各縣市的統籌分配款怎麼分一向是爭議不斷，事實上，從財稅的角度來看：公平是不可得的；當然也可以說怎麼分都是公平(以後再寫一篇來說明這大學時財政學上到的理論)。但是以不支持特定政策就分不到統籌分配款，這就太過分了。

中央與地方政策不同到的情形，並不是台灣這個政治兩極化，人民高度熱衷政治的國家所特有的；美國聯邦與各個州政府也有許許多多的意見不合，有很多甚至超出意見不合的層次，而升高到立法甚至憲法的層次了。詳情請參閱以下所引用的紐約時報報導："States’ Rights Is Rallying Cry for Lawmakers"

從報導中可以發現，美國許多州都通過立法，排除聯邦法律在該州的適用性，或是限縮聯邦法律在該州的效用。與聯邦不對頭的州裡 South Dakota 長久以來都很高調地反對聯邦。在歐洲則是地方政府想要獨立，大部分是較為富有的地方：南歐的西班牙巴斯克加泰隆尼亞和義大利北部，比利時的荷語區，英國的蘇格蘭...等等，許多地方政府都想脫離中央而獨立。

國民黨立委蔡正元日前打算提案，讓反對兩岸經濟合作架構協議（ECFA）的縣市政府「吃不到」統籌分配稅款。「吃不到」是狠了點，美國的聯邦政府也有用過類似的手法，但是不是針對高政治爭議，且影響國家與人民生活甚鉅如台灣ECFA這樣的法案，也不是如蔡正元所構思的這麼絕，而且是有一段預告期－－美國國會通過的 National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 規定最低飲酒年齡為21歲，這較許多州當時的規定還高，因此有不少反對；於是在 Federal Aid Highway Act* 裡明定， 到1987年之前未能遵守「最低飲酒年齡為21歲」的州政府，年度聯邦的公路建設補助款(annual federal highway apportionment)會減一成。


Remarks:
Federal Aid Highway Act 從 1982 年就開始注意飲酒問題，當時是以提供額外安全基金給予積極取締酒駕的州政府。此舉普遍造成警方執法過當，甚至是執法暴力，引發許多批評。因此從84年以後將焦點放在提高法定最低飲酒年齡，有其脈絡可尋。





"反ECFA不給錢" 藍委說出財長心聲


國民黨立委蔡正元說，反對ECFA的縣市不該分得統籌分配款，財政部長李述德表示，這說到他的心聲。

蔡正元再強調，反ECFA的縣市一毛錢都不要給、才符合社會公平正義，李述德再附和沒有錯。這樣的對話，看在反對ECFA的綠營縣市長眼裡大為不滿，台南市長許添財就出面反擊。而國民黨中央也緊急滅火，2號晚間向媒體發簡訊傳達國民黨秘書長金溥聰希望黨籍立委和政務官在公共政策的發言應謹慎，避免傷害黨的形象。

人在大陸和台商座談的蔡正元，得知黨中央對他的發言有意見，大罵金溥聰不懂財政專業、搞不清楚狀況。蔡正元表示，若簽了ECFA增加了地方營業稅，當然分給支持ECFA的縣市才公平，執政黨不該分不清對錯，而在野黨也不該認為這是政治鬥爭。

(2010-04-03 11:56)  公視午間新聞

http://web.pts.org.tw/php/news/pts_news/detail.php?NEENO=144764




States’ Rights Is Rallying Cry for Lawmakers        

By KIRK JOHNSON        

Whether it’s correctly called a movement, a backlash or political theater, state declarations of their rights — or in some cases denunciations of federal authority, amounting to the same thing — are on a roll.       

Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a Republican, signed a bill into law on Friday declaring that the federal regulation of firearms is invalid if a weapon is made and used in South Dakota.       

On Thursday, Wyoming’s governor, Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, signed a similar bill for that state. The same day, Oklahoma’s House of Representatives approved a resolution that Oklahomans should be able to vote on a state constitutional amendment allowing them to opt out of the federal health care overhaul.       

In Utah, lawmakers embraced states’ rights with a vengeance in the final days of the legislative session last week. One measure said Congress and the federal government could not carry out health care reform, not in Utah anyway, without approval of the Legislature. Another bill declared state authority to take federal lands under the eminent domain process. A resolution asserted the “inviolable sovereignty of the State of Utah under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.”       


Some legal scholars say the new states’ rights drive has more smoke than fire, but for lawmakers, just taking a stand can be important enough.       

“Who is the sovereign, the state or the federal government?” said State Representative Chris N. Herrod, a Republican from Provo, Utah, and leader of the 30-member Patrick Henry Caucus, which formed last year and led the assault on federal legal barricades in the session that ended Thursday.       


Alabama, Tennessee and Washington are considering bills or constitutional amendments that would assert local police powers to be supreme over the federal authority, according to the Tenth Amendment Center, a research and advocacy group based in Los Angeles. And Utah, again not to be outdone, passed a bill last week that says federal law enforcement authority, even on federal lands, can be limited by the state.       

“There’s a tsunami of interest in states’ rights and resistance to an overbearing federal government; that’s what all these measures indicate,” said Gary Marbut, the president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, which led the drive last year for one of the first “firearms freedoms,” laws like the ones signed last week in South Dakota and Wyoming.       

In most cases, conservative anxiety over federal authority is fueling the impulse, with the Tea Party movement or its members in the backdrop or forefront. Mr. Herrod in Utah said that he had spoken at Tea Party rallies, for example, but that his efforts, and those of the Patrick Henry Caucus, were not directly connected to the Tea Partiers.       

And in some cases, according to the Tenth Amendment Center, the politics of states’ rights are veering left. Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, for example — none of them known as conservative bastions — are considering bills that would authorize, or require, governors to recall or take control of National Guard troops, asserting that federal calls to active duty have exceeded federal authority.       


“Everything we’ve tried to keep the federal government confined to rational limits has been a failure, an utter, unrelenting failure — so why not try something else?” said Thomas E. Woods Jr., a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a nonprofit group in Auburn, Ala., that researches what it calls “the scholarship of liberty.”       

Mr. Woods, who has a Ph.D. in history, and has written widely on states’ rights and nullification — the argument that says states can sometimes trump or disregard federal law — said he was not sure where the dots between states’ rights and politics connected. But he and others say that whatever it is, something politically powerful is brewing under the statehouse domes.       

Other scholars say the state efforts, if pursued in the courts, would face formidable roadblocks. Article 6 of the Constitution says federal authority outranks state authority, and on that bedrock of federalist principle rests centuries of back and forth that states have mostly lost, notably the desegregation of schools in the 1950s and ’60s.       


“Article 6 says that that federal law is supreme and that if there’s a conflict, federal law prevails,” said Prof. Ruthann Robson, who teaches constitutional law at the City University of New York School of Law. “It’s pretty difficult to imagine a way in which a state could prevail on many of these.”       

And while some efforts do seem headed for a direct conflict with federal laws or the Constitution, others are premised on the idea that federal courts have misinterpreted the Constitution in the federal government’s favor.       

A lawsuit filed last year by the Montana Shooting Sports Association after the state’s “firearms freedom” law took effect, for example, does not say that the federal government has no authority to regulate guns, but that courts have misconstrued interstate commerce regulations.       

National monuments and medical marijuana, of all things, play a role as well.       

Mr. Herrod in Utah said that after an internal memorandum from the United States Department of the Interior was made public last month, discussing sites around the country potentially suitable for federal protection as national monuments — including two sites in Utah — support for all kinds of statements against federal authority gained steam.       

       
And at the Tenth Amendment Center, the group’s founder, Michael Boldin, said he thought states that had bucked federal authority over the last decade by legalizing medical marijuana, even as federal law held all marijuana use and possession to be illegal, had set the template in some ways for the effort now. And those states, Mr. Boldin said, were essentially validated in their efforts last fall when the Justice Department said it would no longer make medical marijuana a priority in the states were it was legal. Nullification, he said, was shown to work.       


Whether the political impulse of states’ rights and nullification will become a direct political fault line in the national elections this fall is uncertain, said Mr. Woods of the von Mises institute.       

But in Utah, at least, a key indicator is coming much sooner. The party caucuses to determine, among other things, whether candidates will face primary elections, are to be held next Tuesday, and Mr. Herrod said the states rights’ crowd would attend and push for change.       


“Those politicians who don’t understand that things are different are in big trouble because a few people showing up to caucus can have a big influence,” Mr. Herrod said.       

A spokeswoman for Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican — who signed a firearms law like South Dakota’s last month declaring exemption from federal regulation for guns made and used within the state — said Mr. Herbert was still studying the new batch of bills passed this week and had not yet made decisions about signing them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/us/17states.html

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