Deliberately Destroying America

By Alan Caruba | June 17, 2012 | Canada Free Press

It has taken three and a half years into Barack Obama’s presidency for most Americans to realize that he has been deliberately destroying America by driving up the nation’s debt and deficit, reducing privately held wealth, forcing millions onto the public dole, undermining its moral structure, and weakening the nation’s reputation internationally.

His latest lie is that “the private sector is doing just fine”, but the numbers tell the whole story and one can find them on an excellent blog, Economic Collapse, that offers seventy examples:

Leftwing Extremists Bully and Heckle Kindergarteners for Singing Patriotic Song (God Bless the USA) [Video]

Bob Turner Stands with Kids as Libs Heckle Them for Singing Lee Greenwood Song

By Rush Limbaugh | June 19, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Bob Turner was the president of Multimedia, which was a company that syndicated TV programs, and they syndicated mine in 1992 through 1996. Bob Turner was the president, and it was Bob Turner that chased Roger Ailes and me down one night at 21 with the idea of doing a show. He was a great guy. He is a great guy. And he has the perfect temperament. I mean, the guy knew what he was getting into. Almost. (laughing) He sized it up real quickly, and he was as loyal as the day is long.

A Nation of Paper, Not of Men

By Andrew C. McCarthy | June 18, 2012 | PJ Media

In continuing the dramatic shift from American constitutional democracy to rule by executive fiat that has marked his tenure, President Barack Obama now claims that the illegal aliens, to whom he purports to grant what effectively is amnesty, are “Americans … in every single way but one — on paper.” That is false. They are not Americans under the only thing that matters, the thing the Obama administration has chanted like a mantra — while riding roughshod over  – since its very first day in power: the rule of law.

The Constitution and congressional statutes are written on parchment. That is the only relevance of “paper” in this equation — as the “hard copy” of our social contract and of the laws enacted pursuant to it. Under the Constitution, Congress, not the president, is endowed with such a power: “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Congress exercises this power by passing laws. Under the Constitution, which Obama took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend, and under the laws it is his duty to execute faithfully, illegal aliens — no matter how sympathetic their plight, no matter how blameless they may be for the illegality of their status — are not citizens of the United States. They are not Americans. Period. It is not “paper” that separates them from our body politic, it is the law, of which Obama is supposed to be servant, not master — as I argued in this September 2011 essay for The New Criterion: “The Ruler of Law — On ‘Justice’ in the Age of Obama.”

Only Voters Can Hold Obama Accountable For Illegal Amnesty Policy

By Ken Klukowski | June 17, 2012 | Breitbart News

President Obama’s new amnesty policy regarding illegal aliens violates the law. But there’s probably no route to trump it either in Congress or in court, so the only recourse is for the American people to trump it by electing a new president.

Are We in Revolutionary Times?

By Victor Davis Hanson | June 15, 2012 | National Review

Legally, President Obama has reiterated the principle that he can pick and choose which U.S. laws he wishes to enforce (see his decision to reverse the order of the Chrysler creditors, his decision not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, and his administration’s contempt for national-security confidentiality and Senate and House subpoenas to the attorney general). If one individual can decide to exempt nearly a million residents from the law — when he most certainly could not get the law amended or repealed through proper legislative or judicial action — then what can he not do? Obama is turning out to be the most subversive chief executive in terms of eroding U.S. law since Richard Nixon.

The Democrat Race Lie

By Bob Parks | June 16, 2012 | Black and Right

This whopper deserves all the attention it can get. Again, it shows the ignorance and contempt of the electorate liberals depend on.

In 2010, Democrats gave their website a facelift and whitewash. Click on the screenshot above to see what they used to say about their civil rights history compared to now.

How Political Parties Almost Ruined the Constitution

By Julia Shaw | June 15, 2012 | The Foundry

The Constitution is for sale.  No, really. Christie’s in New York will auction off George Washington’s 223-year-old copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights next week.

The pages are largely unmarked, except for a few of Washington’s notes about the presidency. That’s appropriate, considering that Article II was drafted with George Washington in mind. This has largely worked out well, except in one area: the Electoral College for selecting the President.

Senator Cornyn to Holder: ‘Resign’ [Video]

By Staff Report | June 13, 2012 | CNS News

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Attorney General Eric Holder he should resign for reasons that included his failure to cooperate with Congress’ investigation of Operation Fast and Furious in which the administration allowed straw purchases to buy guns for Mexican drug cartels.

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Electricity Bills are About to ‘Necessarily Skyrocket’

By Derek Hunter | June 9, 2012 | Breitbart News

In January of 2008, then Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, talking about his energy plan, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal…under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…” He wasn’t kidding.

While he was talking about his cap and trade plan, something that went nowhere in Congress, even when Democrats controlled it with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, his objective of changing how we generate electricity hasn’t changed. Neither has his lack of concern for the cost to consumers.

Taxpayer Protection Pledge Signers for the 112th Congress

View this document on Scribd

Legislative Lowdown: The secret plan to raise your taxes

By Brian Darling | June 8, 2012 | The Daily Caller

Republicans are secretly negotiating with Democrats to raise your taxes after the election.

“A dozen senators ranging from Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn to Delaware Democrat Chris Coons have begun to organize closed-door briefings with leading economic experts to prod Congress into action,” Politico reports.

Evidently these leading experts include Robert Zoellick of the World Bank and William Dudley, president of the New York Fed. These guys are experts in fear-mongering. Unfortunately, members of Congress, motivated by fear, will likely cut a terrible deal for the taxpayer.

Congress is taking action to address “the year-end fiscal cliff” set up by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, cuts to defense spending, a possible debt ceiling hike and a scheduled Obamacare tax increase. Details are scarce, but we know these squishy members want a deal after the elections so they can feel free to violate Americans for Tax Reform’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge not to vote for tax hikes.

With Apologies to Jay Silverheels…

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit

Obama Caught Lying Again: He Was a Member of ‘New Party,’ Says Kurtz

By Joel B. Pollak | June 7, 2012 | Breitbart News

Barack Obama was, in fact, a member of the socialist New Party in the 1990s and sought its endorsement for the Illinois senate–contrary to the misrepresentations of Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, and in spite of the efforts of Politico’s Ben Smith to quash the story. Stanley Kurtz, author of Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism (2010), has released new “smoking gun” evidence at National Review Online. It is evidence that the mainstream media can no longer ignore–and Obama can no longer deny.

Ayers and Obama: What the Media Hid

By John Sexton | June 4, 2012 | Breitbart News

Obama’s connection to Bill Ayers, like his connection to Jeremiah Wright, briefly became a campaign issue in 2008. The Obama campaign was quick to distance the candidate from the 60’s domestic terrorist, even as blogs continued to dig up evidence connecting the two men. Eventually the issue became enough of a story that, on October 3rd, the NY Times weighed with a piece titled “Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths” by author Scott Shane. Looking back it’s clear that the Times’ story downplayed or overlooked some significant connections between the two men, connections which may have raised red flags for some voters.

Exposed: Wisconsin Democrats’ Plan to Smear Conservatives and Governor Walker [Slideshow]

Exposed: Wisconsin Democrats’ Plan to Smear Conservatives and Governor Walker

Unlike Obama, Scott Walker delivers

By Sen. Ron Johnson | May 31, 2012 | Politico

Scott Walker has lived up to his campaign promises, author says. | AP Photo

Starting Wednesday, most of the folks I know in Wisconsin will be looking forward to a well-earned respite from what seems like a permanent campaign.

Instead of taking a break from politics between elections, Wisconsin has for months been dealing with fugitive legislators, ugly protests, legal challenges and a series of recall contests allegedly aimed at overturning Gov. Scott Walker’s legislative agenda. There’s virtually no possibility that his successful reforms will be overturned, so one has to wonder: What exactly is the point of Tuesday’s recall vote?

The simple facts are the governor’s reforms have worked, and Wisconsin is open for business.

U.S. Constitution: Parental Rights Amendment

At last: parental authority challenges government intruders

By Wes Vernon | May 28, 2012 | Renew America

It has been a century since Woodrow Wilson reportedly opined that young boys should grow up to be as unlike their fathers as possible. Whether he worded it exactly that way, our 28th president surely pursued the goal, both as educator and as politician.

Not that his era was the first to witness a challenge to parents’ prerogative. However, the early 20th century “progressive movement” (of which Wilson was a part) did offer up the most open manifestation of that attitude in American official circles up to that moment in history.

Different versions, same crusade

In our own time, Hillary Clinton has channeled such Wilsonianism into the high-sounding It Takes a Village, which a few years ago became a bestselling book viewed by many as suggesting the “village” (not the parent) as best arbiter of what is best for one’s children.

Leon Panetta and the Institute for Policy Studies

By  Christian Gomez | June 12, 2011 | The New American

Receiving very little opposition and easy questions regarding troop deployments and withdraw dates for Afghanistan and Iraq, the Senate overlooked Panetta’s past record, which puts into question the eligibility of Panetta as Secretary of Defense.

Careful observation of former Rep. Panetta’s record in the U.S. House of Representatives reveals a history of votes perceivable as in contrast with U.S. national security objectives, which if confirmed as Sec. of Defense may compromise U.S. national defense.

Warren, Obama, and Harvard’s Culture of Corruption

By Jack Cashill | May 29, 2012 | American Thinker

As Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and her Harvard partners in crime are learning, academic fraud is not as easy to get away with as it used to be in the good old days before the emergence of a vigilant alternative media.

Writing for Breitbart, Michael Patrick Leahy revealed on Friday a spring 1993 article that listed Warren as one of approximately 250 “women of color” in legal academia.  The article was published in what was then called the Harvard Women’s Law Journal and would have been released roughly when Warren was being considered for tenure.

At the time, Harvard Law was desperately seeking just such women.  Just three years earlier, the Law School found itself embroiled in a nasty racial brouhaha.  Black firebrand law professor Derrick Bell was demanding that Harvard appoint a woman of color to the law faculty.  This protest would culminate in vigils and protests by the racially sensitive student body, in the course of which Bell supporter Barack Obama would compare the increasingly absurd Bell to Rosa Parks.

The Proposed Enemy Expatriation Act Leaves Too Many Questions About Who Can Take Your Citizenship [Video]

1996 AD: Obama Event Sponsored by Socialist Group

By Aaron Klein | May 24, 2012 | WND

A 1996 print advertisement in a local Chicago newspaper shows President Obama was the speaker at an event sponsored and presented by the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA.

Buzzfeed.com reporter Andrew Kaczynski posted on his Twitter account an image of the Hyde Park Herald ad for the Feb. 25, 1996, DSA event, billed as “the first townhall meeting on economic insecurity.”

WND first reported on the event in 2008.

Obama has shown evidence of a larger relationship with the DSA.

FBI quietly forms secretive Net-surveillance unit

By Declan McCullagh | May 22, 2012 | CNET

CNET has learned that the FBI has formed a Domestic Communications Assistance Center, which is tasked with developing new electronic surveillance technologies, including intercepting Internet, wireless, and VoIP communications.

The FBI has recently formed a secretive surveillance unit with an ambitious goal: to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications.

Obamacare Decision Paralyzes Dems

By Rush Limbaugh | May 25, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have a lot of people sending me e-mail, “What do you mean, Rush? I thought you made the complex understandable.” I do, I do. But sometimes things are so simple, it’s hard to understand. All it means is that sometimes the least conspiratorial, the least complicated, answer explains something.And it’s thought to be so simple, it just can’t be. It’s gotta be more complicated. Oftentimes it’s not. And liberalism and the Democrat Party are so simple to explain that sometimes it’s difficult to understand it. But I look at Obama’s Bain attack, and it makes total sense based on everything we knew and suspected last fall about the regime desperately wanting Romney. They wanted Romney for two reasons. They wanted Romney because of Bain and Wall Street. That’s what Occupy Wall Street was all about. That’s why it was created and manufactured. And they wanted Romney because of health care.

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Crony Capitalism Creeps Into the Defense Budget

By Peter Schweizer | May 22, 2012 | Daily Beast

Congress is supposed to be cutting deficits. So why are so many members using the defense budget to line the pockets of friends and allies?

I’m generally a pretty hawkish fellow when it comes to the military: better to be strong than weak. I think of the world as a pretty rough neighborhood, and we need protection.

But as Congress tries to decide how we are going to slash spending and get out of this budget deficit, debates on the defense budget offer more evidence that crony capitalism, rather than sound policymaking, increasingly rules the day in Washington. How else do you explain Congress authorizing more defense spending than the military brass is asking for? How else to explain Capitol Hill pushing weapons systems that the Pentagon doesn’t even want?

The Party of Civil Rights

By Kevin D. Williamson | May 21, 2012 | National Review

 This magazine has long specialized in debunking pernicious political myths, and Jonah Goldberg has now provided an illuminating catalogue of tyrannical clichés, but worse than the myth and the cliché is the outright lie, the utter fabrication with malice aforethought, and my nominee for the worst of them is the popular but indefensible belief that the two major U.S. political parties somehow “switched places” vis-à-vis protecting the rights of black Americans, a development believed to be roughly concurrent with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the rise of Richard Nixon. That Republicans have let Democrats get away with this mountebankery is a symptom of their political fecklessness, and in letting them get away with it the GOP has allowed itself to be cut off rhetorically from a pantheon of Republican political heroes, from Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass to Susan B. Anthony, who represent an expression of conservative ideals as true and relevant today as it was in the 19th century. Perhaps even worse, the Democrats have been allowed to rhetorically bury their Bull Connors, their longstanding affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, and their pitiless opposition to practically every major piece of civil-rights legislation for a century. Republicans may not be able to make significant inroads among black voters in the coming elections, but they would do well to demolish this myth nonetheless.

The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House

By Ed Lasky | May 14, 2012 | American Thinker

Edward Klein’s new book on Barack Obama,The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, is a withering portrayal of a radical adrift, in over his head, drowning in his own incompetency — while being weighed down by a small circle of “advisers” who are compounding the problem of the Amateur in the White House.

Klein’s book begins with a talisman-like quote uttered by Barack Obama when his recently appointed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to boost Obama’s ego by telling him, “Your legacy is going to be preventing the second Great Depression.”  To which Barack Obama responded, “That’s not enough for me.”

As all of America knows by now, Obama has aggressively sought to “fundamentally transform” America — one of the few promises he has kept from the days of 2008.  Five trillion dollars of borrowing, ObamaCare passed over the objections of the majority of Americans through legislative legerdemain and special deals made with resistant politicians, failed stimulus, green programs failing left and right as taxpayers are left holding the bag, a recovery that is the most anemic on record, an America that has been sundered by the man who promises to unite us, America weaker abroad and at home — yes, America has been fundamentally transformed.  Mission Accomplished.

But how and why did Obama succeed in such a catastrophic way?  That is the question that Klein successfully answers in his extremely readable and enjoyable book, with enough spicy details to satisfy the craving of anyone interested in how President Obama and those closest to him have driven us to the condition we find ourselves in as we approach November.

One of the motifs that runs throughout the book is Barack Obama’s sheer level of incompetency.  He has the fatal conceit of many politicians: an overweening ego.  That may be a prerequisite for politicians and leaders, but when it is unleavened by a willingness to consider the views of others, it becomes a fatal conceit.  And Obama has that trait in abundance.

Stories tumble out that reveal a man who believes he is all but omniscient — unwilling to give any credence to the views of others (especially but not limited to those across the aisle).  Experts in management are interviewed who point out that he lacks essential qualities of leadership.  Indeed, the book gets its title from an outburst from Bill Clinton, who was trying to encourage Hillary to take on Obama in the Democratic primary of 2012:

Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent. He’s…he’s…Barack Obama’s an amateur.

But Klein does not rest there.  He delves into associates from Obama’s career in Cook County politics, his stint as a state senator, and his rise to the United States Senate.  There is a common pattern: Obama likes to campaign, but once he is elected and actually starts working, his interest flags, and he starts looking for the next “big thing” — electorally speaking.  He had few if any accomplishments or professional standing in any of his previous positions.  Even when he served as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, he avoided any encounters with other faculty who enjoyed discussing the law.  His reluctance to engage them is revealing in and of itself, suggesting he had a reason for his lack of confidence.

His disdain toward working with others is manifest.  He has gained a reputation over the last few years as being cold and distant, refusing to engage, as have other presidents, in the give-and-take of politics, in the social niceties that help grease the wheels in Washington.  Liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently advised him to read Robert Caro’s newest volume on the life of Lyndon Johnson as a primer on how to be president.  Johnson, of course, was a master at pulling levers of power, but he also knew how to persuade individual politicians on both sides of the aisle to work with him on legislation.  But, of course, LBJ also had the common touch and, having risen from humble beginnings, never considered it beneath him to work with those underneath him.  Not so Barack Obama.  He complained to foreign leaders that he had to waste time talking with “congressmen from Palookaville.”  At another time, he switched locales and said he was tired of dealing with people from “Podunk.”

His campaign trail comments regarding small-town America as being populated by “bitter” people who cling to guns and Bibles was not a one-off.  They are reflective of his views.

But the high and the mighty also come in for the Obama treatment.  Klein reveals dismay among former Obama supporters who feel they have been mistreated, maligned, and thrown under the bus.  Obama’s most generous early donors have been all but ignored; early mentors in the black business community have been sidelined if not completely ditched; people don’t hear from him or his staff unless a fundraiser is coming up.  But there is more: Caroline Kennedy is angry at the way she and her family were used for campaign purposes in 2008 and then summarily dismissed and stored away like so many movie props have been (the latter is my description).

Even Oprah Winfrey has been stiff-armed by the Obamas.  According to the book, Oprah took a big risk in supporting Obama in 2008 and campaigning for Obama in Iowa, being a big boost in his campaign.  The ratings for her show weakened significantly (and her new network has been a huge disappointment).  But when she has tried to visit the White House, she has been all but treated as persona non grata.  Apparently, Michelle Obama is a possessive person who fears the influence Oprah may have over Barack Obama (more on this below).  Oprah blames it on Michelle’s anti-obesity campaign.  She is quoted as saying, “Michelle hates fat people and doesn’t want me waddling around the White House.”  Klein digs up a quotation of Michelle Obama’s from a White House source that seems to confirm Oprah’s suspicion:

Oprah only wants to cash in using the White House as a backdrop for her show to perk up ratings. Oprah with her yo-yo dieting and huge girth, is a terrible role model. Kids will look at Oprah, who’s rich and famous and huge, and figure it’s okay to be fat.

Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, Pastor Jeremiah Wright (who merits a chapter), and Obama’s former long-time doctor (who feels Obama is distant and lacks feeling, passion, and humanity) all join a long list of people whom the Obamas have used, abused, and then cast aside once they moved into the White House.

Read the full article here.

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Obama Voters Losing Jobless Benefits Due to the Manipulation of Workforce Numbers

By Rush Limbaugh | May 11, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Michael in Momence, Illinois.  Great to have you on the EIB Network.  Hello.

CALLER:  Thanks a lot, Rush, first-time caller.  I’m calling because I was at the unemployment office just yesterday, and they have tables there where people fill out the paperwork that they have —

RUSH:  Wait, wait, wait whoa, whoa, whoa, just a second.  I need you to go slow here.

CALLER:  Okay.

RUSH:  Why were you at the unemployment office?  It may seem like an obvious question, but I want to know, why were you at the unemployment office?

CALLER:  I was filing for benefits.

RUSH:  Filing for unemployment benefits.  Okay.

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  Then you said on the tables…

CALLER:  They had tables set out for people to fill out paperwork.

RUSH:  Okay.

CALLER:  All right.  On this table was a few copies of a news release, as it said across the top of the paper, and what the news release was saying was:  Due to the lowering of the unemployment rate and the improving economy, that federal extensions for unemployment benefits were being canceled.  So it’s not 99 weeks anymore.

RUSH:  Well, this was in Momence, Illinois?

CALLER:  Kankakee County office.

RUSH:  Kankakee County.  So you went in there —

CALLER:  Yeah.

RUSH:  — and they’re touting the economy roaring back so much, unemployment rate has gone down, the economy is improving, so federal extensions for unemployment benefits are being canceled?

CALLER:  That’s correct.

RUSH:  I had not heard that.

CALLER:  That was news to me as well.

RUSH:  Well, but was there anything in this about 99 weeks, or are you just saying that because you know it’s 99 weeks that’s the max?

CALLER:  Well, actually my brother’s well below his 99 weeks. He called to verify and he said he’s gonna be kicked off as of next week.

RUSH:  Even before he reaches his 99 weeks?

CALLER:  Yeah, 99 weeks doesn’t mean anything anymore.

RUSH:  I have not heard this anywhere. Have you heard this anywhere, that people are just being told the economy is doing so well and unemployment is going up or down, employment’s going up, that your benefits are being canceled?

CALLER:  Not mine personally yet, but that’s what’s going on.

RUSH:  Well, but you’re just starting.  Illinois’s unemployment rate hasn’t gone down. Illinois’s unemployment rate is skyrocketing.

CALLER:  Well, apparently they seem to think it’s pretty good.

RUSH:  Well.  This doesn’t make any sense.

CALLER:  Well, Rush, here’s part of my question, is what happens to these people now that they’re shoved up the unemployment rolls?  Are these people being counted?

RUSH:  That’s why this doesn’t make any sense.  In an election year, you add people to the unemployment rolls.  You take care of ’em. You extend their benefits. You make sure they know you’re doing — this makes no sense.  This is like a Romney prank.

CALLER:  You know what you probably could do, and maybe your staff could do it, maybe go to the Illinois unemployment website and click on news releases.  They do release news on the website.

RUSH:  Well, I’ll assign one of the 55 people doing research to that.  Snerdley is asking me, “Could this be how they’re lowering the numbers?”  Am I the only one that sees this?  Again, I ask that question.  Okay, here are the two possibilities on the table.  Michael, I was joking about the 55 people doing research.  I was being very, very facetious.  Thanks for the call.  Here’s what we have.  A guy goes in to the Illinois unemployment office in Kankakee County.  News releases all over the tables where you fill out your forms: Because the unemployment rate is coming down and the economy is recovering, unemployment benefits are being canceled.

The only thing not said on the release is, “Get a job.”  I don’t know what canceled means. They’re not canceling everybody’s benefits.  That I know.  But it’s just what this guy saw.  So here are the two possibilities on the table.  Snerdley’s theory is that this is how they’re getting the unemployment rate down.  Okay, the benefit of that is what?  The unemployment rate going down, millions and millions and millions of Americans unemployed, who else is gonna see this?  The only people that are gonna see this are people going to the unemployment office.  Why do you go to unemployment office?  To get your bennies.  To get your benefits.

You walk in to get your benefits. You read a news release that says: Sorry, you’re out of luck, get a job.  This is how we’re lowering the unemployment rate. And this lowering the unemployment rate is gonna redound to Obama by getting him more votes because we’re gonna spread the news the economy is recovering, unemployment’s going down, but nobody is gonna see that unless somebody from that office called here like just happened.  On the other hand, what is the real-world effect of this?  People who are on unemployment are in there, I’d say the majority of them are genuine, they’re not scamming the system.  Some are in there trying to scam it, happens, but most people are in there ’cause they’re out of work and they want some unemployment benefits.  They read something in there:  Sorry, the economy is getting so good, the unemployment rate is falling so much, that benefits are canceled, or extension benefits are canceled.

In an election year, Obama turning away voters?  I can’t believe this.  This is like a Republican trick.  If I didn’t know better I’d say Andrew Breitbart had been in the Kankakee County, Illinois, unemployment office.  I mean here you have hapless people with nowhere else to go, out of work, going in to sign up for unemployment and they read something from the regime that says, “No benefits, the economy is doing too good.”  In an election year you want as many people on unemployment benefits as possible.  You want dependents. You want people thanking you for making it possible they can eat.  Snerdley, you’re off the reservation. Snerdley is now suggesting this is how they’re getting rid of white working class.  They don’t know who’s gonna walk in there.  The news release doesn’t say: Only to be read if you’re white working class.  Doesn’t say that.  Everybody’s gonna see this.  According to the BLS, the Illinois unemployment rate is 8.1, so it is down.  This doesn’t make any sense.  And again, anybody can call here and say anything, but the guy sounded legit.

Read the full article here.

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• If Obama’s Jobs Record Is Good, How Come the Media Can’t Ask About It? (minx.cc)
• Unemployment Rate Drops to 8.1% Is Anyone Buying It? (fromthetrenchesworldreport.com)
• Long-term unemployment remains virtually unchanged in economic recovery (rawstory.com)
• Jobs data may be too good to be true (economywatch.msnbc.msn.com)

Why Congress Must Confront the Administrative State

By Robert Moffit, Ph.D. | April 2, 2012 | Heritage Foundation

Abstract: The triumph of the administrative state has been made possible by the emasculation of the legislative power. Washington’s problem is not merely federal spending and debt; it is the arrogance of centralized power. The time is therefore ripe for a major national discussion not only about the size of government, but also about the processes of government. Americans have a choice: to be governed by the rule of law, as hammered out in open legislative debate carried on by elected representatives who are directly accountable to us, or the rule of administrators who are most certainly not accountable to us. The rule of regulators is arbitrary and unaccountable government—exactly what the Founders wished to prevent in crafting the Federal Constitution.

Steve Kroft of CBS recently interviewed President Barack Obama. In response to a question on his job performance, the President ranked himself fourth among America’s chief executives (behind Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln) in the production of policy initiatives.[1]

Critics quickly ridiculed his self-assessment as narcissistic nonsense. They’re wrong.

President Obama is transforming American government. Few Presidents have enjoyed more success in enacting such a large policy agenda in such a short period of time.

• Within weeks of his inauguration, the President signed into law a major expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicaid.
• He quickly followed this up with the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the “stimulus” bill), adding $831 billion to our deficits.
• In 2010, Congress passed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd–Frank bill), providing for massive and far-reaching financial regulation.
• And on March 23, 2010, he signed into law the 2,800-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). It is the largest single piece of social legislation in American history, expanding federal control over one-sixth of the American economy and the personal lives of more than 300 million citizens.

Combine this massive legislative production with his zealous regulatory program. While Washington’s bureaucratic regime has been growing since the early 1900s, under President Obama its growth has exploded. In 2009 and 2010 alone, federal agencies issued 7,076 final rules.[2]

While the President insists that his regulatory output is less than that of President George W. Bush, a closer look reveals that his “major” regulations—those having an annual impact of at least $100 million each—were more numerous. Since President Obama took office in 2009, federal agencies have issued 75 major regulations with an annual additional cost to the economy of $38 billion.[3] Taken altogether, the Small Business Administration last year estimated that the total cost of America’s regulatory burden reached $1.75 trillion—more than twice what Americans pay in individual income taxes.[4]

The U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Treasury, and Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are at the center of this regulatory storm. They alone account for 43 percent of all rules in the federal pipeline.[5] Of the 43 major rules issued in 2010, 10 were based on EPA mandates.[6] With the President’s health and environmental initiatives alone, the Obama White House has dwarfed the regulatory agenda of its predecessors.

The national health law expands the administrative power of the HHS Secretary beyond anything previously attempted. The Secretary is required to act—indicated by the statutory language “shall”—1,563 times in the final language of the legislation, and 40 specific provisions of the law mandate or permit the issuance of regulations.[7] Senate Republican Policy Committee staff estimate that the new law creates 159 new agencies or entities, but the Congressional Research Service says that the exact number is “unknowable” inasmuch as certain powerful federal offices are created administratively without direct congressional authorization.

While the law’s schedule of implementation stretches out over eight years, the most far-reaching provisions—the mandates on individuals, employers, and states—take effect in 2014. Nonetheless, in less than two years, the national health law has already generated over 11,000 pages of rules, regulations, and guidelines and related paperwork in the Federal Register.

Just consider the law’s 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The powerful board will make its initial recommendations for detailed and specific Medicare payment cuts in January 2015, and the Secretary is empowered to put them into effect unless Congress enacts an alternative set of payment cuts to meet statutory Medicare spending targets.[8] The board’s automatic recommendations are subject to neither administrative nor judicial review, and the law further requires a three-fifths Senate majority to block IPAB’s prescriptions.

Peter Orszag, President Obama’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has observed that the extraordinary power of this new board is “the largest yielding of sovereignty from the Congress since the creation of the Federal Reserve.”[9]

In 2010 alone, Congress enacted 217 bills that became law, but that same year, federal agencies issued 3,573 final rules covering a wide variety of economic activities.[10] Today, more than at any other time in our history, we are less and less governed by the rule of law, hammered out in legislative deliberations as the Founders intended, and more and more governed by the rule of regulation. We are subject to edicts promulgated by administrators—persons we do not know and will never know, persons protected by civil service law and tenure who are not accountable to us and will never be accountable to us. Nonetheless, the administrators’ detailed decisions have the force of law.

Regulation, as law, can and does directly affect whether or not we can start or run our businesses, determine how many persons we can or cannot afford to hire, how we may or may not use our land or dispose of our property. Not only do administrators publish thousands of pages of regulations, but our fellow citizens can sometimes also go to jail for violating them.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE

Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing the triumph of the administrative state, but that conquest is only possible because of the emasculation of the legislative power. The Founders made Congress the lawgiver, as clarified in Article I, Section 1 of the Federal Constitution. So much of their focus, reflected in The Federalist and other writings, was on how to check and balance the predominant legislative power, to channel and contain personal ambition and factional interest, to restrain potentially tyrannical majorities and safeguard the rights of beleaguered minorities, to secure personal liberty and protect the rights of property.

Though federal power has grown steadily since President Washington took the oath of office, today the relationship between the individual and the government is changing in a qualitative way. Americans are increasingly the subjects of an administrative regime rather than the free citizens of a democratic republic with a limited government.

Picking Winners and Losers. This steady transfer of legislative power to administrators has another inescapable consequence: arbitrary rule. The champions of administrative power invariably couch their arguments in appeals to expertise. The more complex the economic sector to be planned or regulated, the more that strict uniformity in the application of the rules becomes problematic.

In broad congressional grants of power, lawmakers give administrators wide latitude in the development and enforcement of the rules, so those who make the rules can also unmake them by granting waivers and exemptions. In the case of the health care law, HHS has already granted over 1,722 temporary waivers to certain businesses, unions, and gourmet restaurants in San Francisco that don’t have to comply with national coverage rules that apply to other companies throughout the country.

Treating similarly situated Americans differently, either as individual citizens or as citizens of a particular state, amounts to arbitrary rule; and arbitrary rule is inherently unjust.

THE NEED FOR A HIGHER LEVEL OF PUBLIC DEBATE

Today’s debate over the powerful bureaucracy is usually framed in terms of economic impact: How will federal rules affect economic growth and job creation, the price of gasoline or electricity, the cost of health insurance or the quality of medical care? While this level of debate is necessary, it is insufficient. Yes, we cannot neglect the trees, but it is really the health of the forest that matters.

The big question is this: How does this bureaucratic ascendancy affect ordinary Americans? My answer: Our very civic life is at stake, not just our prosperity.

The current trend is an affront to our self-government. The tacit assumption: Millions of us are not smart enough to make our own decisions for ourselves. Rather, we need to be closely supervised by officials. They will prescribe for us, for example, what kind of light bulbs and washing machines we should use. The provision of nutritional or caloric information on restaurant menus, or food items dispensed through vending machines, is now a federal mandate under Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act.

Our supervision, though distant and impersonal, becomes more precise and detailed. We are to become increasingly dependent on government for our well-being. Today, almost half of Americans (48.5 percent) live in households that are getting some form of government assistance, largely funded from federal revenues, but nearly half (49.5 percent) of our citizens pay no federal income taxes. But today’s Progressives are still dissatisfied. In their view, the many are to be even more dependent on the few, and the few (the hated “rich,” however they are defined) should be paying even more in taxes than they do today.

Over time, these dynamics will change the character of our people, with corrosive consequences for our political culture and our economic prosperity. America will have a progressively larger class of dependent citizens, and that spirit of freedom and independence for which the Founders risked their lives and fortunes will be broken.

It does not have to be this way. Our task is to paint the big picture, the overarching framework of American civic life. The great medieval philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, the “First Whig,” defines law as an edict of reason, promulgated by the sovereign for the common good of the community.[11] The law instructs citizens in their rights and duties, and thus has a teaching function. That being the case, as lawmakers, you must become teachers of the Constitution, carriers of our rich political culture of republican government.

What must we do to preserve and protect the constitutional traditions of limited government, individual liberty, the separation of powers, and the unique advantages of federalism? James Madison, “the Father of The Constitution,” was not a lawyer, but he was a Congressman. And in that role, he was also a teacher: He routinely employed his formidable talents in the education of his colleagues and fellow citizens on the first principles of government.

In my reading of the public mood, you also have an eager audience. More and more Americans hunger for the wisdom of the Founders, are reading their biographies, and seek to understand their tightly reasoned arguments for the adoption of our Constitution. They are also becoming aware that there is something deeply wrong with the way in which they are being governed and that this process deviates from the intentions of the Founders. They correctly sense that modern government is ever more distant and disconnected from them. They are right.

HOW WE GOT HERE

President Obama, like President Woodrow Wilson, is a real “Progressive,” but what does that mean? In his recent speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, he recalled President Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism.”[12] A genuine Progressive, TR favored the imposition of inheritance taxes and the income tax and became the standard bearer of the Progressive Party in 1912.

Reflecting that tradition, President Obama and his ideological allies are also vigorous champions of aggressive executive power.[13] Commenting on President Obama’s governance, New York Times columnist David Brooks predicts, “When historians look back on this period, they will see it as another progressive era…. It’s a progressive era based on faith in government experts and their ability to use social science analysis to manage complex systems.”[14]

Welcome to the “100 Years War” of American politics. Progressivism, after all, was America’s dominant political movement from 1890 to 1920. While the Progressives are identified with social reform and the reining in of corporate interests and trusts, they focused intensely on structural reform of government, particularly civil service reform and the democratization of our politics.

No modern American political movement has been more successful. Within a relatively short span of time, progressives backed the adoption of four transformative amendments to the Constitution. They fostered the income tax (Sixteenth Amendment) and secured direct election of U.S. Senators (Seventeenth Amendment); many backed Prohibition (Eighteenth Amendment); and they allied with the suffragettes (Nineteenth Amendment). In the several states, they broke the power of the political bosses and enacted initiative and referenda and the recall of public officials.

Long before the New Deal of the 1930s, Progressives concentrated power in Washington. With the backing of the Progressives, Congress created the Federal Reserve System (1913) and the Federal Trade Commission (1914). Federal employment soared.[15] During the Great War, Congress (in the Overman Act of 1918) gave President Wilson enormous discretionary power to consolidate and rearrange executive offices and agencies. Meanwhile, dissent, especially criticism of America’s entry into the war, was suppressed.

“Permissiveness,” the hallmark of the Sixties, was never welcome among Progressives, old or new. Under the rule of the new Progressives, if you want to just “do your own thing,” you won’t. You will do what you are told. If you think you can just “turn on, tune in, and drop out,” think again. You will be forced, for example, to buy government-approved health benefits—including federally certified abortifacients—or pay a fine. You will behave. You will conform. You will comply. You will not march to a different drummer.

The old Progressives were earnest and well-intentioned—old-fashioned “do gooders.” They were also stern and sober social reformers. During the Progressive Era, Congress suppressed the lottery business and interstate prostitution. They enforced prohibition on the sale and manufacture of alcohol,[16] and they imposed taxes on narcotics. Personal vice had become a public enemy. Professor Charles Beard, a leading Progressive historian, wrote in 1930: “Perhaps no country in the world, except Russia, places so many restraints on what is called ‘personal liberty,’ the right to do as one pleases in personal conduct and on the use of property.”[17]

Because Progressivism is an old and recurrent stream in our public life, its influence on public policy is so immense that it is a given: part of our national landscape. Progressive intellectuals generally had—and still have—a profound faith in social science, a conviction that scientific expertise was the key to social progress, especially in a social and economic order that was increasingly complex. Administration was to be the change agent. Again, Beard: “Thus, in our day, a new social science is being staked out and developed—the science of administration in a ‘great society.’ If the ‘great society’ is to endure, then it must make itself master of administration.”[18]

For Progressives, true liberty was not merely freedom from, or “negative” liberty, meaning freedom from arbitrary rule or tyrannical coercion, as embodied in the venerable natural rights tradition of the American Revolution. True liberty was the freedom to be, to act, to grow personally and to fulfill one’s potential.

This was “positive” liberty. It was to be achieved by the removal of economic and customary restraints, creating fairness in social and economic relations, liberating all persons, regardless of class or condition, from the unwelcome vicissitudes of the market and providing child care, education, universal health care, and pensions: in short, security. Justification for government action would be grounded, as Beard argued, not in power, but in service. This new liberty would be secured through broad-scale central planning and social and economic regulation.

Positive liberty, therefore, was to be achieved through the positive state. Think personal “growth” in a straitjacket.

Such ideological assumptions justified a federal role in health care and a national system of social insurance (based on the German model) for pensions in the Progressive Party platform of 1912. They explain the passion for centralization of power, particularly in the executive branch of national government, where scientific expertise would be able to work its will. “Progressivism,” wrote Professor Ralph Gabriel of Yale University, “was an aspect of the rising cult of science.”[19]

But Progressivism carries within it the seeds of contradiction. While Progressives long championed the democratization of our institutions, sunlight in government, and the elimination of the baneful influence of corporate interests, they clung stubbornly to a faith that public problems could be effectively solved through bureaucratic decision-making: little bands of experts appointed to an expanding number of government boards, commissions, or panels. That is at the heart of the Progressive conception of modern government.[20]

Populist rhetoric notwithstanding, the reality of Progressive rule is profoundly undemocratic, precisely because it takes crucial decision-making that directly affects the lives of millions of citizens “out of politics.” Thus, you have the administrative state: the rule of administrators.

Read the full article here.

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