In the beginning, God entrusted to the human race a dominion over creation.[2] But Nature’s God prefers order to chaos. And when He deputizes us, the Creator includes responsibility as a counterpoise to abuse of freedom.

The freedom to own property is heaven-sent, a liberty that the constellation law will bolster (section nine). Our sovereign responsibility as a nation is to pay heed lest our legacy to posterity be despoilment of God’s gifts (section eight).

At the outset, this chapter considers property tax in light of its history, and in view of tax reductions that the constellation law would deliver. The second half of this chapter examines [1] the effect of the proposed property tax reforms on urban sprawl [2] the national sovereignty necessary to exercise environmental responsibility “from sea to shining sea,” [3] a history of the environmental movement in the United States, and [4] how the constellation law balances freedom of ownership with duty to be good stewards over America’s corner of creation.

As indicated in the previous chapter, the Jobs Levy will serve to counter the exploitation of labor by unrestrained capital. In analogous fashion, today’s property tax does exercise a salutary effect by reducing monopolist control or speculative exploitation of land. But just as the constellation law, section eight, limits the jobs levy to ten percent – lest the solution prove worse than the malady of unemployment – so section nine limits property tax to domiciles (or homesteads) which are spacious enough to qualify for a luxury tax.

Thus, domiciles ranging in size from ample to colossal estates, i.e. upwards from 1/10th acre, would remain taxable under the arch-amendment. Such classification by size will greatly reduce the regressive nature of the property tax, by exempting humbler homesteads while permitting taxation on larger holdings.

Even economists who defend the property tax do concede its regressive effect on renters.[3] Section 9:4 of the constellation law extends exemptions to both owners and renters of non-luxury domiciles.

Modifying taxation by US constitutional amendment has occurred twice. In 1913, a Constitutional Amendment (16th) reversed the stricture on income taxes in the original Constitution, and in 1964 another Amendment (24th) abolished poll taxes imposed by states and localities. The constellation amendment would thus constitute the third case of tax modification by the amending process under Article V.

Existing statute law provides additional precedent for limitations set at the national level against local taxation. For example, under federal law railroad property cannot incur a local tax higher than levies on other commercial and industrial property.[4] Under a more recent act of Congress, the Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998, states and localities are restricted in taxing transactions made over the Internet.[5]

Part I. Un-Taxing People’s Homes

Pertinent History

The great trichotomy, “Life, Liberty and Property,” is cited in the U.S. Constitution and many other works. This time-tested triad was articulated a century prior to the Constitution by the English philosopher, John Locke.[6] Property, the third leg in the tripod, may be taxable as a concession to reality; but however compelling the rationale on pragmatic grounds, the principle of the matter is that our right to possess property is enfeebled in proportion as the tax is inescapable. However irksome, the cigarette tax is no fundamental threat to liberty in that people can break this politically flimsy shackle – they can quit smoking. Unlike renouncing tobacco, however, people cannot opt to cease consuming the necessities of life. The property tax on domiciles is in essence tyrannical, for with unbreakable fetters it shackles citizens to the powerholders’s wheel.

Taxation of people’s living space, or domicile, has a track record going back many centuries. Like prostitution, it is one of the oldest economic activities. In general, the more primitive the economy, the more government gets its revenue by taxing land and dwelling places. History suggests an inverse proportion between reliance on property tax and sophistication of the polity and economy.[7]

In ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, Athenian citizens resisted land taxes successfully except during intervals of political tyranny.[8] During the Roman Empire, only Italy escaped property taxation; and that exemption ended after 200 AD. Thenceforth the roman economy weakened, even as property tax reached a quarter of the annual yield on land. Neither the Caesars nor their autocratic officials cared a whit about the chorus of complaints from taxpayers. The burdensome nature of the

Abandoned American farmhouse

Abandoned American farmhouse [9]

tax grew and produced dire economic results. Overtaxed farmers abandoned large sections of fertile land. Indeed the Roman Empire in its latter phase affirms the old principle – the power to tax is the power to destroy.[10]

After the Dark Ages, Europe’s return to a money economy saw property taxes reemerge. Revenue hungry regimes proved resourceful in extracting wealth from citizens, a governmental characteristic about which the Bible warns.[11] As the economy revived in Germany and England, the position of assessor was invented, and by A.D. 1400 there were taxes on movables as well as against land and houses. Already, however, as wealth took new forms, the property tax was becoming less effective as a way of reaching wealth.[12]

In the USA from Presidents Washington to Lincoln the federal government resorted to property taxes but three times.[13] Since then the property tax has been the exclusive province of states and localities. After the Great Depression of the 1930’s, even states looked elsewhere for revenues, leaving the property tax as crumbs from the table allocated to county and municipal government. America’s entry into WW II marked the final end of reliance on the property tax by the country as a whole. By 1941 it had become “clear that the property tax could not remain the primary tax in a complex industrial economy.”[14]

Until the American Civil War property tax reformers put their hopes in the uniformity movement, under which property taxes were made consistent and devoid of loopholes. During the post-bellum period, however, the classification movement cut consistency into ribbons, so that property taxes became a crazy-quilt of levies, rebates, circuit breakers, homestead exemptions and exemptions for personal property, charity, and industry – formulas often requiring a tax accountant to decipher.[15]

Economic development incentives are also a commonplace approach used in states to favor certain types of business activity. For example, exemption of manufacturing inventory or machinery from property taxes is a way to encourage light and heavy industry. Another approach is to negotiate tax breaks with individual firms. Therefore, if such exemptions are ok for industry, why not grant domiciliary exemptions? Also, property tax exemptions for cemeteries are standard practice throughout the United States. If this consideration is appropriate for interment of the dead, why not also exempt residency for the living?

Accordingly, the constellation law aims to [1] favor smaller homesteads [2] keep people renting / buying in urban areas [3] give citizens a security against homelessness, which afflicts 7.5% [1 in 15] of Americans at some point in their lifetime?[16]

To advance these three purposes, the constellation law would demarcate a new classification (domiciles up to 1/10th acre) and remove everything in this category from the property tax roles. Rather than further erode the principle of consistency, section nine would in fact impose the consistent tax rate of zero percent on the entire realm of poor to moderate sized domiciles; also greatly simplifying the attendant costs of assessment by eliminating valuations on these properties. To verify that a domicile is property tax exempt, the assessor can simply measure the exterior dimensions.

Pluses and Minuses of the Property Tax

In the United States the property tax is mainly a levy against land and buildings.[17] A basic drawback is that taxing homes hits at one of the four necessities of modern life – food, shelter, clothing and transportation – and is therefore most hurtful to people leaving at bare economic subsistence. By taxing this necessity for living, namely the domicile, government assumes the role of wolf at the door.

Getting an officious wolf off the front porch is humane from the small householder’s standpoint in much the same way as states exempt groceries from the sales tax. For people near subsistence, a tax on groceries levies against their bellies, just as a tax on their house punishes them for the roof over their heads.

Over 80% of the states with sales taxes have attempted to soften the impact of a grocery tax on the poor, 10 states by tinkering, but 27 states by eliminating the grocery tax altogether — as distinguished from dining out where a sales tax is a luxury tax. In my home state of Washington the legislature resisted populist pressure to repeal the tax on groceries. Nevertheless in the mid-1970’s the voters overrode the politicians in Olympia, establishing the full exemption by means of the popular referendum.[18]

On transportation too, voters in the Washington referendums have been determined foes of governmental rapacity. In 1999 they overrode the legislature by exempting all but a flat fee of $30 from the property tax on automobiles. With public transportation at a minimum in Washington state (no subways and little rapid transit), cars are in the category of necessities. For example, the only way to get from Sea-Tac Airport to Seattle proper, or to Tacoma, is to drive a car, or take a taxi or a bus. Not even our pro-government spin doctors in the media and elsewhere managed to convince Washington voters that busing was normal while driving was a luxury that warranted weighty taxation.

So far, however, reformers here have done nothing about the necessity of clothing. Patrons of thrift stores in my home town pay the same 8.5% sales tax on used attire that others pay for new mink coats or giant screen televisions.

Not only is the property tax regressive because of its impact on the poor, it tends also to be more burdensome than taxes on other consumer goods.[19] A tax is disordered and even cruel when it falls on items indispensable to living, impacting them more heavily than commodities that citizens can spare.

Insofar as smaller housing is proportional to the occupant’s income, today’s property tax on domiciles hits lots of people who can least afford to pay. The constellation law will shift the tax burden away from non-luxury domiciles, leaving government to make up for the lost revenues. As government recoups the shortfall, the effect is sure to be progressive in that the burden of taxation will have nowhere to go but in the direction of luxuries and less essential items.

Unless, of course, government strikes a low blow and attempts to reinstate taxes on some of the other necessities, like groceries or transportation! Fortunately, however, reforms elsewhere in the constellation law will revitalize populism and help citizen activists hold firm on earlier tax revolts – such as bans on the grocery tax or reductions in the car tax.

As regards property taxation levied against housing, the constellation law extends the principle of exempting necessities. Section nine draws the line between luxury and necessity at one-tenth acre for a domicile, with a third of that allowed for the footprint, or foundation of the house. Anything in excess of these thresholds would carry no constitutional exemption. Localities could still impose property taxes on domiciles exceeding what the Constitution exempts, but counties, cities, and school districts would thenceforth be levying taxes on what amounts to luxury; they would cease imposing tolls on basic shelter.

Precisely at the size threshold, the exemption would go from 100%, to zero. Thus, the tax break would be simple to understand and to calculate. Today’s system is complex at best and even baffling. The accumulation of half-measures has made property taxation into a “‘structure designed by a mad architect, erected on a shaky foundation by an incompetent builder, and made worse by the well-intentioned repair work of hordes of amateur tinkerers.’”[20]

Over the years, state legislators have gone through contortions to ameliorate the flaws in the property tax, meanwhile keeping it in place for most houses and apartments. Today all 50 states have some form of homestead exemption or circuit breaker, and many states employ both. In Minnesota, for example, the taxpayer may need to hire a C.P.A. to claim their various rebates — [1] a state-reimbursement for homeowners, [2] a rebate or tax subsidy known as a circuit breaker, which originated in neighboring Wisconsin in 1964. The circuit breaker kicks in when a homeowner’s property taxes exceed a certain percentage of the household’s income. [3] Another property tax credit for homeowners who experienced an annual tax increase of more than 10 percent. [4] A lower rate of assessment for residential property as administered in 2713 assessment districts.

The state of Michigan provides circuit breakers for homeowners and renters who make less than $82,650, plus a total exemption for disabled veterans but not for the elderly.[21] In California a circuit breaker kicks in for residents who earn less than $13,200, provided they are blind, disabled or elderly homeowners / renters. But the typical claim has averaged only $92.12. In addition nearly five million Californians claim a homestead exemption on the first $7000 in value for their homes, with the state government reimbursing the respective local governments for the resulting revenue shortfall. The formula is further complicated by Proposition 13 (a tax revolt passed by referendum in 1978), which imposed a virtual assessment freeze at the rate of inflation calculated from the time one buys the property.[22]

To be sure, much of this tinkering has been well intentioned. But the phrase coined in 1670 is no less true for having been quoted so often:

“the road to hell
is paved with
good intentions.”

In the tax code for Washington state there are some 29,000 pages on property tax exemptions. Professor Glenn Fisher, a property tax scholar, sums up the trouble: “Every such provision (exemption, etc.) creates administrative complexity and fuels demands for additional relief for those near the cutoff point.”[23]

Instead of a complex system of patchwork relief where the property tax is most harmful or regressive, why not eliminate it entirely for homesteads of moderate economic value [1/10th acre], and increase it on luxurious estates?

Admittedly, some of property tax reforms have proved helpful, and are not so complicated. Modifications in the property tax have benefited religious and educational organizations, for example, who receive simple 100% property tax exemptions. In cases like private education, cemeteries, hospitals, orphanages, scout camps, veterans organizations, charities; arts / literary organizations the tax breaks are means whereby the public, with a minimum of entanglement, can subsidize services that otherwise might have to be provided collectively.[24]

If this is true for worthy social causes, sparing society the necessity of performing them by contract or force account, why not also for housing? In San Diego CA, for example, rent is so high that even some full-time workers are being forced to live on the streets. Accordingly, the constellation law adds low-cost rentals to the aforesaid list of tax-exempt economic activities. For apartment complexes, section 9:4 sets the same necessity / luxury boundary as for privately owned houses – at 1452 sq. feet per rental unit. By making non-luxury apartment buildings tax-free, along with a surrounding green zone triple the square footage of the building's first story, section nine would encourage private enterprise alternatives to the subsidized public housing projects.

Property tax exemption for these non-luxury rentals would also eliminate the dilapidation effect. Here is how current property tax policy discourages maintenance and upgrades:

Every improvement in an apartment building gives the tax assessor the opportunity to revalue the property for tax purposes. If the reassessment reflects the upgrade, the tax rate goes up. If the property assessment stays the same, so does the property tax. But if the landlord lets the property rundown, the assessed value falls. Twice the slumlord saves himself money: on cost of maintenance and by paying less in property taxes as the apartment building deteriorates.

Cities that urgently need to replace obsolete buildings paradoxically base much of their financing upon a tax that encourages owners to hold on to deteriorated structures and penalizes owners of new ones. Every increase in the property tax rates on structures [not land] reduces the desirability of putting capital funds into new buildings, creates an incentive against upgrading quality by new construction, and discourages maintenance.[25]

In short, taxing rentals according to property value discourages upgrades. By exempting non-luxury domiciles, the constellation law would end the disincentive to maintain affordable rental properties, which is among the worst byproducts of the property tax.

Another public benefit of the exemption would relate to urban sprawl. It is not too late: plenty of land has yet to be urbanized.[26]

Instead of compacting a city or town by regulating domiciles down in size (the police approach), the tax structure operates obliquely, via disincentives to developers of rural and forestlands. This oblique approach has proven more successful than government attempts to force people to behave with more environmental responsibility. Environmentalist, Mary Graham, notes that the movement for ecological responsibility has gotten less mileage out of the rule-making approach, than via incentives.[27]

Tax incentives are less intrusive than urban planning, and yet can be effective in protecting the countryside against the encroachment of urbanization. Tax breaks on land (1/10th acre and below) and on buildings (1452 sq. feet per house or rental unit) will operate as a bonus for staying within size demarcations.

This substantial tax exemption is certain to moderate the size of both new home construction and the contiguous lots. Supply and demand forces do respond to expectations of cost, and the constraints of basic economic laws engender less resentment than when government regulates development through its police power. Because tax-free homes and apartments will be less expensive to live in, and therefore easier to sell, buyers and homebuilders will gravitate in that direction. And so even as we eschew government intervention along totalitarian lines, we can still save rural and wilderness America by redirecting market forces. By drawing the exemption line at 1/10th acre, the constellation law will impose an obstacle to urban sprawl.

The foregoing considerations favor exempting non-luxury domiciles from property taxes, taking into account both pragmatism and compassion, i.e. economic calculation as well as a preferential option for the poor.

Another factor in the formula for reform is political principle. The property tax is undemocratic to the extent that recent years have seen a push for professionalization in the assessor’s office, even to the point of eliminating the elective nature of the office of assessor. In the name of efficiency they would make the office an appointive one. Their motto seems to be, down with the local democratic process of electing assessors.[28]

The anti-democratic position recalls the early history of the Republic, and the struggle between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson within the first Presidential administration. The Hamiltonians demanded centralized expertise, while Jeffersonians preferred democracy, however messy. No genuine republic escapes this perennial conflict. Its battle lines cross over into property taxation as follows:

On one side are those who believe assessors should be highly trained professional appraisers isolated from political influence and armed with the latest technology. On the other side are those who favor locally elected assessors who understand local conditions, respond to political consideration, and realize that formulas or computers do not always produce “correct” answers. [29]

The United States features more than 15,000 property tax assessment districts (about the same number as school districts). They range from Minnesota, with 2713 assessment districts, to Maryland’s single district – the state government in MD doing all the assessment. In 22 states assessors are elected, in 14 there is a mix, with elections or else appointments by county or municipal officials.[30]

My own family home is periodically assessed by a professional whose boss is the elected county assessor. To elect the assessor, we go to the polls every four years. It is unlikely that the GOP accountability committee I chaired would have been permitted to quiz the current incumbent, along with all of his primary election competitors the year he first won office, if the county assessor had been a non-political appointee.

Proximity of public office to the people is calculated to make politicians into public servants; this principle is key to democracy. In many ways the constellation law reflects the Jeffersonian bias in favor of the democratic process. Property tax assessment is no exception. Section 9:1 of the arch-amendment requires that ,

the taxes are collected under the jurisdiction of an assessor democratically elected by citizen-residents of the general area to which the assessor’s authority applies

Another undemocratic feature of property taxation is that it takes the principle of universal suffrage and turns it against owners of property, pitting renters against homeowners. This polarizing effect makes a mockery of the franchise by allowing part of the electorate to escape unscathed, passing the burden of property taxation onto others.

Such a travesty is nothing new. People have always tried to have government services without paying for them. As Glenn W. Fisher puts it in The Worst Tax? A History of the Property Tax in America (1996): “The universal truth about taxation is that people want government without paying for it.”[31] This presents a problem in the collection of any tax. The inequities are particularly glaring with the property tax.

In 1776, despite the efforts of Gen. Washington and the continental army, the British captured New York City and occupied it until 1783. This gave Americans in NYC something akin to dual citizenship, since despite the occupation they did send delegates to the state assembly. The occupied districts were spared enforcement of US taxation – courtesy of the British army – so naturally the NYC delegates voted for increased taxation. It was the application of crude self-interest – let the other guy pay.

Such an economic interest to literally pass the buck was not unlike today’s landless renters voting for higher property taxes. The more the tax burden falls on the propertied, so the thinking goes, the lighter the load for the rest of us!

It accords with blatant self-interest that people who own no land will vote for property taxes, (especially when rent control laws mean that property owners cannot simply raise the rent and pass on the burden). Bring on the free lunch!

A plausible justification for property taxation of domiciles might be sought in the principle of redistributing income, if indeed the process did transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. In reality, however, the transferees include owners of small to moderate sized housing. These householders are often unemployed or retired on minimal incomes, or are working families whose home is mortgaged right up to the chimney. Taxing small homeowners redistributes income regressively.

The inequity of hit-and-miss income redistribution via the property tax calls for revision. One “solution” would be to return to the property qualification for voting that prevailed prior to the Jacksonian revolution of the 1830’s. Given its anti-democratic character, such a solution would be worse than the malady, playing into the hands of the postmodernists for whom elitism is a boon.

In my home state of Washington, the solution, if such it can be called, has been to increase the percentage required for increases in the property tax. The idea, passed by referendum in 1944, was to pick a number out of the air – 60% – in hopes that the semi-supermajority would afford homeowners a veto, or at least more potency in arresting tax hikes.[32] It is anyone’s guess whether the ratio between renters and homeowners has approximated 60/40 during the past six decades. Even if the ratio were calculated with exactitude, our state tax law affords no flexibility to respond to fluctuations in the ratio by adjusting the percentage required for a tax levy to win.

A reform that would be more rational, as well as practical for the computer age, is to allot tagged ballots to non-exempt homeowners / landowners when assessments and property tax levies are at stake. The constellation law (9:1) establishes therefore that,

· no more than three candidates for assessor shall appear on the ballot, each nominated by citizens whose domiciles are subject to the property tax

· property tax levies get approved by a majority of the respective non-exempt taxpayers, i.e. those who do pay taxes on real estate as per section 9: 4-7

Thus under section nine, property tax levies would require approval not by 60%, but rather by a single ballot tabulating the requisite majorities in two ways. Levies that impose property taxes would require both a majority of the general electorate, as well as a majority of the voters who are themselves subject to the property tax. The latter – the property taxpayers – would also select nominees for assessor, while the general electorate would decide between these nominees. Conducting such elections could proceed as follows:

Tax Referendums: the tagged ballots are counted first. If the tax increase wins a simple majority, then a second count incorporates all ballots. In other words, the ballot measure cannot pass without a majority of those voters who will have to foot the bill.

A landowners’ veto is analogous to the closed primary election system in most states, whereby candidates must pass muster on a ballot reserved exclusively for one political party.[33] The top vote getters on the respective party primary ballots then compete in the general election; none of the losers in the primary appear on the November ballot.

By contrast, “blanket primary” laws prevailed in all four West Coast states, except Oregon, until overturned in mid-2000. This inequitable procedure allowed members of one political party to hijack the election of nominees for the opposing party. It was like letting Chevron raise Texaco’s oil prices, or authorizing the New York Mets’ management to set the cost of tickets at Yankee stadium. Allowing rivals to control the terms of competition makes no more sense than the unilateral power of property-tax-exempt voters to impose levies on their neighbors who have to pay.

Another parallel to giving property taxpayers a veto over property tax levies is Article 1, section 7, of the US Constitution — “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” If none were forthcoming, there would be no tax or special levy for the Senate to consider or amend.

For property tax levy increases a double keyed door is fair in affording the targeted taxpayers – the property owners on whom the levy is to fall – a preliminary verdict. Upon a favorable result, the general electorate renders the final verdict, pro or con. On either ballot the lex majoris partis prevails – it takes only a simple majority (not 60%) to pass the levy.

Electing assessors: The primary election narrows the field to two nominees on the basis of ballots distributed to non-exempt property owners – the very people whose property the assessor will be appraising. Political parties which are competitive would each field their favorite candidate (assuming no more than three major parties). Thus the candidates must address the same citizens whom they will impact if elected. At the subsequent election (in November?) the general public decides between the three candidates for assessor that the property taxpayers have nominated.

Benefits of Property Taxation

Why have an assessor at all? Should we seek a referendum on the issue for the purpose of abolishing property tax levies altogether?

In a word, no! For the golden mean has a particular application to property taxation. We have already noted drawbacks of the one extreme – the taxation of domiciles for people on low to moderate incomes. At the other end of the spectrum, however, all-pervasive property tax exemptions would leave land speculators and wealthy investors unchecked. Here property tax serves a salutary purpose. It curbs the hoarding of land and property for monetary uses irrespective of social utility. Domiciles are innately serviceable to humanity, but large landholdings monopolized by a few owners or corporations can be socially disadvantageous in the extreme. Even Leo Tolstoy, anti-government idealist though he was, supported taxation of unimproved land, the one tax he was willing to impose.[33a]

When vast estates go tax-free they serve the very wealthy as investment, but to the detriment of the rest of humanity. Because large private interests hold the land in their clutch, the general public loses the utility and the benefit that portions of the planet might otherwise provide, were they not locked up by monopolists. Rightly administered, property tax promotes the productivity of land, and loosens the grip of the few over the land interests of the many.[34]

From antiquity to the present, redistribution of land has been an ongoing economic struggle, often bitterly fought. In the roman republic (133, B.C.) tribune and reformer, Tiberius Gracchus, was assassinated for moving to reduce the vast senatorial landholdings from many square miles to a maximum of 600 acres per senator.[35] Gracchus’ purpose was to end the rank inequity and travesty whereby, as he put it,

The men who bear arms and expose their lives for the safety of their country … were styled the master of the world, but in the meantime had not one foot of ground which they could call their own.[36]

Oscar Romero of El Salvador

Oscar Romero
of El Salvador

In Russia, 1917, the promise of “peace, land, and bread” brought Lenin and Trotsky to power. Twentieth century Latin America saw many reformers stand forth on the issue of land reform, from Emiliano Zapata to Archbishop Oscar Romero, both of whom were assassinated for their devotion to reform. Appeals to redistribute land also gave impetus to Marxists like Fidel Castro, Salvador Allende, and Daniel Ortega.

In the United States too, there have been rumblings of discontent over land control from the beginning. For example in one of the 13 original states, Georgia, the state constitution of 1798 proclaimed,

…the property of the soil, in a free government, being one of the essential rights of a free people, … monopolies of land by individuals (are) contrary to the spirit of our free government [37]

On the eve of California statehood [1849] the territorial governor declared that a tax on land would force sale of “immense tracts of bright, fertile, and beautiful lands,” thus turning haciendas of the Spanish / Mexican era over “to those who will cultivate them…”. Here the basic idea was to keep land productive and out of control by a few.[38]

America’s land reform movement during the last two decades of the antebellum period culminated in the Homestead Act of 1862, granting 160 acres of free land — not to speculators but to heads of families who were supposed to reside on the land and work it for five continuous years.

In any case such was the law’s intent, notwithstanding much fraud in practice. At a quarter of a square mile, the sheer size of each homestead claim impeded the application and enforcement of guidelines. Monitoring problems sprang also from the remoteness of settlements during a communications era when the telegraph was at the leading edge of technology; the telephone (invented 1876) being barely in its infancy.

Under the arch-reform, section nine, the cap on property tax exemptions to one-tenth acre will make domiciles too small to serve cheating speculators as did homestead claims on 160 acre tracts. In addition the country’s vast and computerized infrastructure for communications will greatly aid assessors against fraudulent domiciliary claims; also in implementing tax above the demarcation line between tax-exempt domiciles (up to one tenth acre, i.e. 1452 sq. feet) and other land / property holdings.

Drawing such a constitutional line between lands subject to the property tax, and non-taxable properties, will allow counties and municipalities to retain much of what has long been the mainstay of local government revenues. To be sure, localities will indeed loose the revenues from small to moderate sized domiciles. But a portion of that can be recouped from the some 41% of property tax revenues across the nation that go to the c. 15,000 school districts. There a great disparity or stratification in the tax base makes for inequities in facilities and teacher salaries from district to district — unless, as is increasingly the case, the respective state assumes responsibility for educational finance.

Empirical evidence indicates that during economic downturns a heavy reliance on property tax tends to widen the disparity between rich and poor public school districts. But as schools are financed by statewide taxation, rather than local property taxes, the per pupil expenditure gap narrows.[39]

A chief objection to statewide financing of education derives from the desire to safeguard local control of schools. He who pays the fiddler will call the tune, or so the saying goes. So could it be that where state legislatures allocate the funds, state government will eventually take over from locally elected school boards?

There is truth galore in wise, time-tested proverbs. But seldom do they apply to every case. It has long been the case that public schools get the vast majority of their revenues through the property tax.[40] And yet local control of schools continues giving way to federal and state control, with school boards putting up a feeble fight or no resistance at all.

The political / cultural reforms elsewhere in the constellation law will hopefully help revive spirit and put backbone in local politicians; also a sense of populist nerve. Fortitude and moral fiber will do more to enervate local authorities than has the reliance of school boards on locally levied property taxes.

Even where the state does assume funding responsibility, they often continue to rely on property taxes administered locally. But not always: With the nation’s most decentralized system, New Hampshire levies the highest per capita property tax [6.3%] in the nation. Highly centralized Alabama is just the reverse [1.2%], or one-fifth the property tax burden of NH. It appears that fiscal centralization is correlated inversely with higher property taxes.

Cities and towns across the country have already reduced their reliance on the property tax vis-à-vis other revenue sources to a 50/50 ratio. Counties have moved more slowly than municipalities, but in the same direction.[41] And yet trends notwithstanding, the property tax survives because it remains “the only tax capable of producing the revenue,” that keeps local governments viable.[42]

Being particularly reliant on the land tax, rural counties lost their former allotment of pork barrel after Baker v. Carr deprived rural counties of stronger representation in each upper house of the 50 state legislatures. If a revitalized Congress enervated to undo usurpatious decisions by the Judicial Branch restores to counties their former political clout over the state budget, then rural counties can be sure of a rising portion of funds from revenue sharing, and from other legislative spending.

Certainly, a lot of variation exists in the way states and localities levy taxes. Ways for localities to recoup lost revenues after the constellation law reduces property tax would include:

secure more revenue from non-property tax sources
raise the property tax rate that falls on the non-exempt land / real estate
rely more on state government (Alabama model), less on localities, to finance certain types of services to citizens, such as public schools
establish revenue sharing arrangements whereby local governments levy taxes but the state administrates their collection and returns the revenues to the localities.[43]
Implement revenue sharing earmarked for schools, an approach that would continue trends presently ongoing.[44]
Take public schools out of the property taxing process entirely. This would free up 47% of property tax revenues for non-educational purposes, and shift the burden of school funding primarily up to the state level where revenue sources are more diverse and progressive.
Restructure local governments into regional governments encompassing more diversified economies. The window of opportunity for such a redrawing of political boundaries would be in the immediate aftermath of ratification, by order of the TAsC.[45]
Eliminate local government entirely.

The last of these alternatives, abolition of local government, would be unwise and undemocratic. The absence of government elected at the local level would reduce proximity of constituents to their representative(s).

The other alternatives do have merit in varying degrees. Let the various options be sifted and weighed in the balance through the democratic process, after it is revitalized and restored under the arch-amendment.

Depriving local governments of the tax base represented by domiciles up to 1/10th acre will not destroy local government. But it will force the localities to redesign the tax base, a process for which the constellation law (9:7) allows three years past the next census.

The bottom line here is that government is much more inventive – and has more options – in collecting taxes than do householders in finding ways to pay. About all householders can do is moonlight, sell out, or – more commonly – put both parents to work full time (with children consigned to daycare).

Conclusion

Most of my personal housing experience has consisted of renting a room / apartment as a bachelor, and later as head of a family, paying the mortgage on a house. After 1998, for the first time in my life, I resided in a fully paid-for house. It was big enough for my family, and liberated (or so one might think) from the necessity of paying part of my teacher’s salary for shelter. Not so! I still found myself paying nearly a month’s worth of my annual salary for rent – i.e. for property taxes to the county government.

According to a Brookings Institution study, economists would tend to meet such complaints by countering, “this predicament is a signal that the taxpayer is overhoused….”[46] Their view would be, in other words, that my family and I should have sold the house and downsized. The problem with their economic expertise is that my previous house in the same county was less than half as large, and still a painful portion of my pay went to property taxes.

But suppose the tax had been a painless token? Even a penny a year would betoken the conditional nature of the right to own land. And it would be politicians imposing the conditions. If they can require a penny, their political successors can take silver by the pound. The Founding Fathers of the USA saw the importance of principle as regards taxes. It was not that King George III imposed taxes that were terribly burdensome, but that the taxes violated a key principle of liberty. Therefore “no taxation without representation” became a rallying cry in their justifiable and successful Revolution.

In the great trichotomy – life, liberty and property – only property suffers the payment of political rent. Life is rent free, except perhaps the cost of childbirth. Liberty is both priceless and gratis for the individual, excepting a slave or indentured servant. But in America, the property on which one resides, despite its fundamental and indispensable character, remains beholden to local government – or contingent upon payment of the assessor’s fee.

Levying such a rent is perverse on political principle. The power to tax is the power to destroy, and therefore the levy renders the right to own a domicile conditional upon the benevolent dispositions of the officeholder class. Alas, their munificence and their malevolence go hand in glove. They play to a constituency consisting largely of voters (renters) who own no domicile and are naturally sympathetic to appeals that would pass the tax burden off to someone else (homeowners).

In place of a perverse incumbent protection plan – a modus operandi that sets renters against homeowners – section nine benefits both domiciliary interests, the landless and the landed, with tax exemptions. In addition, a two-tiered ballot gives renters and homeowners their fair say on property tax levies and candidates for assessor.

The constellation law would serve to repudiate utterly the view (held by communists, and some postmodernists) that property ownership by individuals is outdated and should be outlawed. Section nine would reaffirm the principle and secure constitutional rank for outright private ownership of one’s home.

Above a certain quantity of acreage, however, taxation of a domicile does have an ancillary benefit of preventing a few people from unproductively hoarding vast tracts of valuable land, ostensibly as their homestead. For the average homeowner, however, the realistic hope of being able to live moderately and rent-free is a liberty in itself, and a status towards which to work hard. Here we can nurture a great economic motivator by holding the property tax collector permanently at bay.

Furthermore, financial reverses can ruin the richest business tycoons. By enhancing the option to fallback with one’s family to a tenth-acre and a 1452 sq. ft. house, beyond the reach of government foreclosure, the constellation law would afford citizens an heartening haven in a remorseless, machine-like world.

Home-ownership without strings attached is liberty infinitely more wholesome and uplifting than the licentious, hedonistic freedoms proffered by the postmodernist regime, or than safety nets comprising the welfare state.

Part II: Environmental Protections

…the earth’s treasures no longer serve to build
God’s garden for all to live in, but they
have been made to serve the powers
of exploitation and destruction.

Pope Benedict XVI, 2005[47]

The needs of capital are not always
the same as the needs of society.
We, the people, risk being displaced.

Economist, Noreena Hertz[48]

Agricultural Lands vs. Urban Sprawl

Under the principle of necessities, food comes into play via the preferential tax treatment incorporated into the arch-amendment. The constellation law permits localities to impose property taxes on farms, subject, however, to several provisos, including the following (section 9:1):

· assessment of productive agricultural lands and associated farm equipment is minimized to reflect the fact that production of food is a necessity of life

· productive family farm land is assessed at no more than half the rate for corporate agriculture.

More consciously than European farm protection policy – where an unintended consequence of farm subsidies was to check urban expansion [49] – section nine has the intent of curbing urban sprawl. Here is a conjunction between environmental concerns and a preferential option for the poor (low taxes on farmland make basic food items less expensive). Even as the low land tax helps keep agricultural areas from falling into the hands of housing developers, and thus promotes a lower cost of food production, so the extension of favored tax rates to farmers on the periphery of cities and towns will serve as a sort of wall against urban sprawl.

Since the 1920s, flight to the suburbs has radically altered both the human ecology of America and our flora and fauna. In Europe the limitation of such expansion has meant more vital urban neighborhoods, and a stronger sense of identify with one’s city. The check to urban sprawl should be seen, not as a restriction on liberty, but as an advancement of the freedom to live in healthier, more vibrant, and more community conscious urban environments.

Europeans continue to live in the cities, … because that's where everything is. Their city neighborhoods have many small and accessible shops and markets, while U.S. city neighborhoods often lack even the basics, such as a grocery store…[50]

A notable difference between Chicago and Paris can be seen from their highest vantage points. On a clear day atop the Sears Tower, one observes urban sprawl as far as the eye can see (except only Lake Michigan). From the Eiffel Tower, by contrast, one sees farms in the distance.[51]

Genuine liberty is found in the availability of a healthy and hospitable environment, not just in the opportunity to exercise political freedoms to the maximum. Also it is no insignificant freedom to be able to buy a farm on which to raise a family. Although farmers have dropped from a third of the U.S. population in 1900, to 15% in 1950, to two percent currently, the latter figure represents between five and six million Americans who still live on farms. Their impact is proportionally greater than their numbers, both economically and culturally.

By reducing assessments on family farms to 50% or less of the rate for corporate agricultural enterprises, the constellation law will bolster opportunity for individual families to adopt or maintain an agrarian lifestyle. Farm life was rightly regarded by Thomas Jefferson, and by many observers since, as conducive to the country’s moral and political stability. The decline of farm life needs to be checked, and its survival supported and promoted. Such a purpose is implicit in the ninth section of the constellation law.

Reviving Nuisance Doctrine and the Legal Status of Public Trust

Just as society can guide the economic forces of supply and demand so as to help the family farm survive, so likewise we the people can change the economic equation to favor the natural legacy we all share, i.e. the public trust. Bobby Kennedy, Jr., sees the process as letting the marketplace inflict its natural punishments on polluters.

In a real free-market economy, when you make yourself rich, you enrich your community. But polluters make themselves rich by making everybody else poor…. And they do that by escaping the discipline of the free market…. The truth is, I don’t even think of myself as an environmentalist anymore. I consider myself a free-marketeer. Along with my colleagues at the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) and Waterkeeper, I go out into the marketplace and catch the cheaters. We tell them, ‘We’re going to force you to internalize your costs the same as you internalize your profits.’[51a]

To be sure we lack a genuine free market when armies of lobbyists unavailable to consumers pressure members of Congress, and give them payoffs (a.k.a. campaign contributions) to maintain “capitalism for the poor,” but provide “socialism for the rich.” What kind of free market capitalism is it, pray tell, that has federal subsidies totaling $65 billion per year to big oil, and more than $35 billion annually in tax revenues going to “western welfare cowboys” – stockmen, large farmers, along with mining and timber companies? As Kennedy demonstrates in his book, Crimes Against Nature, the last thing that corporate cartels want is genuine free markets. When allowed to operate freely, the marketplace would reflect in energy prices the costs which the victims of pollution, the American people, must pay in long-term economic costs. For instance, through political favoritism coal-burning utilities avoid having to bear any burden for what they inflict on society when they acidify lakes, poison waterways with mercury, stimulate 120,000 asthma attacks per year, and contribute to 30,000 deaths of Americans annually.[51b]

RFK, Jr., the country’s leading environmental attorney, bases much of his legal campaigning on the dual principles of public nuisance and Public Trust Doctrine. The latter, public trust, is said to be the oldest body of law upon which the Republic rests, with a history in English common law and in the earlier Roman law.

Public trust doctrine reserves for the whole of the populace such particular “gifts of nature’s bounty” as air, waters, fisheries, shellfish beds, migratory species and public parks. The public trustees of this bounty are the people, acting collectively via government. As codified 15 centuries ago, Roman law held “common to all,” and beyond the reach of private ownership, such blessings of nature as “air, running water, the sea, and consequently the sea shore.”

The barbarian invaders who overran the Roman Empire destroyed public trust protections, especially in Western Europe. But the process of restoration began with the Magna Carta in 1215, and public trust doctrine revived in English common law. With the Industrial Revolution, however, public trust rights fell again into disuse, so as “to dramatically reduce the power of individuals with interests in fishing, bathing, recreation, drinking water, or aesthetics to exercise their rights to redress injuries to public trust resources.” Bringing public trust doctrine to the fore on Earth Day, 1970, was thus a sort of counterrevolutionary approach when 20 million Americans demonstrated for “restoration of our lost environmental rights.” But the subsequent gains in statutory protections for our “commons” were largely rolled back after the so-called 'revolution of 1994,' and with a vengeance after Bush replaced Clinton.

Today, environmental activists like Kennedy and John Cronin should be seen as leading the latest wave of counterrevolution, insofar as they would undo the pollution based prosperity revolution perpetrated by corrupt politicians and their corporate cronies. The oft challenged but continually resurgent goal is to restore and secure legal protections for an ancient public right.[51c]

The second legal principle on which environmentalists of RFK’s ilk build their case is public nuisance law. This doctrine had long protected the general public from “malefactors attempting to enrich themselves by harming the community.” Nuisance laws restricted private property’s use when it “might injure the public.” The basic purpose was both old and conservative insofar as the aim was “to protect property, public health, and democratic values.” Alas, in a trend running parallel to the erosion of public trust doctrine, nuisance standards began to decline in proportion as America’s industrial revolution advanced. Judicial leniency to corporations became the rule rather than the exception, making it ever more difficult to issue injunctions against corporate public nuisances.

And so today, once again, the task is restoration of two venerable doctrines: nuisance restriction and protection of the public trust.[51d]

National Sovereignty vs. Globalization & the WTO

Defending the environment is a cause that is now well established within the fabric of America's social consciousness. A generation has passed since the hard-fought gains of the 1970s, and the revived recognition that environmental injury is a form of theft. The challenge today is not just continuing the environmental movement and raising awareness of problems like climate change, but also fighting plutocratic attempts to administer setbacks. On this front, a Zola-like j'accuse[52]issues from RFK, Jr.'s book, Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush & his Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country & Hijacking our Democracy (2005).

While U.S. Presidential Administrations last four to eight years, the longer-term threat is transnational — the drive by globalists to outflank national laws and move multinational corporations into a posture of independence from environmental protection legislation. Nearly every ruling by the WTO in environmental cases has favored corporate interests against decisions by democratically elected governments.[53] In so doing, globalist elites like the World Trade Organization (WTO) have provoked a worldwide backlash of massive proportions.

Established in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a powerful new global commerce agency, which transformed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into an enforceable global commerce code. GATT – established in 1948 with 23 member countries – became the WTO, a 144-member organization. Unlike GATT, no member nation in the WTO possess a veto. WTO hearings are held in secret, and once issued it takes a unanimous negative by all 144 member states to override.[54] The WTO has become one of the main mechanisms of corporate globalization; also a clear and present threat to national sovereignty.

Quito, Ecuador. Opposition to Free Trade Area of the Americas, 2002

Sovereignty is a nation’s political independence. National sovereignty enables us to bridle capitalistic enterprises within our borders. The forces that love or loathe the WTO are the latest manifestation of an old struggle between two economic visions: capitalism of the laissez faire model that brooks no interference from government, vis-à-vis capitalism harnessed to serve workers and consumers.

One hundred years ago these visions had their respective champions in the likes of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan (who cashiered unregulated capitalism into monopolies and vast personal fortunes), versus AFL leader Samuel Gompers, trustbuster Teddy Roosevelt, and solons who enacted the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (preferring to domesticate business enterprises rather than let corporations run wild).

Dr. Norenna Hertz sees the WTO, et. al. undermining national sovereignty, “not for a holistic greater global good, but for a very particular one – that of American and European multinationals.”[55] As Chris Mooney puts it, what the WTO, NAFTA and FTAA really threaten is this,

the ability of states and nations to opt for a
regulated and democratically governed
form of capitalism rather than a laissez-
faire and politically insulated one. [56]

The anti-WTO, anti-globalization movement caught America’s undivided attention in December 1999, during the now famous “battle of Seattle” (on the streets of which your author played a small role). Since then cities across North and South America and Western Europe have seen demonstrations comparable in size and intensity to the Viet Nam War protests of the 1960’s, and more recently, to the marches opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[57]

Portions of the anti-globalization movement have protested lawfully and/or peacefully; others have engaged in civil disobedience and/or adopted violent tactics. For example, in La Paz, Bolivia, violent street demonstrations against globalist free trade policies and against foreign exploitation of the country’s natural gas resources (October 2003), led to 65 deaths and downfall of the Bolivian government. El Presidente, Sanchez de Lozada, fled to the United States giving over power to the vice-president, Carlos Mesa.

Anti-FTAA protesters in Miami, Florida

Anti-FTAA protesters in Miami, Florida
11/20/2003. Jared Lazarus / Miami Herald

AFL-CIO members, 11/20/2003 during the anti-FTAA protest.

AFL-CIO members, 11/20/2003 during the anti-FTAA protest. Nuri Vallbona / Miami Herald

Service Employees International labor union at the anti-FTAA march, 11/20/2003.

Service Employees International labor union at the anti-FTAA march, 11/20/2003. Noelle Theard / Miami Herald Staff

The movement against globalization features a potent alliance of greens with labor activists. The U.S. version includes old line unions, like the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters. As pictured to the right, Miami, Florida saw labor take to the streets, joined by a wide range of anti-globalism activists. Their protest was against the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) and the meeting of FTAA leaders and promoters held in Miami, Florida, November, 2003.

The previous year in Quito Ecuador, a spokesman for protestors stated that, “we don't have food to feed our children. Our markets are flooded with cheap imports. Imported milk is dumped in Ecuador for half of what it costs to produce it, but transnationals [mostly Nestle] sell it back to us at $1.80 per liter. We have no way to live, and the FTAA will only make it worse.”[58]

Beginning in the mid to late 19th century, workers’ advocates (trade unionists included) carried on a noble uphill struggle on behalf of working men and women. Contrasted to their counterparts in Europe, organized labor in the U.S. fought exclusively within the context of the capitalist economy, generally limiting their aims to better wages and working conditions. Employing the strike as their primary weapon, political action remained secondary.

In America the success of trade union pioneers like Samuel Gompers of the AFL did much to steal the thunder from the disciples of Lenin and Mao; also weakening socialists like Eugene Debs. Thus the labor movement in the United States did capitalism and the world an invaluable service, aiding victory over communism in the competition for the hearts and minds of working men and women.

And yet with ingratitude that dismays people of good will – but that heartens diehard Marxists – postmodernist plutocrats have embarked upon a concerted betrayal of capitalism’s old benefactors. They have outsourced jobs overseas so as to escape U.S. labor laws and wage standards, and have duplicitously spun the job drain as a regrettable but passing side-effect of free trade. In order to maximize profits they have hired sweat-shop labor in China and other third-world countries to manufacture goods, which they turn around and sell to American consumers at prices that undercut products made in the USA. In perpetrating this double-cross, they tout the economic freedoms that American workers secured for industrialists in the first place.

In pursuing a turnabout against the backstabbing euphemized as “outsourcing,” the proposed counterrevolutionary combination would mobilize three diverse elements – labor advocates, greens, and ardent defenders of national sovereignty. From all three perspectives, ranging from left to right on the political spectrum, the common foe is a regime that denies the supremacy of United States law. Postmodernist plutocrats seek to:

· Circumvent longstanding laws that incorporate historic gains by the American labor force vis-à-vis owners and management.

· Bypass environmental protections won in Congress over the course of the last generation.

· Subordinate U.S. sovereignty to international treaties and protocols.

Plutocrats in the postmodernist regime would relegate all U.S. law to nullities when they conflict with international trade agreements. If we let some form of world government override the U.S. Constitution, then our “supreme Law of the Land” shall thenceforth rule in name only. And if king Constitution ceases to rule the land, then the country is no longer ours to govern.

Given the weighty issues at stake, it is no surprise that writings abound on the threat to American sovereignty. These works take four approaches:

First, a key issue is whether democratic governments can regulate faults in their market economies. Globalism would make free trade the overriding paradigm, trumping economic decision-making via the democratic process, and demonizing all tariffs.

Robert Kittner of Business Week notes: [59]

…dissenters (from globalism) are not challenging the value of global commerce, much less the virtue of international culture. At issue, rather, is the ability of democratically elected governments to regulate the less attractive aspects of a market economy and to allocate social investment to those areas of human life that markets find unprofitable — education, health, public infrastructure, the environment, and decent conditions of work….

For over a century, popular struggles in the democracies have used the nation-state to temper raw capitalism. The power of voters has offset the power of capital. But as national barriers have come down in the name of freer commerce, so has the capacity of governments to manage capitalism in a broad public interest. So the real issue is not "trade" but democratic governance.

Dr. Noreena Hertz, The Guardian

Dr. Noreena Hertz, The Guardian photo

As a result, many dissenters scorn the ballot box. Often they take to the streets, sometimes violently, because “they are moved by a common disillusionment with traditional politics. Their mood of resistance is born of a widespread sense of disenfranchisement — not because they don't have the right to vote, but because they believe their vote is irrelevant.”[60] A must read here is the young light of Cambridge University’s International Business school, Noreena Hertz. The title of Professor Hertz’s 2002 book states the problem concisely: The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy.[61]

Second, the expansion of WTO power subjects everyone to a new and more powerful form of plutocracy. The new world economy is not wild capitalism but rather, as Richard C. Longworth points out, a supranational system weaving, like some giant arachnid, “a legal and supervisory web around the global economy.” Caught in the mesh are countless workers and consumers who have no say in how or where the web is woven. Longworth continues,

“Nonbinding standards to promote uniformity in banking, accounting, and corporate behavior become templates of good conduct and take on the force of law. Most insidiously, this governance grows by the day, even without new rules and laws. Often, old national rules and laws are interpreted or bent by regulators, to the point that differences between national codes are shaded or even erased. In the process, a new global law comes into being, to be enforced by the same people who created it. These new global rule-makers are well on their way to legislating the twenty-first century. And they are seldom subject to the same cross-pressures and democratic constraints that limit their domestic counterparts.”[62]

Third, the WTO, NAFTA, IMF, World Bank and other agencies regulating the global economy are doing damage to poor countries.[63] This is certainly the perception of the poor and their spokesmen in third world countries. It was also the observation of Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz, who left his

Joseph Stiglitz

Joseph Stiglitz takes Nobel Prize in Economics, 10/2001

job as chief economist of the World Bank “because the policy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank only intensified poverty in developing countries instead of reducing distress.”[64] As Stiglitz described it:

During my three years as chief economist of the World Bank, labor market issues were looked at through the lens of neoclassical economics. "Wage rigidities” – often the fruits of hard-fought bargaining – were thought part of the problem facing many countries. A standard message was to increase labor market flexibility. The not-so-subtle subtext was to lower wages and lay off unneeded workers.

They had a strategy for job destruction. They had no strategy for job creation. Many of the policies the IMF pursued as they were killing off jobs made job creation almost impossible. In the U.S., you couldn't have job creation with interest rates of 30 or 40 percent. They had a philosophy that said job creation was automatic. I wish it were true. Just a short while after hearing, from the same preachers, sermons about how globalization and opening up capital markets would bring them unprecedented growth, workers were asked to listen to sermons about "bearing pain." Wages began falling 20 to 30 percent, and unemployment went up by a factor of two, three, four, or ten….

As people in Seattle were saying (the ‘Battle of Seattle,’ December 1999), the international institutions go around the world preaching liberalization, and the developing countries see that means open up your markets to our commodities, but we aren't going to open our markets to your commodities. In the nineteenth century, they used gunboats. Now they use economic weapons and arm-twisting.[65]

The WTO and FTAA and like organizations are a new and powerful instrument whereby poor countries are compelled to submit to exploitation of their raw materials and natural resources by wealthy nations. As Noreena Hertz puts it, globalization as it currently operates is widening the gap between the rich and the poor. “While I have no hesitation in believing that capitalism is the best system for creating wealth,” says Hertz, “I also believe that economic globalization in its current form exacerbates inequalities. Trickle-down doesn't work, and capitalism alone cannot resolve the problems it creates.”

In mixing with youthful protestors in Europe and America, Hertz heard questions such as these:

· Why has the number of people living on less than $1 a day increased over the past two decades in every developing country in the world (excepting East Asia).

· Why, after inequality declined in most countries between 1946 and the 1970s, has this trend reversed all over the world since the ideals of free trade and privatization became mainstream?[66]

Fourth, the free trade mindset embraces the notion of economic growth for the sake of growth. In turn the overriding focus on growth is fundamentally opposed to environmental sensitivity.[67] Forests, wildlife habitats, streams and lakes are the losers. Urban sprawl is a big winner.

In summary, socialism for the corporations in the guise of free-trade, combined with globalism, are political and economic foes of sovereignty, ecology and responsible growth. The defeat of these foes will make a profound contribution to saving America’s future. And with the constellation amendment as superintending law, America can lead the world by example — away from environmental disasters like climate change, meanwhile encouraging the independence of nation states.[67a]

Historical Perspective

Assuming a decision of this contest that favors sovereignty over globalization, the fight will be far from ended in our favor. From the domestic standpoint, environmental responsibility will require (as with the defense of liberty) eternal vigilance. Like the proverbial equestrian who leads a horse to water but cannot force the animal to drink, so our arch-reform will enable (not force) the country to exercise environmental care.

Fortunately for greens, the prospect is not all uphill, or anything like starting from scratch. As environmental

Dr. Mary Graham

Dr. Mary Graham
Harvard University

historian, Mary Graham, points out, much of the battle has already been won on the domestic front. Graham cites tangible improvements in the way mankind treats the natural environment, backed by solid support in public opinion.[68]

Environmentalism in general enjoys solid approval within both the Democrat and Republican rank and file, and is indeed approved in their official platforms. For example, one of the seven sections in the GOP national platform of 2000 is entitled, “American Partners in Conservation and Preservation: Stewardship of Our Natural Resources.” It includes the following:

Economic prosperity and environmental protection must advance together. Prosperity gives our society the wherewithal to advance environmental protection, and a thriving natural environment enhances the quality of life that makes prosperity worthwhile.

Democrats may regard their rival party as guilty here of tokenism or obfuscation, but any reasonable observer must concede that, however much the two parties may differ in practice, they both endorse environmental responsibility in principle. Graham considers this political development to be of no small importance: …“it is worth acknowledging a governmental success,” she says, namely “the addition of a new set of values to the American political system.”[69]

As it undermines this salutary revolution, globalization is a malignant reaction that carries the cancer of pollution based prosperity. Here the constellation law will be counter-reactionary. For the arch-amendment will check postmodernist institutions like the WTO in their moves to outflank environmental protections.

The truth is that in a laissez faire free-trade world economy, U.S. firms cannot compete effectively, unless they conform to conditions in the 2nd and 3rd world where environmental protections and labor laws are weaker. Therefore, free trade puts downward pressure on environmental responsibility and worker-friendly jobs.

The constellation law will present an obstacle to this tendency, in that it will contradict the laissez faire principle inherent in postmodernist globalism. “Let it be” or laissez faire may appeal to Beatles’ fans, but in running the world economy, the WTO et. al., manage to capitalize on the lack of checks in order to undermine democratic rule. The constellation law will re-enfranchise nations, or at least this nation, and re-empower the people to govern economic life via elected officials.

Political / economic principles worth their salt do in fact manifest themselves in the real world. By this test, environmentalism worked well during the last three decades of the 20th century. As Graham put it on the eve of the Bush/Cheney Administration:

After a generation, pollution control and conservation have been assimilated into the America political system. As national priorities, they have stood the test of time, and they have weathered political challenges. They have become a permanent part of government and business decision-making.

For example, today’s most serious water pollution problem is runoff from farms and city streets – a tribute indeed to the success of the environmental movement in the United States. For in contrast to the recent past, today’s steel mills, refineries, and chemical companies have done much to control discharges from drainpipes.[70] And the submission of large corporations to accepted environmental standards is due in part to the aggressive tactics taken by NGO's like the Water Keeper Alliance, and their determination to send fighting attorneys into the fray like Bobby Kennedy, Jr.

Lakes below Dry Falls, central Washington state

On the governmental front, no longer do cities dump raw sewage intentionally into lakes and rivers. It is anathema now for government at the federal and state levels to manage public lands primarily to facilitate logging, mining, and grazing. So successful has been the impact of the environmental movement that activists have shifted much of their focus from public lands to “conserving ecological resources on private lands.”[71]

Here a good deal of tension exists, naturally enough, between public and private interests.[72] The constellation law, section 8:3, would help to relieve this friction by demarcating boundaries as regards homesteads. Even though domiciles would rise to a distinguished place in the revived Constitution, they would still be subject to state and local environmental protection legislation. But such laws would have to spring from the democratic process (not from administrative discretion). Moreover, state and local regulation of domiciles would apply without interference from Federal or international officials — except insofar as the arch-amendment charges the Federal government “to protect the property owner against regulation that is arbitrary, and against local and State legislation that violates the fundamental right to own, develop and defend one’s domicile.”

Another proof of progress during the first generation of the environmental movement is the degree to which air pollution has dropped. In 2004 a US Environmental Protection Agency report found 85 percent of the more than 3100 counties in the USA in compliance with EPA air quality standards.[73] Even the Los Angeles basin, which came in worst in the report, is moving in the right direction. A generation ago we used to pity LA as “the city of death.” Once afflicted chronically with acrid brown skies, LA has seen annual smog alerts fall in just 20 years from 121 down to seven.[74] A good part of the progress is due to the fact that new automobiles burn gasoline some 90% more cleanly than cars produced in 1970.[75]

The consolidation of this salutary revolution was still incomplete when the WTO, et. al. reared their ugly heads. Once the international outflanking movement is checked,[76] remaining challenges for greens will include the continuing discharge by industry of more than a million tons of toxic chemicals, mostly into the atmosphere.[77] Another difficulty is that farmers and small businessmen, whose impact on the environment is enormous, “lack the resources and incentives to modify their practices.”[78]

The assimilation of pollution control and conservation into the mainstream of the American polity in no way reduces the necessity for vigilance and strong safeguards. Postmodernism is driving religious principles to the back of the bus, for example, which were long held as part of America’s cultural consensus. The same could happen with ecological values.

Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew

In a poignant way, indeed, religion and ecology are linked. The old hymn puts it thus:

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee:

How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

“How Great Thou Art,” 2nd verse (C.G. Boberg, 1885)

Recalling the kindness toward animals exhibited by saints like Francis of Assisi and Philip Neri, the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares man’s dominion over the earth to be contingent upon “a religious respect for the integrity of creation.” In 1995 Patriarch Bartholomew, leader of Orthodox Christians worldwide, presided over a liturgy on the Aegean island of Patmos, where the Bible’s last book was written. There the Orthodox Church formally declared pollution to be a sin.[79] Since then Pope John Paul and Patriarch Bartholomew have labored jointly to proclaim the religious call to “ecological conversion.”[80]

God forbid that under the postmodernist regime both religion and the environment go deeper into persecution/abuse. Let us therefore consolidate environmentalism’s rightful status by means of an honored place in the restored written Constitution. Greens are welcomed to the twelve lights coalition by virtue of the merits of their cause, and also because globalization threatens them too. In league with the peace movement, which the constellation law seeks to bolster (section 5:1), and with the labor movement (section seven), advocates of environmental protection will find familiar compatriots.

The conjunction between greens and advocates for private property rights is not so familiar, however. To conclude this chapter, here in outline form is a summary of what the constellation law will do for these two interests in the coalition:

What section seven/eight/nine would do for greens:

Disavow accelerating GDP and growth in consumption as the sole approach to full-employment. (see section seven and chapter eight)
Morally reinforce the nation’s commitment to environmental protections — “duty to exercise good stewardship over the natural bounty bequeathed to this continent from time immemorial.” (section 8:2) Reinforce the notion of environmental protection as a “basic human right.”[80a]
Acknowledge the link between stewardship over creation and the highest authority, our Creator. (economic preamble)
Defend the wilderness out of concern for humanity's survival as per Thoreau's maxim: “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”[80b]
Promote a happier and more healthy citizenry by keeping woods and deserted areas accessible (stop closing and ripping up dirt roads). The therapeutic effect of the wilds recalls John Muir's celebrated invitation: “Climb the mountains and get the good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”[80c] (see above, chapter three)
Check postmodernist moves to let international protocols supersede the Constitution, and override statutory enactments of environmental protections. (section 8:3)

What section eight/nine would do for householders:

Allow property owners a floor space and green zone that is safe from tax collectors, and more secure from regulation than at present.
Give Congress oversight against over-regulation of green zones around domiciles.
Demarcate jurisdictional boundaries, thus reducing wasteful squabbling between levels of government
Otherwise confine Congress to the role of informational facilitator in regulating domiciles.
Benefit renters indirectly, by extending property tax breaks to their landlords.

What section eight/nine would do for both greens and property rights advocates:

Revise property taxes so as to encourage (rather than punish) the maintenance and upkeep of homes and apartment buildings, and promote the inner city as living space.
Discourage urban sprawl via tax structures that favor agriculture, particularly the family farm.
Address what Dr. Mary Graham has called one of the basic environmental questions yet to be resolved, i.e. permanent tension “between public interest in how land is used and the interest of landowners in deciding for themselves what to do with their own property.”[81]

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ENDNOTES

[1] Harold Lamb, “Sovereignty no match for WTO,” World Net Daily, June 23, 2000.

[2] Genesis 9:7

[3] Henry J. Aaron, Who Pays the Property Tax? A New View (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1975), pp. 34, 37-38. Aaron is an iconoclast re the conventional wisdom that property taxes are regressive, yet on rentals he admits (barely) the regressive effect.

[4] Glenn W. Fisher, The Worst Tax? A History of the Property Tax in America (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1996), p. 90.

[5] (47 US Code 151)

[6] John Locke, Concerning Civil Government, essay 2 (1690). Locke uses the phrase “life, liberty and estate.”

[7] Sumner Benson, “A History of the General Property Tax,” in, George C.S. Benson, Sumner Benson, Harold McClelland, Procter Thomson, The American Property Tax: Its History, Administration, and Economic Impact (Claremont, California: Claremont Men’s College, 1965), p. 12.

[8] Chester G. Starr, The Economic and Social Growth of Early Greece, 800-500 B.C. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 163, 175, 186.

[9] Photo taken by R.S. in mid-1970’s, eastern Washington State.

[10] A.H.M. Jones, The Roman Economy: Studies in Ancient Economic and Administrative History (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1974), ed. by P.A. Brunt; Tenney Frank, Economic History of Rome (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1927, 1962).

[11] 1st Samuel 8:11-18.

[12] Sumner Benson, “A History of the General Property Tax,” op. cit., pp. 12-17.

[13] Ibid., p. 11. On only 3 occasions has the Federal government levied property taxes — during the French crisis of 1798; the War of 1812, and the American Civil War.

[14] Benson, ibid., pp. 69, 71.

[15] Harold F. McClelland, “Property Tax Assessment,” in George C.S. Benson, et. al, The American Property Tax, op. cit., p. 82; Fisher, The Worst Tax? op. cit., pp. 193-94, 209; Aaron, Who Pays the Property Tax? op. cit., p. 72.

[16] Cheri Honkala, Richard Goldstein, and Elizabeth Thul, with William Baptist and Patrick Grugan, “Globalisation and homelessness in the USA: building a social movement to end poverty,” Development in Practice Abstracts, vol. 9, no. 5, 1999. Citing a 2001 estimate in The Journal of Academic Emergency Medicine, 20 May 2003, the authors indicate “ ‘Homelessness remains a social disease of epidemic proportions. In the United States, the homeless population is estimated to be between 4 and 13.5 million persons, and 7.5% of the general population will become homeless at some point in their lifetimes.'”

[17] “A property tax is a tax levied primarily upon land and buildings. In some countries, including the United States, the tax is also levied upon business and farm equipment and inventories. Sometimes the tax extends to automobiles, jewelry, furniture, and even to such intangibles as bonds, mortgages, and shares of stock….” Encyclopedia Britannica, 15^th ed., 28: 424.

[18] Initiative 345 passed by the voters of Washington state in 1977.

[19] Encyclopedia Britannica, 15^th ed., 28: 426

[20] Stocker in Fisher, The Worst Tax? op. cit., p. 187.

[21] Fisher, ibid., pp. 193-94, 197.

[22] Fisher, ibid, 1-2, 190, 194.

[23] Fisher, ibid., p. 209. As of 2000, Fisher was Regents' Professor of Urban Affairs, Emeritus, at Wichita State University.

[24] Aaron, op. cit., p. 94. The State of Washington Administrative Code [WAC 458-16-110-11] mandates exemptions from taxes on the property of the indicated organizations.

[25] Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edition, 28: 427.

[26] Mary Graham, The Morning after Earth Day: Practical Environmental Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), p. 23, reports that urbanized land was at c. 60 million acres in 1992, or 2.6% of the 2,262,440,000 acres in USA.

[27] Graham, ibid., pp. 61, 102-03, 106, 109, 112.

[28] George C.S. Benson, et. al., The American Property Tax, pp. 3-10; Fisher, The Worst Tax? op.cit., p. 197.

[29] Fisher, Ibid.

[30] Ibid. Fisher cites a 1992 survey, which found that nineteen states give the primary responsibility for assessment to counties. Eight states allocate the responsibility to municipalities or townships. In 17 states there is a mix.

[31] Fisher, ibid., p. 187.

[32] Washington State Constitution, amendment 17 (a), states that levies on real and personal property in the state may not exceed 0.4cents per dollar of assessed valuation unless approved by three-fifths of the voters. In 1975, the base rate was more than doubled.

[33] American political parties selected party nominees via the convention system until after the turn of the 20^th century. Since then U.S. politics has produced four versions of primary elections: [1] the blanket primary used in four states until overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in June, 2000. Long used in my home state of WA, (also California, Alaska, Louisiana) this system allowed any voter, even from the opposing parties, to participate freely on every portion of the primary ballot. Voters did not identify themselves by party affiliation. [2] As of mid-2000, twenty states had open primaries whereby voters decide on election day which party's primary ballot to cast. The ballot includes that party's candidates only. [3] Thirteen states had closed primaries permitting only party members to vote in each party's primary. [4] Thirteen states had closed primaries modified to let independent voters cast ballots in at least one party's primary.

[33a] Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Random House, 2006, Anchor Books, ed., 2007), p. 126.

[34] Sumner Benson, “A History of the General Property Tax,” op. cit., p. 60.

[35] Chester G. Starr, A History of the Ancient World, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 513.

[36] Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 9:4-5, tr. John Dryden. Twelve years after the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus (121, B.C.) the senatorial class orchestrated the assassination of his younger brother, Gaius Gracchus, who had taken up his brother’s mission of reform.

[37] Georgia Constitution of 1798, Article 1, sect. 23; Sumner Benson, “A History of the General Property Tax,” op. cit., p. 60.

[38] Benson, ibid. pp. 60-61.

[39] Greg Winter, “Wider Gap Found Between Wealthy and Poor Schools,” The New York Times, online ed., 10/6/04.

[40] Fisher, The Worst Tax? op. cit., pp. 202-03, cites a survey by the 1993 Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations indicating that 97.5% of school district revenues nationally came from property taxation.

[41] Fisher, ibid, pp. 199-202. In recent decades local governments have secured a rising proportion of revenues via fees, charges and earnings from various sources, as well as sales taxes (27%) and income taxes (13%).

[42] Fisher, ibid., p. 199. Cf. George C.S. Benson, et. al., The American Property Tax, op. cit., p. 2; Aaron, op. cit., p. 55.

[43] Fisher, ibid., pp. 210-11. At p. 211 Fisher argues that the piggyback approach would decrease the incentive for local governments to be economical, and would inevitably work against local autonomy.

Another consideration is the effect of Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) — apportioning both houses of the legislature by population, not area — which put rural counties at a disadvantage in the event of revenue sharing. In that the constellation law re-empowers states in a number of ways, the states might work to recover the Congressional pattern for their legislative branches – apportioning the upper house by area, and the lower house by population.

[44] Fisher, ibid., pp. 211-212 considers revenue sharing for school districts as much simpler to administrate than for municipalities and counties; also less traumatic politically in that many matters are already decided at the state level, such as curriculum requirements, textbook selection, teacher qualifications, lengths of school year, standardized test selection.

[45] Fisher, ibid., pp. 210-11. “In most states it would be possible,” writes Fisher, “to identify regions that have per capita income, sales, and property tax bases adequate to support local government…. such regions are large enough to support an administrative structure capable of administering sales taxes, income taxes, and a variety of fees and charges that could be used to support the regional government.”

[46] Aaron, op. cit., p. 94.

[47] Inauguration mass, 4/24/05, Vatican Original Text, English.

[48] Noreena Hertz, The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy (New York: The Free Press, 2002), p. 86.

[49] Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Preferential Tax Treatment for Agricultural Land, The United States, 21 June 1999, a Congressional Briefing sponsored by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), with Pietro S. Nivola, Kaid Benfield, and Don Chen. Available online.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Ibid., according to Nivola.

[51a] Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush & his Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country & Hijacking our Democracy (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004, 2005), p. 191.

[51b] Ibid., National Resources Defense Council (NRDC): Speech by RFK, Jr., 5/2004 at the NRDC event, “Earth to LA.”

[51c] John Cronin & Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., The Riverkeepers: Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right (New York: Touchstone, 1997, 1999), pp. 140-45.

[51d] Ibid., pp. 145-57.

[52] Ibid., pp. 12, 175.

[53] Noreena Hertz, The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy, op. cit., pp. 80-81.

[54] Ibid., p. 82.

[55] Ibid., p. 81.

[56] Chris Mooney, “Localizing Globalization”, The American Prospect, (Volume 12, Issue 12), July 2 – 16, 2001. Or as Hertz puts it [ibid., p. 84], in the WTO arena nations are “unable to decide for themselves how they and their citizens would like to live and trade.”

[57] A partial list of anti-globalism mass demonstrations from December 1999 through November 2003: Seattle, WA, WTO meeting, November 1999 about 50,000 protesters, 600 arrests; Washington, D.C., World Bank/IMF annual meetings, April 2000, about 20,000 protesters; more than 600 arrests; Quebec, Canada, summit of the Americas, April 2001 between 25,000 and 60,000 protesters, 463 arrests; Goteborg, Sweden, European union summit June 2001about 25,000 protesters; three protesters were shot and 12 police officers were injured in 12 hours of rioting; more than 500 people detained; Genoa, Italy, meeting of G-8, July 2001, some 60,000 protesters, one dead, 180 injured, with 500 arrests; Barcelona, Spain, March 16, 2002 saw some 500,000people protest in Barcelona against issues relating to corporatization and globalization in Europe; Washington, D.C., April 11-13, 2002, several thousand protest IMF and World Bank policies; Quito, Ecuador: 10-11/2002: tens of thousands of protesters “shutting down the country and its capital” to protest FTAA talks; Cancun, Mexico, Sept. 4-14, 2003. WTO [5^th ministerial conference] shut down in disarray and failure, Sunday, 9/14/03. Some 5000 activist protestors. Demonstrations marked by violence, repressive police action, and one suicide by a Korean protestor; Lapaz, Bolivia, Oct. 2003. Massive rioting for weeks. Forced fall of the government of Sanchez de Lozada over free trade policies favoring USA, including plan to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico [see below]; Miami, Fl late Nov. 2003: tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Miami to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas, more than 250 arrests.

[58] Justin Ruben, “Protests In Quito, Ecuador: A Stirring First Hand Account,” Znet, November 02, 2002.

[59] Robert Kuttner, "Globalization and Its Critics," The American Prospect, vol. 12 no. 12, July 2-16, 2001. Kuttner was then with Business Week.

[60] Noreena Hertz, “I'm On Their Side, To a Point,” Washington Post, Sunday, July 29, 2001; p. B01. Hertz was then associate director of the Centre for International Business and Management at the Judge Institute at the University of Cambridge, UK.

[61] Noreena Hertz, The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy (New York: The Free Press, 2002). First published in UK by William Heinemann.

Hertz illustrates the asymmetrical character of the coalition marching against the WTO, in that while she opposes globalization in its present form, she does support stronger international rules in principle, i.e. more restrictions on national sovereignty. Indeed, on international issues like immigration and NAFTA, the environmental movement is divided (Graham, The Morning After Earth Day, op. cit., p. 63).

WTO protestors are not against the international environmental movement, but they do oppose releasing mega-corporations from US laws that defend workers as well as protect the environment.

[62] Richard C. Longworth, “Government without Democracy” The American Prospect, op. cit., July 2 – 16, 2001. Longworth was then senior writer for The Chicago Tribune. See also, Hertz, The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy, op. cit., pp. 79-87.

[63] “The IMF and World Bank hurt poor countries and undermine democracy.” Robert Weissman, “Why We Protest,” Washington Post, Monday, September 10, 2001; p. A21. IMF = International Monetary Fund.

[64] Noreena Hertz, 2003 interview with Germanic Swiss press, (Simon Heusser, Die Weltwoche 51/03, Zürich). Stiglitz left the World Bank in Dec. 2002.

[65] Lucy Komisar interview with, “Joseph Stiglitz,” The Progressive, June 2000; parenthetical re “Battle of Seattle” is mine. Komisar describes her article about the interview as “an edited transcript of his views.”

Stiglitz has taught economics at Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, and as of 2004 at Columbia University. He also served as chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration.

[66] Noreena Hertz, op. cit., Washington Post, 29 July 2001; Hertz, The Silent Takeover, op. cit., pp. 39-43.

[67] Hertz, The Silent Takeover, ibid. pp. 79-81.

[67a]Al Gore's celebrated documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, addressed the issue of national sovereignty when Gore noted the international leadership exercised by the United States in addressing the ozone hole problem, and our success in mobilizing the global community without resorting to world government or undermining the principle of nation states. On global warming see, in addition to Gore's monumental effort, RFK, Jr., Crimes Against Nature, supra, pp. 46-52.

[68] Graham, The Morning after Earth Day, op. cit.

[69] Graham, ibid., p. 8; cf. pp. 9-10, 50, 112.

[70] Ibid., p. 6.

[71] Ibid. Emphasis mine.

[72] Ibid., pp. 21-23, 58.

[73] John Heilprin, “EPA Says 474 Counties Fail Air Standards,” Associated Press, online edition, 4/15/04.

[74] Ibid., p. 7. From 1977 to 1996.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Graham’s relative moderation as a mainstream environmentalist has not prevented her from seeing the threat represented by the WTO, et. al. At p. 9, ibid.,, she notes, “But, in practice, possibilities for national action are now constrained by the increasing power of international forces…” cf. p. 64-65.

[77] Graham, Ibid., p. 7: “in 1995 industry discharged 2.2 billion pounds of chemicals included in the federal Toxics Release Inventory, most of it into the air.”

[78] Ibid., p. 9.

[79] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2416; as RFK, Jr. puts it, “My hero is St. Francis of Assisi because he understood the connection between spirituality and the environment. He understood the way God communicates to us most forcefully is through the fishes and the birds and the trees and that it is a sin to destroy those things.” Bartholomew, the Patriarch of Constantinople, officially the “Ecumenical Patriarch” of the Orthodox Religion, has often been dubbed “the Green Patriarch.”

[80] Joint declaration by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, June 2002. In his general audience address of 17 January 2001, Pope John Paul stated: “It is necessary, therefore, to stimulate and sustain the ‘ecological conversion,’ which over these last decades has made humanity more sensitive when facing the catastrophe toward which it was moving. Man is no longer "minister" of the Creator. However, as an autonomous despot, he is understanding that he must finally stop before the abyss. "Another welcome sign is the growing attention being paid to the ’quality of life’ and to ’ecology’, especially in more developed societies, where people’s expectations are no longer concentrated so much on problems of survival as on the search for an overall improvement of living conditions" (Evangelium Vitae, 27). Therefore, not only is a ‘physical’ ecology at stake, attentive to safeguarding the habitat of different living beings, but also a ‘human’ ecology that will render the life of creatures more dignified, protecting the radical good of life in all its manifestations and preparing an environment for future generations that is closer to the plan of the Creator.”

[80a]Kennedy & Cronin, op. cit., p. 235.

[80b]Tom Turner, Sierra Club: 100 Years of Protecting Nature (New York: Harry M. Abrams, 1991), p. 28.

[80c]Ibid., p. 39.

The Sierra Club's original purpose “had been ‘to explore, enjoy, and render accessible…’ the mountains of the Pacific Coast, and the ‘render accessible’ part had begun to worry people” in the 1940’s. In the twenties the Sierra Club had advocated the building of many roads across the Sierra to open up more wilderness to the public unwilling or unable to make the journey on foot – either their own or a horse’s or mule’s. The organization also advocated the building of trails, beginning with the John Muir Trail, to facilitate entry for hikers to remote areas. After more than half a century the club became increasingly obstructionist with respect to access, changing its official mission statement to read “protect” instead of “render accessible.” Ibid., pp. 128-33.

Section 8:3 of the constellation law would be counterrevolutionary insofar as it restores the original idea of urging people into the wilderness for its healing and invigorating effects, a concept favored by John Muir in founding and leading the Sierra Club.

[81] Graham, The Morning After Earth Day, op. cit., pp. 58, 116-117. The four basic ecological questions that Graham considers unresolved are:

§ How can the now-proven national commitment to environmental protection be reconciled with the core value of protecting private property?

§ Should the next policy steps rely mainly on advancing technological change, as have past approaches, or is the public prepared to support measures designed to change their daily habits?

§ How can the strengths of federal and state governments be combined to produce effective policy?

§ How can the nation avoid the threat of hollow government, a threat characterized by the public’s demand for improved environmental protection that no one is willing to pay for?

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