I am running for federal office (U.S. House of Representatives). The federal government should get involved in INTERstate but not INTRAstate waterways according to the U.S. Constitution including Amendment X.
Except for Washington D.C., federal armories, federal military forts and bases, the federal government is not authorized by the Constitution to own land.
Supporters usually want to use the vast force and tax gathering power of the federal government to enhance the intrastate kalamazoo river watershed, but that is not the function of the federal government. There are two well known men who have shed a little light on this subject of the government "doing good things for the people":
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient ... The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
And C. S. Lewis wrote: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."
Constitution Party of Michigan - www.ConstitutionPartyMI.net