United States federal government should substantially decrease its authority

Yes, I stand by all I have claimed. Reforming the laws in the way which you want to reform them is not the solution to the problem. Making a law stricter towards criminals will reduce criminal activity, but you want to make the law less strict, which would make many people happier, including criminals. Reforming the system which enforces the law of the land is indeed better than reforming the original law. The system that enforces the law (in this case, the police) did not create the law, so the law is not the system. Actually, if police officers are trained properly then there are no loopholes because according to you and your new source, it is the officers who are the problem. So once again, the federal government's authority has little to do with the faults of the police officers who cannot properly enforce the law of the land. The federal government created the law for the people, not to abuse them. It is not responsible if the state governments have corrupt officers working for the police departments. Thus, there is no reason for its authority to be decreased. Unfortunately this is the last round so you will not be able to explain to me how the federal government is at fault with how that individual officer (working for the state government, not the federal) cruelly arrested the girl. What happened would not have happened if a reasonable, properly trained officer stopped her so is the federal government's authority to blame? Not at all. It is that one officer who decided to ruin the girl's life and his supervisors are also the responsibility of the state government, not the federal. The policy being redundantly "very complex and complicated" does not make it relevant. My previous argument stands as to why stop and frisk is irrelevant to this particular debate. Current situations of countries: 1) Nation's debt: yes, every time Obama smiles it increases by $100B. However, decreasing the authority of the federal government will not help lower it. In fact, if the authority of the federal government increased then the national debt would have more of a chance of going down. For example, if the federal government enforced much higher taxes nationwide then the taxpayers would go far in helping the nation's financial status (yes I know this sounds horrible and would cause riots, but it would work). 2) The unemployment rate is dropping, so the federal government must be doing something right, right? Right. 3) Your source does not measure economic stand. It measures economic freedom. A higher economic freedom does not mean a better economy or economic stand. If that was the case then Estonia would have a better economy than the U.S. I think we can agree that Estonia does not have a higher economic stand, just more economic freedom. 4) Based on more recent figures, the rates of people without health care are dropping. Another point for the federal government. http://www.census.gov... http://www.census.gov... Based on the evidence that both you and I provided, the amount of authority that the federal government currently possesses is not harming the nation. My original premise stands: the authority of the federal government helps the nation run smoothly and properly. There is no guarantee based on anything you said that indicates that substantially decreasing the federal government's authority would be beneficial. There is no evidence provided of the federal government abusing its power, only of police institutions which are the responsibility of state governments. There is also no evidence of anyone involved in the federal government abusing their power for own's beneficiary. Each of your arguments spoke of policing issues, not those of the federal government. For the final time, the NYPD is the New York State's responsibility, not the federal government's. Instead of reforming the entire national legal system just so NY cops can be competent at their jobs, the issue must be addressed by NY state itself. C) The U.S. federal government should not substantially decrease its authority.