A Critical Review of Stone Washington’s Declaration on the SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule
*N.B.: Stone Washington’s SEC Declaration Produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute [CEI.org] (Aug. 19, 2024).
“Contracts derive their obligation from the act of the parties, not from the grant of government.”
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~ Chief Justice John Marshall, dissenting opinion: Ogden v. Saunders (1827)
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“America depends on the Free Market. It depends on anyone being able to create value and wealth, but too often government gets in the way.”
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~ Stone Washington, SEC Declaration Opening Statement
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“It takes a crook to catch those crooks.”
~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt (POTUS, 1933-45)
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*N.B.: FDR’s iconic witticism response to a friend who asked him why he choose Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy (father of future POTUS, John F. Kennedy) to be the inaugural Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission? (founded, June 6, 1934) — According to Quotes.org “Kennedy had financed bootlegging operations and had himself been involved in many shady stock deals.” E.g., “Short selling” aka “Pump-and-Dump” – Buying stocks at an artificially low price, manipulating the market causing mass interest in the stock [‘pump’], and then abruptly selling stocks at an artificially inflated high value leaving investors angry, disillusioned and oftentimes bankrupt [‘dump’].
Prologue—Is the SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule a Sound Constitutional Policy, Naked Treason, or Socialism Slavery?
A few days ago (Aug. 19) the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a D.C. Think Tank that my son, Stone A. Washington is a Research Fellow, released a revelatory statement exposing the Securities and Exchange Commission’s so-called “Climate Disclosure Rule” – a series of anti-Capitalism policies which the Resident Biden administration plans to force upon all publically traded U.S. companies without consultation or “advice and consent” from Congress, which is the branch of government the Constitutional Framers mandated with creating all of the laws of the land.
Article I of the United States Constitution grants Congress the power to create laws, or legislate, in specific areas. Article I, Section 1 states, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives”. Congress is also given the power to create laws that are “necessary and proper” for carrying out the powers of the government as outlined in the Constitution.
In response to this unconstitutional policy and naked treachery amounting to Socialism Slavery by the Resident Biden administration to enact such dubious policy initiatives that in effect would literally deconstruct and destroy Capitalism in America, and after listening to Stone’s profound and sobering words of warning in his CEI Declaration against the SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule, I was inspired to post this two paragraph rejoinder on my Facebook page (Aug. 22) in support of Stone’s passionate defense of America’s Republic and the Rule of Law which I also sent out to over 1,000 Academics, Attorneys, Colleagues, Politicians, Businesses, Corporations, Judges, Media entities, Social Media, Think Tanks, friends, and family in America and throughout the world—
{Original Facebook Post, Part 1}
My son, Stone Washington, is a Research Fellow at the D.C. Libertarian Think Tank, Competitive Enterprise Institute [CEI], who presented this very Outstanding
Declaration exposing the Resident Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission’s [SEC] treasonous and unconstitutional Climate Disclosure Rule which Stone contends is NOT designed to protect the environment, but to DECONSTRUCT American Businesses and to DESTROY Free Market Capitalism in America
EPIPHANY — The Contract Clause is the Critical Part of the U.S. Constitution that can Deconstruct and Destroy Virtually all Democrat Socialist Party Policy and Progressive Laws in America
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After a recent conversation with Stone (Aug. 18) in mid-conversation I was moved by the Holy Spirit to have Stone implement his cogent analysis of Substantive Due Process under the First Amendment’s Contract Clause as a central and primary argument to keep government from unconstitutionally violating businesses and corporations with burdensome, unsubstantiated, and unsustainable policy mandates (e.g., Environmental, Social, Governance initiatives [ESG] which include the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed Climate Disclosure Rule policies and business-killing mandates).
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Furthermore, I urged Stone Washington to use the bedrock, judicial precedents of the earliest U.S. Supreme Court Justices who venerated the First Amendment Contract Clause and repeatedly used the Contract Clause in landmark Supreme Court case law in defense of the Constitution’s protection of the sanctity of Contract and Liberty of Contract between private persons, between people and businesses, and between people and corporations lasting nearly 150 YEARS! (1790 -1937).
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This Fascist period of American history that witnessed the merger of Corporations and the State reminds me of Hitler’s main ally during World War II – Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini‘s famous aphorism —
“That to achieve the Fascist utopia in the imperial future, Italian totalitarianism must politicize human existence into subservience to the state, which Mussolini summarized with the epigram:
Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato.
Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
*N.B.: Used by Mussolini in a speech before the Chamber of Deputies on 26 May 1927, Discorsi del 1927: Milano, Alpes, 1928, p. 157.
Why is Liberty of Contract a sacred Natural Right that originates from God and the Bible, not Man or Government? Because America’s Founding Fathers and the Constitutional Framers understood that if people did not have the Liberty of Contract as free citizens to create and enforce contracts among themselves and between businesses and corporations as they pleased without government interference, without outside molestation, or without infringement by the State or some Dictator or Monarch from Europe, regarding what President George Washington called this “Last Great Experiment”, otherwise President George Washington and all of the Founding Fathers understood that America would soon fall into corruption, deconstruction, and would not last very long.
The establishment of our new Government seems to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness. ~ George Washington, Jan. 9, 1790
For about the first nearly 150 years of America’s existence including case law precedent by the Supreme Court (1790-1937) most of the Justices venerated the First Amendment containing the Contract Clause as an impregnable wall of protection for the regular citizen or “little guy” from the increasingly growing power of the Leviathan federal government and the Big Government State because America was born inside the crucible of the First Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) and would grow to eclipse all Nations of the world during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914). Stone Washington, in his revelatory and important law journal article titled —
130 Years of Substantive Due Process (1810 – 1937): The Premature Demise of Natural Law Jurisprudence and the Liberty of Contract How the Lochner Era Could Have Survived the New Deal, 63 Washburn L. Jour. 369-413 (2024)
Stone Washington, using brilliant research, detailed history, and scholarly skill chronicled this neglected history of Natural Law Jurisprudence resurrecting and rediscovering for our Modern Times the Founding Fathers prolific and their often stated veneration of the Natural Law and Natural Rights arguments in the Contract Clause. For example, Stone cited this forgotten history writing that —
Chief Justice [John] Marshall’s vigorous dissent asserts that “[C]ontracts derive their obligation from the act of the parties, not from the grant of government,” recognizing the liberty to contract as a Natural Right exclusively reserved to private parties apart from government decree. See, Ogden v. Saunders, 25 U.S. 213, 354 (1827) (p. 387).
Even as late as the Lochner v. New York case (1905), that tried but failed to limit the maximum hours a baker could work at 10 hours per day, 6 days per week, was found by the Court to be an affront to the Natural Rights of freedom of contract protected in the First Amendment, prompting Stone Washington to write in his law journal article—
Justice Peckham’s [Lochner] opinion sheds light on what was at stake in this case, between the overbearing regulatory interests of the state and the Natural Right for one to work and contract freely, stating, “[i]t is a question of which of two powers or rights shall prevail—the power of the State to legislate or the right of the individual to liberty of person and freedom of contract.”
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In fashioning a Natural Law argument, Peckham asserted that: The act must have a more direct relation, as a means to an end, and the end itself must be appropriate and legitimate, before an act can be held to be valid which interferes with the general right of an individual to be free in his person and in his power to contract in relation to his own labor. (note omitted)(p. 395)
Therefore, as I was alerting Businesses and Corporations, Media entities, Social Media, Judges, Lawyers, Academics, family, friends, colleagues and others about Stone’s Declaration exposing the Resident Biden’s unconstitutional SEC Climate Disclosure Rule, I concurrently revised my original statement above to include the statement below which is a preliminary analysis on the First Amendment’s “Contract Clause” found in Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1—
{Original Facebook Post, Part 2}
The SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule is also an unconstitutional violation of the Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, known as the CONTRACT CLAUSE—
“which imposes certain prohibitions on the states. These prohibitions are meant to protect individuals from intrusion by state governments and to keep the states from intruding on the enumerated powers of the U.S. federal government” and the NATURAL RIGHTS of We the People which originate from the Bible and are codified in the BILL OF RIGHTS and in numerous writings of all the Constitutional Framers under NATURAL LAW.
Transcript of Stone Washington’s CEI Declaration titled, ‘SEC Power-Grab: The Climate Disclosure Rule’
Below is the complete printed transcript of the YouTube video of Stone Washington’s Declaration exposing of the Resident Biden administration SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule as produced and presented by his Libertarian Think Tank, Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)—
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{Transcript} America depends on the Free Market. It depends on anyone being able to create value and wealth, but too often government gets in the way. The Securities and Exchange Commission, a powerful agency has issued a new regulation that will require publicly listed businesses to issue quarterly reports on how they may be impacting the earth’s climate. First, we should ask – Does the SEC even have the [Constitutional] authority to do this? The answer is no!
Created following the 1929 stock market crash, the SEC has been tasked with protecting investors and maintaining transparency in the market, but they’ve never been tasked with monitoring disclosures related to environmental policy, nor do they have any expertise to do so. Next, we should ask – Are these climate disclosures good for consumers and the economy? Again, the answer is No.
They will only create an additional compliance burden on American businesses that are already struggling. Estimates show that compliance with these disclosures will require an average of more than $300,000 a year. This burden will impede economic growth, pass on greater cost to consumers, and create yet another barrier entry for growing businesses – and for what benefit? The market is not asking for these disclosures, and they will do nothing to help the climate.
Congress has refused to pass legislation requiring such disclosures on climate impact. So, the SEC has taken it upon themselves to force America’s companies to comply with its own political agenda. That’s not how our government is designed to work.
Multiple lawsuits in 25 states are seeking to stop this overreach and protect America’s economy. The free market drives our economy forward and allows American people to prosper. The government should be focused on lifting roadblocks, not creating them. |
Critical Review of Stone Washington’s Declaration Exposing Resident Biden’s SEC Power Grab called the Climate Disclosure Rule — A Brief History of the SEC
In the Securities and Exchange Commission’s article in the online encyclopedia it gave the SEC policy mandate first created by the SEC’s inaugural Chairman appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the self-made millionaire, Amb. Joseph P. Kennedy—
Kennedy’s team defined four missions for the new Commission: (1) to restore investor confidence in the securities market, which had practically collapsed; (2) to restore integrity to securities markets by prosecuting and eliminating fraudulent and unsound practices targeting investors; (3) to end million-dollar insider trading by top officials of major corporations; and (4) to establish a complex and universal system of registration for securities sold in America, with a clear-cut set of deadlines, rules and guidelines.
As you read the 4 founding principles of the SEC, they sound rather innocuous, perfunctory, bureaucratic, and yes, even functionary, but the original intent of the Securities and Exchange Commission was created to bring the Constitution, the Rule of Law and federal government oversight into what often times was the Wild-Wild West of the turbulent waters of Wall Street that caused the disastrous Wall Street Crash of Oct. 29, 1929 less than 5 years before the creation of the SEC by the FDR administration on June 6, 1934.
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What Really Caused the Wall Street Crash of Oct. 1929 Leading to the Great Depression of the 1930s — Lack of Government Oversight or the Rothschild Khazarian Mafia (e.g., Central Banking Cartels)?
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Actually like all of the Economic Recessions, Depressions, and “Panics” in U.S. history they were actually False Flag operations purposely constructed by Machiavellian, evil powers behind the scenes including by the Rothschild Khazarian Mafia, the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Warburgs, J.P. Morgans, Carnegies, Astors, Jay Gould, Charles Crocker, James Fisk, Drew Daniel, and other Wall Street Robber Barons to keep America’s economy under the control of the Rothschild Central Bankers who print our money and through their independent institution called the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Banking system actually controls our economy (and all the economies of the WORLD!)
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How? By artificially perpetuating inflation and deflation though paper or fiat currency that they create at will by the TRILLIONS. This “money” is not backed by neither gold nor silver and therefore isn’t real money, but is like money we use in board games like Monopoly. This fiat currency created by the Rothschild Banking Cartels inevitably leads to Chattel Slavery and Debt Slavery in America’s monetary policy. (See Author’s bio on Chattel and Debt Slavery). (E.g., “Panic of 1907” and other years before and after that contrived economic event, See Panic of…: 1796-97 [England], 1819, 1825 [England], 1837, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1907, 1929, 2008, and 2024 [under Resident Biden & Komrade Kamala administration]). For further reading see the article: List of Recessions and Depressions in the United States.
*N.B.: Kennedy, Roosevelt & Reed — (Original Caption) 2/18/1938-Washington, D.C.: With President Roosevelt looking on, Joseph P. Kennedy, former Chairman of the US Maritime Commission, is pictured above (left), being sworn in as Ambassador to the Court of St. James by Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court Stanley Reed (center), at the Chief Executive’s White House office on February 18th. Kennedy will leave immediately for London to assume his new post.
Stone’s opening declaration above states —
“The Securities and Exchange Commission, a powerful agency has issued a new regulation that will require publicly listed businesses to issue quarterly reports on how they may be impacting the earth’s climate. First, we should ask – Does the SEC even have the [Constitutional] authority to do this? The answer is no!”
Thomas Hobbes, Social Contract Theory, and the Rise of the Leviathan Monster we today call the Liberal Welfare State, Big Government, the Deep State and Socialism Slavery
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What Stone Washington refers to as the “power grab” by the Resident Biden administration makes it abundantly clear why many historians and political philosophers throughout the ages like Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) referred to what we call today Liberal Welfare State or “Big Government” as an uncontrollable Leviathan monster that devours the Economic Resources, Freedoms, Liberties, and ultimately the Souls of Men.
*N.B.: See notes on Hobbes’s most famous writings De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651) from which Hobbes derives his most famous aphorism—
Bellum omnium contra omnes, a Latin phrase meaning “the war of all against all“, is the description that Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state-of-nature thought experiment that he conducts in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651). Also see, my 2014 essay On Thomas Hobbes and the Leviathan who devours Men (RenewAmerica.com).
Why is the SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule a patent violation of the U.S. Constitution Contract Clause or Liberty of Contract? Because as you read the original four founding mandates of the first SEC Chairman Joseph Kennedy none of them even in the remotest sense of sanity refers to businesses or Wall Street’s impact and responsibility for the ENVIRONMENT which is far outside of the original jurisdiction of the SEC’s power and scope when it was established by FDR 90 years ago on June 6, 1934.
Secondly, Stone wrote above that the SEC –
Created following the 1929 stock market crash the SEC has been tasked with protecting investors and maintaining transparency in the market, but they’ve never been tasked with monitoring disclosures related to environmental policy, nor do they have any expertise to do so. Next, we should ask – Are these climate disclosures good for consumers and the economy? Again, the answer is No.
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Once again Stone contends that the SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rule –
[W]ill only create an additional compliance burden on American businesses that are already struggling. Estimates show that compliance with these disclosures will require an average of more than $300,000 a year. This burden will impede economic growth, pass on greater cost to consumers, and create yet another barrier entry for growing businesses.
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These new “burdens” on potentially millions of America’s businesses and corporations will put America’s industries at a competitive disadvantage against other competing nations in the global marketplace (e.g., China, Russian, India, England, Germany, France, Canada, Japan, etc.) whose businesses aren’t burdened or encumbered with this litany of government entanglements and new SEC mandates, nevertheless the Resident Biden administration is plowing full steam ahead on this unconstitutional conspiracy against Capitalism and Free Enterprise in America.
Liberal Logic?—Climate Disclosure Rule = Destroy Capitalism before it Destroys the Planet
Of course the actual compliance burden or $300,000 average additional costs annually to the theoretically thousands of publically traded businesses and millions of business and corporations in America is a soft estimate (actual CDR mandates and related costs are likely to be much, much more expensive in my opinion!) Nevertheless, what is certain is the fact that to comply with these new Communist control mandates of the Resident Biden administration will require a vast new expansion of government not only in the SEC, but with other administrative agencies adding legions upon legions of new Capitalism-hating apparatchiks to oversee and enforce these new burdens on U.S. businesses causing untold hundreds of thousands or even millions of publically traded businesses on Wall Street to fall into bankruptcy from the weight of these unconstitutional Climate Disclosure Rule mandates.
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Thus, in my opinion Resident Biden’s SEC Climate Disclosure Rule amounts to Socialist Slavery policy mandates writ large which in turn will cause millions of people to lose their jobs in an already horrible Resident Biden economy where economic growth, employment opportunities, housing starts are at an all time low, and where rent, inflation, utilities, food and fuel are at an all-time high as Resident Biden ends his first term in a few months and is so crippled by his own Democrat Party coup against him that Biden proudly wears a Trump MAGA hat in public and has potentially ceded all POTUS powers to his V.P. and designated 2024 nominee for the Democrat Party, Kamala Harris.
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And what is most shocking about Resident Biden’s SEC Climate Disclosure Rule mandates is that in his arrogance and with a Conservative majority in the House of Representatives he is arrogantly trying to side step Congress to pass a bill on the SEC Climate Disclosure Rule (because he knows he doesn’t have the votes in Congress), to force these dictatorial Socialist mandates upon We the People and America’s businesses forcing many of them into bankruptcy. In increasing numbers each day We the People are beginning to realize it was the Resident Biden administration that got America into this new Great Depression 2.0 established in America in 2024 as we head towards the 2024 elections in November.
Nevertheless Resident Biden is trying to force these Leviathan Progressive, Liberal, Socialist and Communist rules upon all publically traded businesses and corporations in America without first seeking to pass a law through Congress, the branch of government charged with creating and passing all laws in the United States of America according to Article 1 of the Constitution.
The Key to Deconstructing Resident Biden’s SEC Climate Disclosure Rule (and all Democrat Socialist policies in America) is through the Court’s Strict Application of the First Amendment’s Contract Clause
On America’s 248th birthday (July 4, 2024) Stone published on EllisWashingtonReport.com his first law review article which was originally published in the Washburn Law Journal titled, 130 Years of Substantive Due Process (1810 – 1937): The Premature Demise of Natural Law Jurisprudence and the Liberty of Contract How the Lochner Era Could Have Survived the New Deal, 63 Washburn L. Jour. 69 (2024). However, before I proceed further into my analysis of how the Resident Biden SEC Climate Disclosure Rule is a patent violation to the Contract Clause, allow me to quote from Stone’s Declaration transcript above when he stated in his opening statement—
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America depends on the Free Market. It depends on anyone being able to create value and wealth, but too often government gets in the way.
~ Stone Washington
The word Government (who creates inbred Traitors or “Manchurian Candidates” like – Biden, Harris, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Democrat Socialist Party, and their Globalist allied institutions—e.g., the United Nations, European Union, World Economic Forum, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, NATO, etc… to Democide We the People) actually means Mind Control. The world ‘Government’ etymologically originated from the ancient Latin language. It divides into two words: 1) (guvernare) meaning “to control” and 2) (mens or mentis) meaning “mind” e.g., CIA MK Ultra Mind Control. For further reading see article regarding the 1962 movie, The Manchurian Candidate which the first meme states in THEORY and the second meme presents the PRACTICE of a Manchurian Candidate in the 2024 Election cycle—
Remember that in 1934, just 3 years before the newly packed FDR court gained a Socialist majority in June 1937 (See, “The switch in time that saved nine”), Justice Charles Evan Hughes gave what seemed like a last gasp from the Conservative or Constitutionalist wing of the Supreme Court in defense of a Natural Rights argument in support of the Contract Clause. This was cited in Stone Washington’ s law journal article (p. 400)—
Not only are existing laws read into contracts in order to fix obligations as between the parties, but the reservation of essential attributes of sovereign power is also read into contracts as a postulate of the legal order. The policy of protecting contracts against impairment presupposes the maintenance of a government by virtue of which contractual relations are worthwhile—a government which retains adequate authority to secure the peace and good order of society.
*N.B.: See, Home Bldg. & Loan Ass’n v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398, 435 (1934). Also see, Ellis Washington, 75 Years of Progressive Regression, WND.com (2013), ———, 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse (WND.com, 2011), ————, The Shadow Power Behind the Supreme Court (WND.com 2012).
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Pyramid Hierarchy — Natural Law = the Bedrock of America’s Constitutional Republic
With revelatory zeal, skill and sober analysis Stone Washington in his law journal article repeatedly stated the imperative of the Court to return to the Natural Law and Natural Rights original intent of the Contract Clause must be extended past the Lochner ruling of 1905, (e.g., post 1937 cases onward to 2024) that unconstitutionally legitimated FDR’s New Deal. Including FDR’s outrageous Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 (aka “the Court-packing Plan”). FDI and his apparatchiks put tremendous pressure of the Supreme Court to pass his New Deal legislaiton and threatened to “Pack the Court”. The legislation was unveiled on February 5, 1937, and was the subject of Roosevelt’s ninth fireside chat on March 9, 1937.[7][8]
From 1933-June 1937 FDR was at an impasses with SCOTUS where Justices Stone and Hughes (who had consistently been ruling with the 4 Justice Conservative majority). And now because of a backroom deals, blackmail, threats, and increasing pressure from FDR and his Progressive administration, all of a sudden in Jan. 1937 the Court majority began voting with the Anti-Constitutionalist or the Progressive-Socialist wing of SCOTUS and started giving constitutional legitimacy in passing FDR’s New Deal policies. This judicial treachery has proceeded into modern times in 2024 with the Resident Biden administration. However, Stone Washington has given legal scholars a brilliant way to counteract Resident Biden’s unconstitutional SEC Climate Disclosure Rule concluding that—
The central focus on the Contract Clause be regarded as a tool of Natural Law jurisprudence is to provide a more specialized manner for examining this important yet overlooked provision of the Constitution. This Article argues that situating the Contract Clause during the Lochner Era would have extended the relevance and justification for using Natural Law arguments in Supreme Court opinions well beyond the height of the New Deal. The Lochner Era may well have extended far beyond the infamous year of 1937 and survived the anti-privatization, pro-regulatory climate of the New Deal, particularly given that the New Deal saw the imposition of severe governmental restrictions to corporate labor practices and employer-employee contractual relations…(p. 410)
This important, constitutionally protected, natural right is not only embedded within the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments but is also among the Article I powers of Congress to prevent state impairment of private contracts. The Clause specifically restricts state legislative mandates and ordinances from impeding the inviolable obligations of contracts between individuals. Courts have recognized that states (at times) may regulate private contracts to further a pressing public interest, such as for eminent domain in the constructing of new highways. (Notes omitted)(p. 411)
Stone Washington concluded how the Lochner Court missed a golden opportunity to put the death knell in all Socialist policies by the present and future Democrat Party administrations (including FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Obama and Biden) by solidifying it’s ruling for posterity because it used the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment rather than the much stronger and the SCOTUS oldest case law precedents using Natural Law and Natural Rights jurisprudence using the Liberty of Contract under the Contract Clause of the First Amendment—
Had the conservative majority of the Lochner Era utilized the Contract Clause as a textual application of Natural Law, the Constitutional justification for defending the freedom to contract would have been much more substantial and enduring (p. 413).
I would conclude this analysis by stating (and I don’t think it’s an overreach) that the Key to Deconstructing and Destroying Resident Biden’s unconstitutional SEC Climate Disclosure Rule which is based on the Leviathan Government Created by FDR (in the 1930s and 40s) and LBJ (in the 1960s) which Enslaves all Americans is to Revive the Natural Law and Natural Rights Principles Contained in the First Amendment’s Contract Clause (Art. 1, Sec. 10, Cl. 1). This Constitutional jurisprudence must be restored as a bedrock principle upon which all future policy, legislation and laws must be built upon or comply with, in order to meet the constitutional strictures of CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. The SEC’s climate disclosure rule will act as a giant tax on literally MILLIONS of American businesses, many of which will be forced to pass on those unforeseen and unknowable costs to the taxpayer causing an already horrible economy the fall into the abyss of another Great Depression 2.0.
Research and Analysis I did on FDR’s New Deal and how his threat to “Pack the Court” from 1933-36 Eventually Forced the Cowardly ‘Conservative’ Court to Bow to FDR’s Totalitarian Will and ultimately pass all of FDR’s New Deal Policies as Law beginning in June 1937
In my 2011 essay in WND.com titled—4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I summarized the legal history which in essence was a de facto, existential war launched by FDR against the 4 stalwart Conservatives on SCOTUS. In other words, the war was between Constitutional Jurisprudence (= the Conservative Justices) vs. Legislation from the Bench (= the Democrat Socialist Justices). The first block quote shows the history of early cases where the 4 Conservative Justices + 1 or 2 other moderate Justices (Harlan Stone and Charles Evan Hughes) held an unbreakable wall protecting Constitutional Jurisprudence from the Socialist treachery of the FDR’s New Deal administration —
While preserving Natural Law and Natural Rights in Constitutional Jurisprudence, the so-called “Four Horsemen” negatively affected passage of the following New Deal legislation:
· In 1934, the Court in Home Building & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdell upheld five to four (the “Four Horsemen”) as constitutional a Minnesota moratorium on mortgage foreclosures;
· In 1934, the Court in Nebbia v. New York upheld as constitutional the price floor and price ceiling set by the state of New York for milk. The Four Horsemen dissented;
· In 1935, the high court, in Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad, ruled unconstitutional FDR’s Railroad Pension Act;
· In 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United Statesthat the NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act) – and the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration) – was unconstitutional, ruling that it infringed the separation of powers under the United States Constitution;
· In 1936, the Court in United States v. Butler, overruled the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 along with the Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act, the Railroad Act and the Coal Mining Act;
· In Carter v. Carter Coal Company (1936), the Four, together with Roberts, voided legislation regulating the coal industry as being beyond the scope of the Commerce Clause, that the terms of the act affected production, not commerce;
· Morehead v. New York (1936), the Four with Roberts ruled unconstitutional a New York minimum-wage law for women and children.
The Four Horsemen included: Justices Pierce Butler, James McReynolds, George Sutherland and Willis Van Devanter. They were opposed by the liberal “Three Musketeers” – Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo and swing voter Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes, who mostly voted with the liberals, but on occasion with the Four Horsemen and Harlan Stone, who often voted with the conservatives. . .
It was the success of the Horsemen in striking down New Deal legislation that led to Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme to increase the size of the Supreme Court from 9 to 15 members. “The switch in time that saved nine” [Feb. 5, 1937] together with the retirement of Van Devanter in June 1937 and his replacement by Hugo Black ended the Four Horsemen’s obstruction of FDR’s New Deal.
FDR’s tyranny over the Court was completed in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. ([April 12,] 1937) where the Court overruled the limits it had placed on Congress’ commerce power. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 established the National Labor Relations board to oversee labor disputes. A Democratic cabal of big-city mayors, labor unions, media, academics and a progressive Congress functioning outside its Article 1, Section 8 enumerated powers determined that labor-management disputes were directly related to the flow of interstate commerce and, thus, could be regulated by the federal government. The production-versus-commerce distinction was at this point discarded.
Though restricted in its powers, the federal government is supreme within its field and the power of Congress recognized by the Ninth and 10th Amendments. However, the NLRB case went well beyond these constitutional strictures when the Court declared that “the fundamental principle is that the power to regulate commerce is the power to enact all appropriate legislation for its protection and advancement.”
Justice McReynolds’ dissent in NLRB argued that the reinstatement of these employees only affected about 10 people directly, so any relation or effect on commerce was remote and indirect. If the distinction between direct and indirect interstate commerce is destroyed, then almost anything – birth, death, marriage, health care – might affect commerce and thus be subject to congressional regulation.
The 150-year battle between Natural Law and Positive Law was over – and tyranny won.
Epilogue—Conclusions: America’s Republic can only be Restored and Reestablished once the Foundations of Natural Rights and Natural Law are restored to Constitutional Jurisprudence and the Rule of Law
Exceeding gratitude to my son Stone Washington for rediscovering the Natural Law and Natural Rights of the bedrock First Amendment constitutional principle of the Contract Clause and inspiring me to realize that it was the Contract Clause of the First Amendment that can defeat the tyranny of the Resident Biden SEC Climate Disclosure Rule. Thus, all people who venerate the Original Intent of the Framers of the Constitution now have a nuclear bomb to literally nuke any legislation presented by the Democrat Socialist Party as fake law to forever be consigned to the abyss of UNCONSTITUTIONAL Law or the Law of Treason!
REMEMBER! The Founding Fathers, the Framers of the Constitution and tens of thousands of unknown, unheralded Heroes sacrificed their lives, liberty and sacred Honour to establish, protect and defend the United States of America on our country’s first birthday, July 4, 1776 where Jefferson’s sublime DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE was signed upholding the sacred Biblical values of Natural Law and Natural Rights in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, don’t allow the fight by these men nearly 250 years ago be in vain but every day We the People must compel Congress to continue to fight the Democrat Socialist Party along “with all enemies, foreign and domestic” to preserve the United States of America… “a Republic if you can keep it” according to our Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin.
I like this above meme (except for the first 2 points which are obviously BIG LIES) celebrating the major policy achievements of the Democrat Socialist Party since the Founding of America, but is in reality praising the policy initiatives of the two Progressive champions of the Left — President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (1933-45) and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society (1964-69). However, they forgot one last sentence after the phrase – AND OPPOSSED BY CONSERVATIVES. . . to add FOR BEING AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION OF THE CONTRACT CLAUSE of the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Sec. 10, Clause 1—
I believe that virtually every policy mandate passed by the Democrat Socialist Party throughout HISTORY! is in some way a patent violation of the Contract Clause since a core tenant of the Democrat Socialist Party for nearly 200 years is to create policies based on Marxist, Socialist Communist, and Progressive Principles—e.g., To use the police power and confiscatory power of Government to take $$$ from Group A (the Rich) and give it to Group B (the Middle Class, Poor, Foreign Governments (to repay illegal political cash that got them elected in the first place!) and Resident Biden’s Illegal Aliens) in order to buy their votes for future elections into perpetuity (e.g., Divide-and-Conquer). This understanding of politics according to the Democrat Socialist Party is in synopsis why Resident Biden’s SEC Climate Disclosure Rule is a patent violation of Article I’s Contract Clause and against the freedoms and liberties of We the People based on the Constitutional Framer’s understanding of Natural Law and Natural Rights.
*Libertarian Economist, Dr. Walter E. Williams (1936-2020) was my dear intellectual mentor who helped me get my earliest essays published in the Journal Social Critic in the early 1990s. When my son attended George Mason University his freshman year (2015) I insisted that he meet with Dr. Williams every week to learn from his Wisdom and Knowledge. Below are two essays Stone and I wrote to commemorate our dear friend and intellectual mentor.
- Ellis Washington, Lacrymosa for a Libertarian Legend… RIP Professor Walter E. Williams (1936-2020)(2020)
- Stone Washington, Eulogy to Dr. Walter E. Williams—A Friend, Mentor, & Intellectual Giant (2021)
The Eternal Importance of Mentoring through the Generations—Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, my son, Stone and Dr. Walter Williams (1936-2020) (Professor Emeritus of Economics, George Mason University), all having lunch together at The Hard Times Café in Fairfax Virginia (December 13, 2016). One of the greatest things I ever did for my son in this life was to introduce him to these two Strong, Magisterial Men.
References
1. 1. Stone Washington, 130 Years of Substantive Due Process (1810 – 1937): The Premature Demise of Natural Law Jurisprudence and the Liberty of Contract How the Lochner Era Could Have Survived the New Deal, 63 Washburn L. Jour. 369-413 (2024).
2. 2. Stone Washington, Research Fellow at CEI.org, Archives of Articles and Blogs on the U.S. Supreme Court cases dealing with the Securities Exchange Commission, Environmental Social Governance [ESG] and the Climate Disclosure Rule.
3. 3. Ellis Washington, 75 Years of Progressive Regression, WND.com (2013); ——–, 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse(WND.com, 2011), ————, The Shadow Power Behind the Supreme Court (WND.com 2012).
4. Ellis Washington, Reply To Judge Richard A. Posner on The Inseparability of Law and Morality, 3 Rutgers J. of L. & Religion 130 (1999).
5. 5. FDR’s “The Switch in Time that Saves nine” aka “The Court Packing Plan” aka Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937.
6. See generally, the 1984 Lutz/Hyneman Study. In 1984, the American Political Review published an article titled “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late 18th-Century American Political Thought,” written by Donald S. Lutz of the University of Houston, and Charles S. Hyneman. After reviewing nearly 15,000 items written between 1760 and 1805, Lutz and Hyneman discovered that the writers of the Constitution quoted Montesquieu more than any other source, except the Bible. Thus, the Bible was quoted in the writings of the Framer’s of the Constitution 96% of the time! Also cited in my law review article, Ellis Washington, Reply to Judge Richard A. Posner on the Inseparability of Law and Morality, 3 RUTGERS Jour. of Law & Religion 1, 22 (1999).
Category: Commentary
