AmeriKKKa under our Fascist-in-Chimp
America's relentless march toward dictatorship continues apace, at least according to the left-wing blogosphere. They've been making much of this piece in the New York Times, describing Bush's executive order involving regulatory oversight.
President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.
Sounds ominous, right? It did to me too, until I actually read the entire article.
Typically, agencies issue regulations under authority granted to them in laws enacted by Congress. In many cases, the statute does not say precisely what agencies should do, giving them considerable latitude in interpreting the law and developing regulations.The directive issued by Mr. Bush says that, in deciding whether to issue regulations, federal agencies must identify “the specific market failure” or problem that justifies government intervention.
That sounds quite a bit different from the first paragraph, doesn't it?
This is what always bugged me. Somewhere along the line, Congress delegated (abdicated) its Constitutional role as the sole author of federal law. Consequently, we have completely unelected career bureaucrats crafting de facto legislation outside of Constitutional authority. (If you don't think a "regulation" is a law, then try breaking one.) I've never been okay with that.
The ideal solution would be for Congress to reclaim its monopoly on legislative powers. Since that's not happening, however, I'd prefer to have them overseen by political appointees who are at least somewhat accountable to the electoral process than by career bureaucrats.
Your mileage may vary, of course, and while I understand that many people will be unhappy with this move, the cries of "dictatorship!" and calls for impeachment seem largely misplaced. At their core, they are lacking in substance, and upon inspection boil down to little more than "we don't like Bush."
Comments
"At their core, they are lacking in substance"
Hmm... and I thought that deliberately lying to start a war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths was enough to impeach anyone...
Posted by: Blue Wind | January 30, 2007 05:18 PM
Well ... not quite.
Bush, as usual, is trying to grab illegal powers by taking over the regulatory powers illegally assigned to unconstitutional entities like the FCC, FDA, etc., which do in fact seem to simply create laws out of their opinions.
This isn't as bad as Bush simply committing treason by voilating the constitution directly to create medieval dungeons and directing American intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without oversight of any kind, but yeah, it still falls under the general objective of grabbing powers far beyond the scope of the Executive branch.
The first passage is completely correct.
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | January 30, 2007 05:21 PM
"The directive issued by Mr. Bush says that, in deciding whether to issue regulations, federal agencies must identify “the specific market failure” or problem that justifies government intervention." (NY Times)
That's something that should've been done long ago, like the Line Item Veto, the Executive Branch should have the LIV and demanding that Civil Servants justify any pending changes in department regulations they seek to make, just makes common sense.
P.S. What happened to that case of "abuse of the Patriot Act?"
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals just reinstated the most serious charge against Abdullah al-Mujahir (a/k/a Jose Padilla).
Wrong before and still wrong Barely.
Posted by: JMK | January 30, 2007 07:41 PM
Well JMK, first of all, much of the Patriot Act itself is illegal and unconstitutional. Any use of those portions of the Patriot Act is abusive, and treasonous.
Of course, the abuses are endless anyway:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/23/AR2005102301352.html
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | January 31, 2007 12:22 PM
Oh, and that makes you WRONG for about the 100th time in a row, but keep lying just the way daddy Rush Hannity O'Reilly taught you, Goebbels.
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | January 31, 2007 12:24 PM
“The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents released in 2005...
“...The FBI general counsel's office oversees investigations of alleged misconduct in counterintelligence probes, deciding whether the violation is serious enough to be reported to the oversight board and to personnel departments within Justice and the FBI. The senior FBI official said those cases not referred to the oversight board generally involve missed deadlines of 30 days or fewer with no potential infringement of the civil rights of U.S. persons, who are defined as either citizens or legal U.S. resident aliens.” (from WaPo article you referenced)
No part of the Patriot Act has been ruled Unconstitutional.
Until a federal court rules so, it is not.
The above matter was evaluated back in late 2005.
As the first sentence above makes clear that the FBI surveilled “SOME U.S. RESIDENTS,” NOT “citizens nor legal U.S. resident aliens.”
You may be unaware of this, but U.S. residents who are not citizens or legal residents are NOT accorded all the Constitutional rights that U.S. citizens are.
That’s why the then INS was able to go and round-up over 4,000 Arab/Muslim illegal aliens in the wake of 9/11/01.
That “illegal alien round-up” was and remains completely Constitutional.
Oh and the Patriot Act will not be overturned.
Could you imagine?
The Patriot Act and the NSA program are curtailed and a second domestic attack occurs here, sometime after – the Democrats would be slimed for the next twenty-five years...or more!
And that’s not a good thing. It would almost certainly assure Republican rule, deserved or not, for a long time to come and no Party deals with that kind of advantage, the Dems didn’t through the early nineties and the Republicans didn’t over the last few years.
Posted by: JMK | January 31, 2007 02:02 PM
LOL! The public may have a short memory, but it isn't THAT short.
Repugs, particularly "convervatives" have lost credibility on their core issues. For six years they chose to pluder, rape, and pillage the middle class while giving welfare to the wealthy. It won't be forgotten anytime soon.
Bush lied, and then failed, which is the story of his life. He won't leave Iraq until their oil contracts are safely in the hands of his buddies. Actually, we will need soldiers there for a very long time to protect the puppet Iraqi government from the robbed and abused Iraqi people.
Bush will ultimately fail at even this scheme, just like the Repugs failed to follow through on their "conservative" principles for six long years of absolute power.
Posted by: Bailey Hankins | January 31, 2007 04:19 PM
My view is that I don't trust the White House to do a better job than Congress or EPA/OSHA/etc. in crafting better or more fair regulations.
They will just be outrageous and overreaching in a different way.
Posted by: CRB | January 31, 2007 04:27 PM