The lastest infringement upon State's rights by the Fed

In an extension of the stealth expansionist tactics employed in disbursing federal highway money for years, we now see the federal government using our education funding as a means to exert control over the states of the Republic. The Medford Transcript cheerfully reports;

Let the race begin!

Massachusetts is one of 40 states (along with Washington D.C.) to submit an application to the federal government for “Race to the Top” funding, as part of a new program meant to bolster school finances and improve the quality of education across the country.

Getting past the fact that central control and federal funding of our school systems - along with the emergence of the bane to merit-based selection of teachers, organized progressive teachers' unions - has deteriorated the quality of our schools, not "improved the quality of education across the country", why are we even racing for our own tax dollars back in the first place?

Washington continues to take more and more money from us in the individual states each year in the form of higher taxes and fees*, and then they make us comply with their conditions and standards to beg for the money back, either in the form of "stimulus" money for infrastructure, or "Race to the Top", or "No Child Left Behind" for education funding?

Are these federal programs even constitutional? Has the 10th Amendment been removed from the Constitution, do these words ring a bell with any of our local or state lawmakers; "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."

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a Supreme Court that could still make that distinction for us? No, these are not helpful programs listed above, each and every one of them is an incremental usurpation of state's rights in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution and 10th Amendment. Instead of sitting up and begging like a bunch of docile puppies, the states should be growling at the hand of the fed stealing from us every day to fund these federal supremacy ponzi schemes.

Nick McNulty

*Do not believe the farcical claims of the Obama Administration and Nancy Pelosi that taxes on the middle classes have not gone up, and will not climb further. Federal taxes - or state taxes driven higher by costs pushed on the states by the Fed - on gas, alcohol, and tobacco have all gone up since January 2009, which all hit the middle class. Additionally, while the federal government raises taxes on citizens, they are cutting what comes back to the states, leading to state and local tax and fee hikes as we here in Massachusetts(6.25% state sales tax) and Medford (.75% municipal meals tax) are all too well aware.