In article . net, "Dan/W4NTI"
w4nti@get rid of this mindspring.com writes:

In the beginning........there was Philadelphia.

It's still here.

It was decided to have a loooooose confederation of states brought together
under a weak Federal government. The purpose of which was to provide such
things as; common roads, common monies, common rules and regulations
pertaining to INTERSTATE commerce. And if needed to provide for the defense
of one, or all of the states.

Yep - Articles of Confederation.

What the hell happened?

Simple - the founders discovered that the Articles simply didn't work. Without
a strong central (federal) government, there was no way to force any of the
states to work for the common good if they didn't want to.

Common roads, common monies, common rules and regulations
pertaining to interstate commerce and defense of one, or all of the states all
require a certain amount of central authority and funding. If New York's
legislature decided they didn't want to honor money from South Carolina at face
value, who was there to make them? Or if a ship from Maryland didn't want to
take orders from an admiral from Maine, what authority was there to require
them to do so?

And when it came to taxes.....

End result was another convention here in Philadelphia in 1787, when the
Constitution was written and ratified by representatives from all of the
states. Three did not sign - they refused to do so because there was no Bill of
Rights in the original Constitution. That was rectified by the first ten
amendments.

You may not like everyhting the Feds do - I know I sure don't! - but the
founders tried the loose confederation idea and it didn't work.

And when it was tried again (1861-1865, 11 states) it ran into the same
problems all over again.

In some ways the Feds have been moving towards a weaker central government, by
cutting domestic spending - and letting the states take up the slack. Of course
the Feds don't give up regulatory control, just funding....

What functions would you have the Feds turn over to the states?

73 de Jim, N2EY