bail-outs to the states." And we have to start electing state officials who will say the same.

Today, the states are more beholden to the federal government than ever before. Show of hands: Who thinks that's a good thing? Yes sir, you in the back? Oh. That's right ... you were stretching.