ABAG EXEC DIRECTOR ''REGIONAL GOVERNANCE IS CONSTITUTIONAL

Important video. I would love to hear the rebuttal of Ezra Rapport by a constitutional scholar. No where does he mention the people right to self govern. His justification of "states authority" is positively socialist in concept. It changes our democracy into a authoritarian central planning model. I understand that Ezra Rapport was a lawyer.in his prior life.

I posed the question about how to rebuff Ezra Rapport's argument and received this response from a friend:

There are many arguments for local control but not based on the US Constitution. In the system of federalism, The federal and state governments co-exist as soverigns. The Constitution reserves the powers that belong to the federal government, and these pre-empt any contrary state or local laws. Anything not reserved to the feds belongs to the states to do as they please, as long as not in conflict with the Bill of Rights or other constitutional provisions. In contrast, the state and cities are not separate sovereigns. The cities are subordinate to the state, and derive any and all of their powers from what the state grants. The state has authority to delegate its powers to agencies, and has done so here. This is the constitutional explanation. As used here, I would argue it is bad governance, but it is constitutional.

Here are a few other comments: 

Constitutionally, he is right.

Just like, after the Reichstag fire in 1933, Hindenburg’s Reichstag Fire Decree suspending basic rights and allowed detention without trail, followed by Hitler getting the Enabling Act passed by the new Reichstag to respond to the emergency, and Hitler taking over as sole dictator of Germany after the death of Hindenburg, Hitler became all-powerful in a perfectly legal manner.

Remember the sequence in Star Wars III where Palpatine convinces the Senate to convert the Republic into the Empire with him as Emperor?

Guess what it was based on?

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

And this one:

Rapport may be correct that the state can subdivide into regional agencies, but this does not permit it to do so without democratic representation. Here is the portion of the Constitution, Article IV, Section 4: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence. 

Article 4 Section 3 of the Constitution HERE