by | ARTICLES, CONSTITUTION, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS
Lately there have been recent discussion about whether or not Congress can sue the President. We have had several occurrences, in fact, where the President has violated the Constitution by overreaching his authority with regard to Congress. In these instances, Congress should have the standing to sue the President.
When Congress has acted in its authority as the Legislative branch, that institution as a whole has been compromised when the President, acting as the Executive branch, has ignored the actions of Congress and acted unilaterally in a manner other than that which was decided by Congress.
For instance, Congress voted for Obamacare. It contained some 2000 pages of laws, rules, and regulations. And yet dozens of times since the implementation of the law (March 2010), parts of the law been ignored, delayed, or changed by the President or some of his agencies — directly contrary to the actions of Congress crafting and passing a law.
In an even more obtuse example, Obama passed the Dream Act on his own. Though the president wanted it, Congress did its institutional job and it did not pass. Instead of letting the matter end there, as proscribed by the Constitution, the president implemented it anyway.
The crux here lies in understanding the will of the people. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson aptly remarked that, “The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.”
Remember, Congress (composed of elected representatives) is the Legislative Branch. Under the Constitution, the Executive Branch has no direct power to pass legislation. That power lies solely with Congress. Therefore, if Congress does not create and pass a particular law, it is because the people don’t will it. That is the free expression of their Constitutional power.
When the President says, “I have to act because Congress does not”, he violates the will of the people with a gross overreach of Executive authority.
Part of the current problem lies in the fact that Obama’s actions are allowed to stand because no one fights it. If this continues without a challenge, then future successors in the Executive branch can — and will — point to Obama and say “Obama did it, so now we can too”.
So let’s get this clarified once and for all that the constitutionality of some of Obama’s actions are not correct. When Obama has acted directly contrary to a decision made by the institution of Congress — creating a law after Congress has declined to do so, or changing a law passed by Congress — he threatens the institution of the Legislative Branch itself and the will of the people as a whole. We have the will of the people through Congress, not the majority of the people’s opinion as defined by the latest poll question.
The three branches of government, and their checks and balances, must be meticulously maintained. A lawsuit on behalf of the institution of Congress to the President regarding powers specifically granted and not granted (including the lawmaking powers), is a necessary safeguard for our Constitutional Republic.
by | ARTICLES, CONSTITUTION, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS
As if the recent letter from the Inspectors General to Congress wasn’t enough, there’s a new story about apparent interference from the Feds into an Inspector General report.
The Washington Post reports today about an incident in which an Inspector General for the Commerce department received a “filtered” version that watered down telework abuse incidents in the U.S. Patent Office.
The original report, seen here described “‘fundamental issues’ with the business model of the patent office”, and that oversight was “Oversight of the telework program — and of examiners based at the Alexandria headquarters — was “completely ineffective,”.
The final report was only 16 pages, compared to the original one, which was twice the size.
The report confirmed the fears allayed in the aforementioned letter to Congress: The post reports that “Investigators recommended “unmitigated access” to records when abuse is suspected.
The version supplied to the inspector general, though, explained that managers did not provide full access to computer records that could substantiate allegations of fraud because officials did not want to be seen as “big brother” through electronic surveillance.”
This is in direct violation to the Inspector General Act of 1978, which mandates that each Inspector General is to “have access to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other material available”. And yet, this tactic is growing all-too-common with regard to Inspectors General and their ability to audit the federal government for waste, fraud, and mismanagement.
by | ARTICLES, CONSTITUTION, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, HYPOCRISY, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
Inspectors General (yes, that’s the plural) are considered watchdogs for the government. Their jobs primarily focus on “uncovering waste, fraud, and mismanagement”, which is an important function to keep government programs and agencies in check.
A serious breach of trust is evident, therefore, when 47 of 73 Inspectors General pen a letter to Congress describing “serious limitations on access to records.” That’s 64% of the total watchdogs who express such concerns. You can read the letter here:
The letter takes aim at primarily three agencies: the General at the Peace Corps, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Justice. These Inspectors General “recently faced restrictions on their access to certain records available to their agencies that were needed to perform their oversight work in critical areas.” The restrictions were not limited to just those Inspectors General; hence the overwhelming need to pen a letter to Congress. The Inspectors General described how other
“Inspectors General have, from time to time, faced similar obstacles to their work, whether on a claim that some other law or principle trumped the clear mandate of the IG Act or by the agency’s imposition of unnecessarily burdensome administrative conditions on access. Even when we are ultimately able toresolve these issues with senior agency leadership, the process is often lengthy, delays our work, and diverts time and attention from substantive oversight activities. This plainly is not what Congress intended when it passed the IG Act.
The Inspector General Act of 1978 is clear. The pertinent statute that relates to access is Section §6: Authority of Inspector General; information and assistance from Federal agencies; unreasonable refusal; office space and equipment. It patently states:
(a) In addition to the authority otherwise provided by this Act, each Inspector General, in
carrying out the provisions of this Act, is authorized—
(1) to have access to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations,
or other material available to the applicable establishment which relate to programs and
operations with respect to which that Inspector General has responsibilities under this Act
The full text of the law can be found here:
The letter to Congress was addressed to the Honorable Darrell Issa, the Honorable Thomas R. Carper, The Honorable Elijah Cummings, and The Honorable Tom Coburn. What made the letter particularly notable, however, was its size and scope.
Darrell Issa described, “I’ve never seen a letter like this, and my folks have checked — there has never been a letter even with a dozen IGs complaining. This is the majority of all inspectors general saying not just in the examples they gave, but government wide, they see a pattern that is making them unable to do their job.”
Reading the official website for Inspectors General, one can see they pride themselves on service, “whose primary responsibilities, to the American public, are to detect and prevent fraud, waste, abuse, and violations of law and to promote economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the operations of the Federal Government.”
The fact that the majority of the Inspectors General find themselves unable to perform their duties to audit the federal government is quite troubling, because it is another example of the “most transparent administration” choosing to willfully cloak themselves in secrecy. Stonewalling the very agents — who have a duty to the American people to keep government in check — is another tactical abuse of power.
by | BLOG
USAToday gave a sobering report this week which reaffirmed the inability of our government to be both accurate and transparent.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) audited spending data from 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, by comparing government agency records with those found on USASpending.gov. The GAO reported that only 2-7% of the numbers found on the website is ‘fully consistent with agencies’ records.” and that at least “$619 billion from 302 federal programs” was missing. You can read the GAO report here.
USASpending.gov states at the top of the website that it is “An Official Web Site of the United States Government”. Moreover, its tagline cheerfully announces, “Government spending at your fingertips”. Except when the data is not accurate.
Some of the key discrepancies include:
“• The Department of Health and Human Services failed to report nearly $544 billion, mostly in direct assistance programs like Medicare. The department admitted that it should have reported aggregate numbers of spending on those programs.
• The Department of the Interior did not report spending for 163 of its 265 assistance programs because, the department said, its accounting systems were not compatible with the data formats required by USASpending.gov. The result: $5.3 billion in spending missing from the website.
• The White House itself failed to report any of the programs it’s directly responsible for. At the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is part of the White House, officials said they thought HHS was responsible for reporting their spending.
For more than 22% of federal awards, the spending website literally doesn’t know where the money went. The “place of performance” of federal contracts was most likely to be wrong.
Unfortunately, this poor performance of USASpending.gov is not an anomaly. In 2013, the Sunlight Foundation released its “Clearspending” report that also analyzed data from USASpending.gov in 2011:
“The government’s USAspending.gov allows the public to search how it spends money. However, as Clearspending’s findings show, what the federal government posts online about their grants doesn’t always match up with available bookkeeping records (ie. a federal audit). In conducting the Clearspending analysis, Sunlight measured the grant spending on USASpending.gov across three metrics: consistency, completeness, and timeliness. The $1.55 trillion in misreported funds in 2011 account for 94.5 percent of the total grant spending data reported that year. It was an increase from 2010 but lower than that in 2009″ (emphasis added)
2011 was supposed to be a key year for USASpending.gov. Tom Coburn noted that, ““The administration set a goal of 100 percent accuracy by the end of 2011. Three years later the federal government cannot even break a 10 percent accuracy rate.” Coburn was one of the leaders of the transparency website back in 2007 along with then-Senator Barack Obama. It was one of Sen. Obama’s early achievements.
USASpending.gov has been under the authority of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) since its inception. The GAO reported that the OMB had “ignored repeated warnings from the GAO that reporting standards for executive branch agencies fell short. The OMB said it recognized the errors but never took steps to correct them”.
In May, therefore, Congress passed the DATA Act, which was subsequently signed into law. This takes USASpending.gov from the OMB and hands it over to the Department of the Treasury.
For those expecting the Department of the Treasury to fix the problem of transparency on how the government spends its tax dollars, think again. The Department of the Treasury is the parent agency of the IRS — and we all know how transparent the IRS has been with record-keeping.
by | ARTICLES, FREEDOM
Thomas Sowell is one of the greatest minds of today. His latest essay entitled “Is Thinking Now Obsolete?” is exemplary: I have reposted it in its entirety below:
“Some have said that we are living in a post-industrial era, while others have said that we are living in a post-racial era. But growing evidence suggests that we are living in a post-thinking era.
Many people in Europe and the Western Hemisphere are staging angry protests against Israel’s military action in Gaza. One of the talking points against Israel is that far more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli military attacks than the number of Israeli civilians killed by the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel that started this latest military conflict.
Are these protesters aware that vastly more German civilians were killed by American bombers attacking Nazi Germany during World War II than American civilians killed in the United States by Hitler’s forces?
Talk-show host Geraldo Rivera says that there is no way Israel is winning the battle for world opinion. But Israel is trying to win the battle for survival, while surrounded by enemies. Might that not be more important?
Has any other country, in any other war, been expected to keep the enemy’s civilian casualties no higher than its own civilian casualties? The idea that Israel should do so did not originate among the masses but among the educated intelligentsia.
In an age when scientists are creating artificial intelligence, too many of our educational institutions seem to be creating artificial stupidity.
It is much the same story in our domestic controversies. We have gotten so intimidated by political correctness that our major media outlets dare not call people who immigrate to this country illegally “illegal immigrants.”
Geraldo Rivera has denounced the Drudge Report for carrying news stories that show some of the negative consequences and dangers from allowing vast numbers of youngsters to enter the country illegally and be spread across the country by the Obama administration.
Some of these youngsters are already known to be carrying lice and suffering from disease. Since there have been no thorough medical examinations of most of them, we have no way of knowing whether, or how many, are carrying deadly diseases that will spread to American children when these unexamined young immigrants enter schools across the country.
Are you worried about Ebola breaking out in the U.S.? Sound off in the WND Poll.
The attack against Matt Drudge has been in the classic tradition of demagogues. It turns questions of fact into questions of motive. Geraldo accuses Drudge of trying to start a “civil war.”
Back when masses of immigrants from Europe were entering this country, those with dangerous diseases were turned back from Ellis Island. Nobody thought they had a legal or a moral “right” to be in America or that it was mean or racist not to want our children to catch their diseases.
Even on the less contentious issue of minimum wage laws, there are the same unthinking reactions.
Although liberals are usually gung ho for increasing the minimum wage, there was a sympathetic front-page story in the July 29 San Francisco Chronicle about the plight of a local nonprofit organization that will not be able to serve as many low-income minority youths if it has to pay a higher minimum wage. They are seeking some kind of exemption.
Does it not occur to these people that the very same thing happens when a minimum wage increase applies to profit-based employers? They, too, tend to hire fewer inexperienced young people when there is a minimum wage law.
This is not breaking news. This is what has been happening for generations in the United States and in other countries around the world.
One of the few countries without a minimum wage law is Switzerland, where the unemployment rate has been consistently less than 4 percent for years. Back in 2003, The Economist magazine reported that “Switzerland’s unemployment neared a five-year high of 3.9 percent in February.” The most recent issue shows the Swiss unemployment rate back to a more normal 3.2 percent.
Does anyone think that having minimum wage laws and high youth unemployment is better? In fact, does anyone think at all these days?”
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, BUSINESS, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
When the resident or his advisers talk about inversions these days, they are truly talking about intentional and virulent discrimination of our American companies compared to foreign companies.
In the present environment, U.S. companies are at a severe financial disadvantage compared to foreign companies. Inversions have nothing to do with taxes that the US or foreign companies pay on income they earn within the United States. It all has to do with foreign-earned income, which the United States government lays claim to — and is the only major country to do so. Under U.S. tax law, U.S. companies are forced to pay higher tax rates than other foreign companies on the income they make in foreign countries.
All inversions are, therefore, are a way for U.S. companies to change their HQ from the U.S. to a foreign country, for the sole purpose of allowing themselves the express privilege of being on par with foreign companies and eliminate the severe disadvantage that the U.S. puts on its own businesses!
It is outrageous that the government applies such discrimination. It is outrageous that American companies have to chose to move their headquarters elsewhere simply to survive and compete globally, because they are taxed on their profits in two jurisdictions — both domestic and foreign.
If the government truly abhors the thought of American companies moving their incorporation abroad, then they should drop this tax policy immediately. Make no mistake — every politician who favors this recent, artificial attack on “unpatriotic inversions” shows they are hostile and antagonistic to American companies as well.
For more on what inversions actually are, you can read this earlier article
