Well, we guess that it is that time of month for one or both of the Obamas to be off on vacation. This time, in a sign of frugality(?), Michelle is skiing with her daughters at Vail, without Barack. Gee, she hasn’t been on a vacation in at least … one and a half months!
What a sacrifice!
Of course, much of the expenses will be paid by the taxpayer. We would estimate this to be in excess of half a million dollars. Travel. Security. Etc. Nothing is too expensive for an Empress (or dictator's wife)!
How was your recent vacation?
Oh, you were working hard to help pay for Michelle’s vacation?
Sorry!
Michelle Obama's big 'sacrifices' on her Vail vacation
Jeannie DeAngelis February 21, 2011
It has been almost a month and a half since the Obama family returned from 10 days in Oahu. With all the breastfeeding advice she's been giving out lately, an exhausted First Lady is long overdue for some R & R.
Relinquishing her role as tireless workaholic, Michelle decided to revisit last year's mother/daughter ski trip to the Ski Liberty Resort in Carroll Valley, Pennsylvania. Only this year, the Obama women have taken to the slopes in Vail, Colorado on a "private family trip" accompanied by "several close friends."
When unveiling his budget, Michelle's husband reminded Americans, "Everybody's going to have to give a little bit." The President even suggested: "If you're a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, you might put off a vacation."
According to Obama, "Just like every family in America, the federal government has to ... live within its means." Which is exactly what Mrs. Obama is doing, spending time with her daughters at a resort that is much more modest than she's used to.
Actually, the whole excursion to Vail Mountain is one of self-sacrifice. According to administration officials, the First Lady and friends are merely "chaperoning...children on a ski trip," otherwise Michelle would likely be home hunkered down, tirelessly working in the "Let's Move" office of the White House.
On a tight budget, the ski trip is but a few steps above a school-sponsored field trip. The chaperones are staying at the Sebastian Hotel, where lodging starts at "$605 per night ... and head north of $2,000 for multi-bedroom suites." Those rates are certainly more modest than the $6,600 a night Mrs. Obama was rumored to have spent at the Hotel Villa Padierna in Costa del Sol.
The Sebastian touts "spas, a Frost Bar, a Market for nibbles, a mountain-view pool, hot tubs and a fire pit." A bevy of ski valets assist patrons "into warm boots and out onto the mountain," which is just the kind of pared-down amenity that penny-pinchers across America can easily relate to.
Michelle arrived with "A motorcade of about a dozen vehicles, including 15 state and local law enforcement officers, traveled from the Eagle County Regional Airport to Vail...Roads were temporarily blocked to make way for the motorcade."
Despite the extravagant entourage, when it comes to frugality Mrs. Obama is a pro. A flight from DC to Colorado is 1,700 miles and takes approximately 3 hours. Although the First Lady usually employs a large Air Force jet to ferry her from vacation spot to vacation spot, this time she answered the call to live within the Obama family means in the following way: To save money, instead of Air Force One, which costs about $100,000 per hour to fly, Michelle chose a less expensive jet.
Not including the weight of ski equipment, a fair guesstimation would be that the Michelle Vail Vacation one-way flight cost much less than what would otherwise have set the American taxpayer back $300,000.
Moreover, Michelle's savvy decision to travel as often as possible without Barack also eliminates about 180 pounds of excess baggage weight, and in the long run helps in tamping down overall costs.
As an added budgetary bonus, the President joined Michelle in setting an example of prudence. Barry saved coaching fees for Sasha's basketball team when another coach failed to show up. Although Sasha was on the bunny slope with Mom in Vail, our thrifty President paused stirring up union trouble in Wisconsin long enough to serve America as a "parent coach" for a team of nine year-old girls, and selflessly did it for free.
“Contempt for the people and their just laws are the hallmarks of tyranny.”
What an insightful, succinct statement (from the following article)! And also quite apropos for the present.
Why?
Because this is what we are witnessing in Washington now unlike any time in our past since the founding of our nation. We have had arrogant, unpleasant Presidents and politicians in the past but they all pale to our present perfect storm of the contemptuous and pathologically narcissistic “president” Obama, Congressional Democrats and the complicit news media (which years ago actually defended the people from the wicked, corrupt politicians).
America is turning into a tyranny and honest, hardworking Americans have become the victims.
This needs to stop or the next solution is a Second American Revolution. Like what has been occurring in Egypt. And against the rest of the Arab autocrats in the Middle East.
Short of this, the Tea Parties are our best hope and so are the brave and increasingly resolute Republicans in Congress, particularly the ones supported by the Tea Parties and the more conservative ones like Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Rand Paul.
We must pledge them our support, time and money if we are to save our nation. This will also be for our children, grandchildren and so on.
We must also become politically involved and serve as individual mouthpieces for freedom and small government.
Or we will become slaves by proxy of a corrupt, disdainful and omnipotent Big Brother Central Government.
This must never happen!
Thus Ever Are Tyrants
Jim Mahoney February 19, 2011
Contempt for the people and their just laws are the hallmarks of tyranny. When the tyrant looks out upon the masses he bestrides, he doesn't see people; he sees objects to be manipulated, mulcted and molested. The sacred trust binding the people and their government means nothing to the tyrant. At best, it's merely an obstacle to his objective.
Because he has no kinship with the people, he feels as free to poach and plunder them as any other criminal. Having the power of the state at his disposal there is no limit to his predation.
A free people, recognizing that the tyrant reflects the corrupt state of all men, wisely hem in their governments with rules. Wherever possible they diffuse power away from individuals. Separation of powers, like the rest of our Constitution, reflects a wise suspicion of fallen human nature.
Only people who acknowledge man's inherent corruption as an immutable truth will ever be free. Only people humble enough to recognize their own failings will ever accept restraint. Consequently, these are the only people who will ever voluntarily submit themselves to the rule of law. They are also the only people fit to lead a free society.
A tyrant, on the other hand, is as sure of his own perfection as he is certain that no limits apply to him. No law will ever contain him. If a people are to remain free, their only hope is to keep him away from power.
Perhaps this is why, when Ben Franklin emerged from the constitutional convention in 1787, he famously told the woman that the delegates gave birth to a "republic, if you can keep it." Understanding human nature as well as he did, his wisdom may have given him a glimpse into the future. Sadly, for much of the following two centuries, Americans failed miserably to meet to his challenge.
Today, America's elite culture is a squalid sludge of contempt. It is the perfect media for breeding tyrants. As with other forms of rot, our tyranny grew and developed unnoticed. The sudden rise of the Tea Party is akin to a man awakening to realize he has been feeding the termites threatening to collapse his home.
Stampeded by a series of shocking events, followed by a flurry of dubious laws justified by hazy reasoning, frightened Americans allowed tyranny to grow unchecked at a blistering rate. The freedoms we enjoyed a scant 15 years ago are now a dim memory. Today we meekly submit to laws permitting sneak and peak searches, no knock warrants, and high tech invasions of our persons that would turn any Red commissar green with envy.
Does anyone remember that just 15 years ago Americans were free to travel in their own country without showing identity papers? Does anyone seriously think these intrusions will stop growing on their own?
Sadly they are all transgressions that anyone reading the Constitution can plainly see are forbidden. Yet somehow in the sludge of the elite mind they are justified: destroying our freedom is necessary to protect "freedom". Battered daily with messages of panic and despair, the land of the free and home of the brave has been transformed something different altogether.
Every one of these abuses arises from a fundamental contempt for free people and the rule of law that protects us. They are only a sample from a shamefully long list.
Consider: we have a President who, for whatever reason, defies demonstrating his Constitutional qualification to hold his office. Whether or not he is qualified is practically irrelevant compared to the damage his intransigence has done to our Constitution and rule of law. By tolerating his obstinacy, Americans forever waive their right to demand evidence that a future president be American born. Let your imagination run with the possibilities.
Think it's farfetched?
Consider: the most fearsome power of the Federal government is to make war. The Constitution assigns specific responsibilities to Congress and the Executive to declare and execute war. It is a thorny and arduous process. It's supposed to be. It's intended as a barrier against gratuitous death.
Yet the last constitutionally declared war ended in 1945. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed or maimed and millions slaughtered across the globe at the whim of a single man, defying or, at best finessing, the Constitutional obligation of Congress to declare war.
Protestors may howl about this president or that war. However, no one gives a thought to the brazen assault that undeclared, unconstitutional wars represent to the American people and our Republic. After 65 years of blind submission to this tyranny, why would the thought occur to anyone?
Does anybody seriously think there will ever be another constitutionally declared war? That protection's gone the way of the Whigs.
As bad as destroying our financial lives is, once Americans accepted sacrificing our young in this manner, it was only a matter of time before our emboldened "leaders" came for the rest of the loot.
Here is a documentary film showing the price today's brave young Americans and our Afghan "beneficiaries" are paying for no more reason than our President found himself impaled on his own talking points. As a result, another generation gets to pursue the deadly chimera of "hearts and minds" for no greater purpose than to pull the President's foot from his mouth.
Worse, while such horrors proceed in his name, the greatest pain this man experiences holding office is losing his privacy! Would we expect less compassion from George III?
The rise of the Tea Party is a grass-roots recognition that our liberty is too precious to leave to a dull priesthood of politicians and pundits. The finest Constitution on earth is just a piece of paper if the people it protects aren't prepared to enforce it. The mass rising of the populace embodied in the Tea Parties is an unprecedented threat to our budding dictators. It's no surprise their empire struck back with every lame insult its muddled minds could muster.
In their own way, the transparent calumnies hurled at Americans demanding the government obey our laws are comforting. If that's the best the elites have, perhaps many of the other walls they've built around us are equally flimsy.
Still, we are on the threshold of losing our Republic. As with other life threatening situations, admitting the problem is the first step: America, we have a tyranny! However, judging by the panicked response of the elites, we still have the means to thwart it. Demanding the government and its officials abide by the Constitution they are sworn to uphold and defend is our best hope.
Enforcing the demands is uncomfortable. They tyrant has many minions, conscious and otherwise. It's important to recognize that even those who proclaim themselves our friends can be as dangerous as our adversaries. Whether it's the Panjandrum of Fairness and Balance or the eye of the Peacock that alters all, those who ridicule the just concerns of the public are themselves the forces of darkness and ignorance.
The article below is a scathing commentary on the unfettered deception that Obama and the media have continued to foist on a not so unwitting American public. Claims of the recession ending several quarters ago and an economy that is improving to plan is abject prevarication.
True unemployment continues to increase, now assessed by non-government officials at a whopping 10% with underemployment (which the government so conveniently avoids) is averaging nearly 20% nationally. That is 1 in 5 Americans.
We have experienced the longest period of time where unemployment is above 9% since the Great Depression. One in seven Americans are behind in their mortgage while 27% of all houses have negative equity.
Our national debt is reaching bankrupting levels while “president” Obama continues reckless and unsustainable deficit spending. And the Fed keeps printing money.
Meanwhile, Obama and Michelle continue to party at the White House like Nero fiddling while Rome burned. They have also cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars on their multitude of vacations while millions of Americans are just trying to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
It would be best for America and the rest of the civilized world if the contemptuous, incompetent, racist, narcissistic, hedonistic and radical Obama were removed from office before the next election.
A little Cairo action by the majority of Americans would surely be welcomed…
Obama's Economics of Deception
Steve McCann February 18, 2011
Barack Obama, perhaps the most dishonest president in modern history, has, in a cynical abdication of leadership, not only proposed a budget that, if adopted, is guaranteed to destroy the financial future of the country, but he has done so while lying about a supposed economic recovery underway. His proclivity to do or say anything to enhance his image or achieve his ends was amply on display at a press conference held on the 16th of February.
There is a recovery underway for those in the federal government and those that have signed on to the Obama version of crony capitalism in the boardrooms of certain major corporations and Wall Street. But for those in "flyover country" who pay the taxes and create the jobs the facts are starkly different.
In the bubble that is Washington D.C. there has not been a recession as incomes continue to soar. Wealth has also increased as property values in the fourth quarter of 2010 grew over 7.5% (as compared to the previous year) while the national average showed a further decrease of 2.0%. The currentunemployment rate in the metro Washington D.C. market is 5.6% as compared to Gallup's latest estimate of a national unemployment rate of 10.0% and an underemployment rate that has now hit 19.6%.
Some may point to the soaring stock market as an indicator of economic growth. In reality the stock market is a reflection of the need to find a home for the massive amount of new dollars essentially printed by the Federal Reserve. As a result there is the beginning of a bubble emerging in the stock markets, particularly in various internet stocks. Gold has topped out and virtually all commodities are at their all time highs. Municipal Bonds have become a very high risk with so many States and municipalities in dire financial trouble now facing the very real possibility of a downgrade in ratings thus making the bonds an even greater risk. Meanwhile the interest return on CDs and IRAs is averaging around 1.0% or less thanks to the Fed monetary policy.
However, the markets do reflect a reality that the Obama administration and their sycophants in the mainstream media will not acknowledge, as their primary and only interest is the re-election of Barack Obama. The American people can no longer trust or look to the current governing class for honesty or integrity, but should instead rely on what the financial markets are saying, whether it is the impending state and municipal debt crisis, inflation or global political upheavals.
The major worldwide concern is, at present, inflation -- something the Federal Reserve and the Administration refuse to acknowledge. However, since August investors have been switching to inflation-linked debt instruments in the United States and other European countries. These index-linked bonds, the traditional way investors protect themselves against rising prices, have become a favored asset class for many fund managers. In the U.S., the world's biggest market for these securities, the issuance of these instruments will set a record this year.
Consumer prices have jumped more than 4% in the United Kingdom, in China over 5%, and in Germany by the fastest rate in over two years. And the estimates are that these rates will continue to rise. In January, the cost of living in the U.S. climbed more than forecast, led by higher prices for food and fuel. The consumer price index increased 0.4% for a second month (annualized at 4.8%). By contrast the real average hourly earnings have increased only .4% over the past year (January 2010 to January 2011).
Many companies that have, over the past year, absorbed the higher cost of manufacturing, will be forced into raising prices, which will further exacerbate the rise of the consumer price index. This action could also precipitate a drop in sales volume which will impact any decision to hire new employees on a permanent basis.
Within the international marketplace there is now open discussion of replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency with SDRs (Special Drawing Rights or a basket of international currencies in conjunction with the IMF). The purpose is to have a reserve asset for central banks that better reflects the global economy since the dollar is vulnerable to swings in the domestic economy and changes in U.S. policy. In other words Washington D.C. has made a hash of the domestic economy and the entire world is also paying for it.
In other news: Applications for jobless benefits increased yet another 25,000 in the week ending February 12 again surprising the so-called experts. There is a record share of U.S. mortgages in foreclosure. The combined share of foreclosures and loans with overdue payments hit a record 14% of loans in the country (one out every seven mortgages in the U.S.) At the end of 2010 16 million housing units or 27% in the country had a negative equity in the property. The projections are that housing values will continue to decrease and foreclosures increase as job creation and income will not be growing.
With this as backdrop the leadership of the United States, in the comfortable bubble that is Washington D.C., proceeds to flounder, obfuscate and play games with the American people.
The Federal Reserve in its latest FOMC meeting minutes "continues to express disappointment in both the pace and unevenness of the improvements to the job market" and conceded it would take five to six years to return to historical rates of growth and job creation. However, they claim that the second round of quantitative easing (essentially printing money) was so far a success.
The Fed expects the GDP to grow even faster than their last projection (they have been wrong for 8 straight quarters so far). Even more surprisingly they don't expect the recent increases in commodity prices to filter into broader inflation permanently. Their preferred price index (which inexplicably does not include food and energy costs) is projected to rise only 1.3% in the twelve months of 2011. Yet the consumer price index in January, which does include food and energy, rose 0.4% on one month alone. No mention was made of any anticipated growth in average hourly earnings.
At the White House, whose motto is: "The end justifies the means," its primary occupant, Barack Obama is perfectly comfortable saying whatever he wants knowing the mainstream media will report his spin with straight faces. As befitting high school juveniles, the Administration, the Democrats, and the media can portray the goings on at each end of Pennsylvania Avenue as game of gotcha, while the country sinks under a mountain of debt.
The only place that the American people can turn to for the truth is themselves and the international financial markets that do not have a vested interest in this irresponsibility.
Obama's lack of responsiveness, his delayed responses, vacillations, muddled messages, and detachment from issues, etc. are manifestations of an individual who is so innately incompetent, uninformed, intellectually challenged and arrogant yet so consumed with himself and power.
He is the anti-President - just what we and the rest of the world don't need.
He should follow Mubarak's lead and leave ... just as he encouraged that dictator to do!
Obama is acting more like a corrupt dictator than the President of what was once a great and free nation. His wanton and arrogant disregard for the will of the people as well as his naked power grab and narcissism place him in a category never before entered by any previous President. This is the crowning jewel (in a negative context) of his sorrowful repertoire which even exceeds his abject incompetence, naiveté and absence of leadership.
The only winner in this besides those Americans who live off the forced largesse and labor of the taxpayer is Jimmy Carter. As pathetic and traitorous as he has become, in comparison to Obama, Carter is an improvement.
As for the rest of us we have a few choices but they aren’t great. This situation will end “badly” if Obama continues to disregard legal judgments from the judiciary and flout the law, creating a Constitutional crisis, in addition to disregarding the will of the good people of this country.
President Stealth Strikes Again
Ed Lasky February 08, 2011
How Obama and his merry band are trying to evade the will of the people
The people spoke in November when they delivered a shellacking to Democrats and Barack Obama. They had grabbed too much power in ways that ran afoul of tradition, the law, and the will of the people. In electing so many Republicans to office, Americans wanted a course change from the radicalism of the past two years: the regulatory avalanche, the policy missteps, the ObamaCare overreach.
Have President Obama and his merry band of followers read the memo yet? The people have had it with the tricks and sly maneuvers used by Democrats to push their agenda on America. Apparently they have not yet heard our voices or care to listen to us -- they still have some tricks up their sleeves.
They know the game book of the Republicans -- what their plans are to circumscribe Obama's power-grab, to minimize the damage from ObamaCare and massive and wasteful deficits. I suggested what that very game plan would be in Stopping Obama: A Republican Game Plan. Merely observing and piecing together various news items was sufficient to give one an idea of the contours of the Republican effort; Obama and the Democrats know how the game is played and have deployed their own tactics to counter and foil the Republicans and those darned and dunderheaded Americans who voted for them (the bitter ones who cling to God, guns, and the ballot box).
Republicans in the House now have oversight authority to finally investigate all that has happened the last two years -- and authority chairmen such as Darrell Issa (House Oversight and Government Reform Committee) and Fred Upton (Energy and Commerce) intend to use to root out waste, cronyism, favoritism, and corruption. Issa has already asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release a number of documents relating to its policies and earlier testimony before Congress.
The response from the Department? A trick question. For there has been no response. It's called stonewalling (or we can call it the "Just Say No" reply), and it is meant to frustrate and derail any sort of oversight by Republicans.
From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
... The Daily Caller reported that the Obama administration had snubbed top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa on his first major document deadline as new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sending a short letter promising to comply in response to a major information request that was due Saturday at noon.
A Jan. 28 letter from the Department of Homeland Security said the agency is "in the process of retrieving" documents requested by Issa "and will make them available for your review expeditiously."
But the next day, Issa's two-week deadline expired.
Now Issa is hitting back with a forceful response that demands key documents by Thursday.
What happens if the DHS fails to comply by tomorrow? Issa may issue subpoenas for top officials to explain to his panel why they have failed to cooperate with Congressional oversight. The Democrats on the committee may try to block the subpoenas.
Democrats are going to be in an uproar, charging Republicans are on a McCarthy-like with hunt. Congressman Henry Waxman has already been accusing Fred Upton of being too disruptive because he dare asked the Department of Health and Human Services to give to the committee copies of communications about an office set up under ObamaCare to write and enforce regulations on private insurance companies. The hypocrisy is blatant for, as the Wall Street Journal editorializes, Waxman was very zealous in requesting documents when he was chairman of a committee:
The 19-term Beverly Hills Democrat made his name as a hell-for-leather investigator of business and, at least during GOP Presidencies, the executive branch, so there's more than a little humor in his sternly worded letter to Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton. Mr. Waxman believes Republicans have gone too far by requesting documents from Health and Human Services as they probe ObamaCare's implementation.
Days after the 2006 election, Mr. Waxman mused to reporters that the Oversight Committee he would chair had "jurisdiction over everything" and said that "the most difficult thing will be to pick and choose." He didn't. Which Waxman investigation was most frivolous is still an open question. Was it his dogged pursuit of the Karl Rove conspiracy to "out" Valerie Plame, or Dick Cheney's phantom plan to enrich Halliburton, or the White House noninterference in climate science?
By the summer of 2008, the Bush Administration had produced more than 1.8 million pages of documents and more than 1,100 different officials had testified before Congress to comply with some 650 investigations.
The Journal notes that one other way the Democrats are going to try to evade the GOP's efforts to restore accountability to Washington. One major strategy the GOP had was to use its House majority to defund various elements of Obamacare. Furthermore, bills would be narrowly drafted to make it easier to cut funding for various agencies.
How did the Obama team respond? By some fancy footwork behind the scenes. The office Upton was investigating had directly reported to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius but, once the GOP took control, was suddenly relocated to the Medicare center. The Journal opines:
The bureaucratic reshuffling was likely meant to counter GOP attempts to defund the office, which has nothing to do with Medicare. Mr. Upton is also asking for information about the process by which HHS has granted more than 700 waivers to its union allies and others exempting them from certain ObamaCare mandates.
Some shuffling of the deck to avoid defunding by suddenly relocating an office from vulnerable area to a more protected one (who wants to be charged with placing Medicare funding at risk?). How clever these Democrats can be when it comes to ignoring the will of the people. Moving offices around on the organizational chart, reassigning government workers who might be called to testify so as to make them less readily available to give testimony to Congress (as has been done by the Department of Justice in the New Black Panther controversy), shifting titles, funds, and job responsibilities become par for the course for the Obama administration. Will their bureaucratic stunts to avoid Republican oversight become a high-stakes game of "Whack- a- Mole"?
So much for those promises Barack Obama made to have the most transparent administration in history. They were, as Barack Obama would say, "just words"?
But wait -- there is more. They also are ignoring federal courts.
From the Washington Examiner:
A federal court in Louisiana has found the Interior Department in contempt for violating an injunction barring enforcement of the first drilling moratorium issued by the agency following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf Of Mexico.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued the first moratorium June 22, 2010, but shortly thereafter federal District Judge Martin Feldman issued a temporary restraining order, which the government appealed. That appeal was denied and a few days later Salazar issued a second moratorium that was virtually identical to the first.
Judge Feldman was not impressed by Interior's claims that the second moratorium was different, and ruled that "the government did not simply reimpose a blanket moratorium; rather, each step the government took following the Court's imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance:
"The government failed to seek a remand; it continually reaffirmed its intention and resolve to restore the moratorium; it even notified operators that though a preliminary injunction had issued, they could quickly expect a new moratorium.
"Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the reimposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this Court with clear and convincing evidence of the government's contempt of this Court's preliminary injunction Order."
A federal judge issued an injunction that barred enforcement of a drilling moratorium issued by the agency (it was actually an executive order issued by Barack Obama). So the Interior Department basically sought an end-run around the court's injunction be developing a new moratorium essentially the same as the first one. Plus, the Interior Department has been afflicted with a sudden case of sclerosis since drilling permitting has been shifted into low gear. The executive branch is ignoring a federal court order, and now the judge has the good sense to treat the administration as it should be treated when it ignores the law: with contempt.
One more point.
Judges normally expect the executive branch to follow the laws (how silly in the Age of Obama). This noble but naïve belief was highlighted in Judge Roger Vinson's decision that declared Obamacare to be unconstitutional because it stretched the Commerce Clause to the breaking point. He also said the lack of a severability clause would make the rest of ObamaCare unworkable. One need not dig into the legalistic details of the decision. But what is most interesting is the judge's reasoning in denying the plaintiffs' an injunction that would have prevented the roll-out of Obamacare. Why deny an injunction if Obamacare is unconstitutional?
Because the judge still has faith that a president would abide by the oath taken when he is sworn into the highest office of the land to the best of his ability to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Judge Vinson did not think that an injunction was needed. He cited a previous ruling and wrote that he expected the "executive branch" to "adhere to the law as declared by the court. As a result the declaratory judgment is the functional equivalent of an injunction." Well, the judge who issued the contempt citation over the evasion of his own injunction against enforcing the drilling moratorium might want to inform his colleague that the executive branch has no problem ignoring the judicial branch.
Memo to Judge Vinson: don't expect the executive branch to adhere to any laws as declared by any court unless it comports with President Obama's agenda. And so it has already done so. As the Wall Street Journal notes the White House reaction after the Vinson decision:
Yet the White House and Health and Human Services have already said they'll continue running ObamaCare as if nothing has changed. Imagine the rule-of-law furor if the Bush Administration had said a wiretapping or other civil liberties ruling didn't matter.
Where are the media when it has become increasingly clear to all but the most besotted and blind that Barack Obama regularly flouts not just the will of the people, but the laws of the land in order to pursue his agenda?
We should reciprocate his disrespect -- if not contempt -- on November 6th, 2012.
Obama taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago in between his stint as a community organizer and Chicago politician. You would think that he would have a rudimentary understanding of the separation of powers as designed by the framers of The Constitution - or, at least, a respect for them. As evidenced by his actions these past two years, you would be wrong on both counts.
President Obama has near complete disregard for the sanctity of our Constitution. To him, it is what HE wants it to be and not what our founding fathers intended it to be. As our arrogant narcissistic “president – king” views it, not only is he smarter than all of us, his wisdom and intellect exceeds that of the titans who founded the greatest country our world has ever known.
America's first president, George Washington knew the perils of having a king-like figure presiding over a free nation and in his infinite wisdom and humbleness, stepped down after two terms to let another individual govern; this despite the wishes of the people who begged him to continue to serve as our national leader. To Washington (and many other subsequent Presidents), it was an honor and privilege to serve the people. Obama, on the other hand, considers the position as one of power, personal prestige and the way to impose his ideological diktats on the American “peasants” regardless of whether or not he oversteps the authority assigned to the Executive branch as defined by The Constitution.
Executive Orders and Presidential Prerogatives
Zbigniew Mazurak February 05, 2011
Some conservatives, including AT news editor Ed Lasky, are worried that despite the election of a Republican-dominated House and six new GOP senators, Obama will continue to advance his extremely liberal agenda -- but this time, by executive fiat rather than by congressional law.
Mr Lasky wrote:
He has already received his marching orders from the Center for American Progress (CAP) -- called his "Ideas Factory" by TIME and his "Policy Font" by Bloomberg News. After the shellacking, the CAP released a report calling for Obama to rely on increased use of executive powers to pushhis agenda (and ignore the wishes of the American people and the role of the newly constituted Congress): "Executive orders, Rulemaking, Agency management, Convening and creating public-private partnerships, Commanding the armed forces, Diplomacy."
As Mr Lasky reported, the CAP's Michael Waldman has claimed the following:
[L]ike all presidents, he has a bulging toolkit: executive orders, regulations, spending decisions, the bully pulpit and more. Obama has lots of power, and he should wield it[.] ...
Consider energy policy, where congressional gridlock seems inevitable, with many conservatives insisting climate change is a myth and taxes are a nightmare. The Center's experts say Obama could impose a $2-per-barrel fee on imported oil with proceeds steered toward energy research.
Essentially, the CAP has claimed that Obama is an omnipotent king who can issue any edict he wants to on any thematic issue. The good news for America and its people is that the CAP is flat wrong.
Obama is not an omnipotent dictator, and he doesn't even have a "bulging toolkit." Like all of his predecessors, he is a president with only limited prerogatives, according to the U.S. Constitution. And it is the Constitution, not Obama or the CAP, that determines what a U.S. president is allowed to do.
Obama has no prerogatives except those explicitly granted to him by the Constitution (specifically, by its Article II).
As explained (inter alia) in this constitutional primer, the prerogatives of the entire federal government are thematically limited to a discrete group of thematic issues. On top of that limit, the President of the United States is limited in terms of what he can do about them.
So what about that "bulging toolkit"?
Executive orders and regulations issued by the president are law for no one except federal executive agencies. Only the Congress can make law for anyone else. So any executive orders or regulations are not law for you unless you work for one of these institutions. The same applies to any executive regulations imposed by executive agencies such as the EPA.
Fees on imported products? Again, only the Congress can impose them. The exclusive prerogative to impose any duties, taxes, or imposts is reserved by the Constitution for the Congress. And under the nondelegation doctrine, one branch of the federal government cannot delegate its prerogatives to another.
Spending decisions? Again, they are for only the Congress to make. The president can only request budgets, and if he deems whatever appropriations the Congress enacts insufficient or excessive, he can only veto them entirely (not partially -- he does not have a line-item veto right, which the SCOTUS declared unconstitutional).
What about the president's prerogatives as commander of the U.S. military? The answer can be found in the Constitution and in Federalist #69:
The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy, while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies -- all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.
The president is the supreme commander of the military, but he doesn't decide military spending levels, the Armed Services' size, or which countries the U.S. wages war with. As James Madison clearly stated, you're not allowed to go to war without a declaration of war -- and that is the Congress's prerogative.
The Executive Branch can't even unilaterally retire certain categories of ships and aircraft. It has been forbidden to do so by the Congress.
Article 1, Sec. 9 of the Constitution says that "[n]o money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law." Obama cannot determine spending levels unilaterally. And if he vetoes Republican-proposed spending reductions...fine. The government will receive no funding, then, which means that Obama will get no budget at all instead of a small budget.
Moreover, according to the Constitution, the Congress has the prerogative to 1) raise and support armies; 2) provide and maintain a navy; 3) provide for the "common defense"; 4) make regulations for the military (such as the former DADT law); and 5) to "define and punish ... [o]ffences against the Law of Nations." In other words, the Congress regulates the military and makes law for the Executive Branch, and the latter obeys that law. And not only does the president swear an oath to support the Constitution, but he also is commanded by it to "take care that laws be faithfully enacted."
The president cannot convene public-private partnerships, because the Constitution doesn't list any such presidential prerogative.
Nor can he use the U.S. military against the American people -- the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits him to do so.
As for diplomacy, this can be used only towards foreign countries, again within limits set by the Constitution and the Congress. The president cannot unilaterally appoint anyone to crucial offices without Senate confirmation, nor can he ratify treaties without the Senate's consent. Nor can the Senate ratify any treaty it likes -- it can ratify only treaties that are authorized by the Constitution. It cannot okay a CO2-emissions-limiting accord, because the Congress and the president have no constitutional right to regulate CO2 emissions.
Moreover, the Congress has the right to supervise the president as he manages America's foreign policy. It can, for example, order a U.S. embassy to be relocated, order (or prohibit) the Executive Branch from doing something, and demand testimonies by Obama administration officials before CSPAN. The Congress can limit Obama's foreign policy in many ways.
To sum up, Obama will make a serious mistake if he tries to advance his liberal agenda by executive fiat. He has no constitutional prerogative to do so. With the exception of employees of federal agencies and the companies that do business with them, Americans will not be bound by any edicts Obama might issue. Meanwhile, the Executive Branch will be bound by any laws the Congress might make -- and of course, it is already bound by any acts already passed by the Congress to date.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/executive_orders_and_president.html at February 05, 2011 - 05:38:08 PM CSThttp://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/executive_orders_and_president.html
Like John Kerry, who famously flip-flopped on his support of the Iraq war, Barack Obama was against the individual mandate for health insurance before he was for it. In this brief video clip from his appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show during the 2008 Democratic primary, then candidate Obama is clear in his opposition to forcing people to buy health insurance. He lamely uses the analogy that "forcing everyone to buy health insurance won't solve the problem of (31 million) uninsured Americans any more than forcing everyone to buy a house will solve homelessness".
Lucky for him there weren't any serious journalists around to call him on his inane analogy. Then again, they never called him out on any of his myriad and outrageous flubs including the “57” states one – his referring to “57” states comprising the United States.
At a time when America and the world need a strong leader, we are stuck with an insincere, arrogant, contemptuous, inept and feckless President who does not know himself where he stands on the important issues of the day unless they are in the socialist manifesto.
One thing that you can count on with him is not counting on the veracity of his words, statements and promises.
Obama to DeGeneres on Why He Opposed Individual Mandate: Forcing Uninsured to Buy Insurance Is Like Forcing Homeless to Buy Homes
Eric Scheiner February 01, 2011
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden react to cheers as they arrive in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, March 23, 2010, for the signing ceremony for the health care bill. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
(CNSNews.com) - Long before his administration went into federal court to fight 27 states that are now challenging the constitutionality of the federal government forcing people to buy health insurance, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama told Ellen DeGeneres that—unlike his opponent Hillary Clinton—he opposed forcing the uninsured to buy health insurance, saying that it would be like forcing the homeless to buy homes.
“Both of us want to provide health care to all Americans. There’s a slight difference, and her plan is a good one. But, she mandates that everybody buy health care. She’d have the government force every individual to buy insurance and I don’t have such a mandate because I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want health insurance, it’s that they can’t afford it,” Obama said in a Feb. 28, 2008 appearance on Ellen DeGeneres' television show. “So, I focus more on lowering costs. This is a modest difference. But, it’s one that she’s tried to elevate, arguing that because I don’t force people to buy health care that I’m not insuring everybody. Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t."
In a ruling issued yesterday holding that the insurance mandate in Obamacare is unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson pointed to a similar statement that Obama had made in a Feb. 4, 2008 interview with CNN. “Indeed,” wrote Vinson, “I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that ‘if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.’”
Judge Vinson was the second federal judge to rule that the federal government does not have the constitutional power to force individuals to buy health insurance. Last month, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson also ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional. Vinson was ruling in a suit brought against the federal government by Florida and 25 other states. Hudson was ruling in a suit brought against the federal government by the state of Virginia.
In the following brilliant and fascinating article, Megan Fox explores what she has determined as the top 10 breaches of protocol by the Obamas. This is not an ad hominem attack but an incisive look at the inexcusable and egregious blunders as well as the reckless arrogance of Barack and Michelle Obama which has implications and consequences for America as well as all its citizens.
A few of these influences include our standing in the world, effectiveness or lack thereof in controlling and addressing violence against Americans and American interests home and abroad, engendering rogue nations and dictators to persist in their actions rather than desist (Iran, North Korea), and losing support or staunch allies of the past.
During his two year tenure as “president”, Obama has unmasked his true intentions and character: an unrelenting arrogant, contemptuous, narcissistic, racist, elitist Progressive who intends to transform the American political, economic and social system in direct opposition to the wishes of an overwhelming majority of citizens in order to realize his ideological goals. His agenda is authoritarian control or, in essence, tyranny and has been accomplishing much of this through his czars and fellow Progressives with regulations and rules that often bypass Congress.
In isolation, Obama would have little success. Unfortunately, he and a cadre of Progressives in high places have worked to advance the far left causes which have been immensely aided by the fifth column press which is complicit in this revolution. We all know the names of some of these noxious Progressive politicians who are bent on undermining and destroying our country: Hillary Clinton, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Pete Stark. (See yesterday’s post : Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Outrageous Statements Made In An Arab Country Regarding the Tucson Shooter for just one example of the outrageous, destructive and irresponsible actions of Hillary Clinton)
We must vanquish this revolution being perpetrated by liberal Democrats and Progressives from within the government, doing whatever it takes to neutralize these individuals and their destructive actions. The November massacre of Democratic politicians at the voting booth is a start but we must continue on relentlessly. It is imperative that we fervently support the conservatives and Republicans in Congress in order to help regain our stolen rights and freedoms as well as reestablish sane fiscal policies.
Arrogant and Authoritarian: Barack Obama and the New Progressives
Chuck Rogér January 12, 2011
Blindness to physical reality, denial of human nature, and a consuming desire to use government force to impose fantasies on fellow human beings. Welcome to the mind of today's American "progressive."
Progressives veil sophomoric schemes in eloquent verbiage. Barack Obama's mastery of the technique got him elected president. Sixty-nine and a half million Americans would not have voted for Obama had he failed to conceal the differences between his campaign spiel and the contents of his heart.
Convinced of the goodness of their intentions, ideologues like Obama mistake tyranny for noble action. And to achieve their noble objectives, today's progressives bend the truth far more than did predecessors like John Dewey, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR. Yet Obama has increasingly adopted a more direct modus operandi since becoming president. The "centrist" disguise has disintegrated.
Progressivism initially appeared on the American scene in response to problems that cried for solutions. Peter Berkowitz describes the movement's birth.
The original progressivism arose in the 1880s and 1890s and flourished during the first two decades of the 20th century. It is associated with, among others, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, scholars Fredrick Jackson Turner and Charles Beard, reformer Jane Addams, theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, philosopher and educator John Dewey, and journalist and New Republic founder Herbert Croly.
At their best, the original progressives responded to dramatic social and economic upheavals generated by the industrial revolution, opposed real Gilded Age abuses, and promoted salutary social and political reforms. They took the side of the exploited, the weak, and the wronged. They fought political corruption and sought to make political institutions more responsive to the will of the people. And they advanced programs and policies that, in a changing world, brought liberal democracy in America more in line with the Declaration of Independence's and the Constitution's original promise of freedom and equality for all.
So some original progressives had a positive influence on the country. But history shows that the ideas of zealots like Wilson, Croly, Dewey, and FDR had devastating effects. Government size and intrusion into business and private life have mushroomed. America's education system has decayed into a vehicle for infecting young people with pie-in-the-sky misconceptions of human nature and twisted versions of the American story.
Decades since the progressive movement began, a clear picture has developed of rabid ideologues like Margaret Sanger, whose racism incited her to conceive the eugenic "Negro Project" to reduce the "inferior" black population. Progressive minds like Sanger's, capable of spawning the depravity of Planned Parenthood, are dark places.
Today, the truth stares Americans in the face. While progressivism was born of an earnest desire to advance personal freedom, the ideology devolved into a collection of approaches that would lock people in the chains of a centrally planned society, with progressive elites withholding the keys to the locks. The elitists truly believe that legislative and regulatory shackles can remold human nature to conform to an impossibly perfect vision.
We need look no farther than our progressive-in-chief for the embodiment of the stubborn pseudo-intellectual who views himself as society's infallible guiding hand. Barack Obama wants government to "spread the wealth" by taking wealth from high earners who spread it more broadly and deeply than government ever could. Our president thinks that Americans who are concerned about decaying values and explosive federal spending are too "scared" to trust cherry-picked "facts and science." Obama believes that people are wasting valuable time "pushing away challenges, looking backwards" -- presumably focusing on really dreadful stuff like wholesome values, common sense, and facts evidenced by history. Barack the magic driver says that Republicans critical of his magic bus "can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back."
A hundred years ago, Herbert Croly foretold the Obama mindset, declaring that "the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat1." Peter Berkowitz suggests that today's progressives probably find Croly's declaration "mortifying." I think Berkowitz misses the mark. Hillary Clinton, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Time's Joe Klein, U.C. Berkley linguist George Lakoff, Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, and countless other progressives routinely make an exhibition of their insufferably arrogant elitism. Obama's superior manner and California Representative Pete Stark's outrageous impudence typify the demeanor of today's enlightened ones.
With a smugness celebrated by soul mates in the media, Barack Obama inspires American progressives to flaunt their haughtiness. Describing the posturing that accompanies the haughtiness, Berkowitz observes that Obama's techniques constitute an "effort to push dramatic transformation under the cover of moderation, pragmatism, and post-partisanship."
My characterization is more straightforward. The media actively sell Obama's phony "moderation, pragmatism, and post-partisanship" to "cover" actions that are immoderate, impractical, and entirely partisan. Obama purveys doublespeak to convince people of one thing while the illusionist-in-chief does another. Millions of Americans voted for a package of illusions in 2008.
Obamaesque deceit and conceit are easily summarized: progressives sanctify pretty theory as obviously true and condemn ugly reality as necessarily false. Progressives see themselves as incapable of error and believe that rejection of their high-mindedness could be undertaken only by commoners too dim to comprehend what's best.
During the two years after Barack Obama moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Democrats increased their stranglehold on Congress, something became crystal-clear. A hideous infestation called progressivism has uglified the White House and the Democrat Party. The tyrannous legislative and regulatory rampages that Obama and the Democrats undertook made something else clear. Until progressivism is flushed from the party, Democrats must never again be entrusted with substantial influence in government.
A writer, physicist, and former high tech executive, Chuck Rogér invites you to visit his website, www.chuckroger.com. E-mail Chuck at swampcactus@chuckroger.com.
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