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SUBJECT: This is interesting and makes you wonder who is really in charge...deligation
Submitted by
Arby from TEXAS on
is one thing but this is ridiculous
Czarred And Feathered
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 01, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Government: It's been suggested that the White House has more czars than the Russian Romanov dynasty. Has the administration forgotten that we have a government of elected officials, not of imperial appointments?
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Czars, or functionaries with the task of ensuring White House commands are followed, have been part of the U.S. government for decades. It's unclear, though, how many are in this administration, as it is not an official title. PolitiFact.com from the St. Petersburg Times believes the count has swelled to as many as 28 under President Obama.
Many of these czars, most of whom are useless or counterproductive, are sitting in newly created positions. They range from Kenneth Feinberg, the pay czar who is the special master on executive compensation, to Earl Devaney, who, as the stimulus accountability czar, will chair the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board. Others among the 28 include:
• Green jobs czar. This post is held by Van Jones. Officially he is Obama's special adviser for enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Jones was a founder and leader of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. The group, now disbanded, had Marxist, Leninist and Maoist influences.
Jones admitted that he became a communist and radical after the officers accused of using excessive force on Rodney King were acquitted. He's supposedly a reformed anti-capitalist, but not everyone is convinced.
• TARP czar. Herb Allison is assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial stability. There's nothing alarming in his background, but there should be concerns about the position he's filling.
• Great Lakes czar. Cameron Davis is a special adviser overseeing the EPA's Great Lakes restoration plan. He's president of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes conservation group.
• Science czar. John Holdren is an ideologue who frets over global warming (junk science) and is a pessimist (in 1980 he thought the world was running out of natural resources) and misanthrope (he's favored population control).
• Climate czar. Before Todd Stern was appointed, he was a senior fellow at the left-wing Center for American Progress. His empty rhetoric on global warming can hardly be distinguished from that of Al Gore.
• Car czar. Ed Montgomery, a University of Maryland dean, economist and a Labor Department deputy secretary in the Clinton administration, is director of recovery for auto communities and workers. He's no raving leftist, but he is discharging a duty the government should never have.
• Guantanamo closure czar. Danny Fried has the duty of overseeing the closure of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The longtime diplomat has to navigate the fulfillment of Obama's promise to shut down Gitmo, a promise that helped get Obama elected but was always foolish.
• Faith-based czar. Dare we say that Joshua DuBois, director of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is a community organizer? The 26-year-old pastor worked for Democratic Congressmen Rush Holt of New Jersey and Charles Rangel of New York.
• Urban affairs Czar. The White House has a director of urban affairs — Adolfo Carrion Jr. — but no czar for rural affairs. What does that say about how this administration values country folks?
• Regulatory czar. Obama wants to fill this post with Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor who has suggested "that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives," against people in our civil court system. Sunstein would likely do a fine job of regulating the country into paralysis.
The growth of a czarist regime is not healthy in a representative republic. When the executive branch isn't checked by the Supreme Court, which shouldn't let the president make fiat law, and Congress, which constitutionally confirms or denies a president's nominees for "public ministers," a risky imbalance of power arises.
Someone who considers himself a defender of the Constitution — say Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who believes presidents intentionally try to bypass Congress by naming czars — should challenge the administration in court.
The White House shouldn't be center of a dynasty.
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Almost an Angel (64.127.45.78) from WEST VIRGINIA says Arby, we have no control over our elected officials.
The oaths of office they swear to mean no more than a hum-drum activity they must endure before beginning their wholesale raping of America and it's citizens. Their ignoring of our constitution should be proof positive of this.
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PJzaBruin #10908 from CALIFORNIA says I just wonder how many of those positions are new, Arby...
and how many have carried over from prior administrations.
Not that this would make it RIGHT, but...
Director of Urban Affairs? That sounds like one I've heard of for quite some time.
"director of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships" Did that replace some director of faith based partnerships from the Bush administration?
The assistant secretary of the Treasury and the Great Lakes restoration guy also sound vaguely familiar.
So yes, I agree that the appointment of all these folks who have no apparent answerability to the electorate is a problem. But I wonder about IBD trying to pin the whole problem on Obama.
This would be a good target for change.
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Arby from TEXAS says PJ...Since none of Bush's czars are still in their positions...
I would say that all of them are new for the Obama Administration.
The point is not to criticize Obama but to call attention to the practice of appointing untitled Cabinet Members without having to get Congressional approval..
BTW, Bush didn't start the practice. Biden recommended the Drug Czar to Reagan and coined the name "Czar"... position ... Clinton and Bush expanded the practice but so far Obama is the Champ....As a Constitutional Law Professor Obama you would think that he would shun the practice.
It is just another way for Administration's to nibble away at the Constitution
The problem is best stated by a UofH History Major:
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states the president “may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices,” thus giving our president a constitutional right to his cabinet.
Throughout our country’s history, notable people who were approved by the legislative branch before they started the job have held these positions.
This confirmation is part of our checks and balances system and is essential to maintain a government in which power cannot be centralized by any single entity or individual.
The executive branch has found a way to circumvent this check on the president’s power by creating “czar” positions.
The first czar in the U.S. government, Carlton Turner, appeared in 1982 during the Reagan administration. Vice President Joe Biden coined the term “drug czar” during a 1982 interview with a United Press International reporter. Since then, every president has either maintained or increased the number of czars in the U.S. government.
The man who invented the term czar, in regard to American politics, is now an accomplice to an unprecedented centralization of political power in the U.S. via the same system he named.
What is most troublesome is the rate at which President Obama has increased the number of these unconstitutional czars in his current administration.
A senior member of the Senate wrote, “the rapid and easy accumulation of power by White House staff can threaten the constitutional system of checks and balances.” Before this is dismissed as right-wing fear mongering, it must be pointed out that a Democrat, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., wrote this.
Byrd's statement is not an exaggeration. The latest count dictates anywhere between 18 to 21 czars in the Obama administration, all of whom answer solely to the President and none of whom were confirmed by the legislative branch.
Byrd’s concerns appear to be grounded because no other administration in our history has appointed czars at Obama’s rate.
Without oversight, the quality of these appointments can be questioned. Herbert M. Allison is the Troubled Asset Relief Program czar. Allison’s last job was Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae. Michael Brown of former President George W. Bush’s Federal Emergency Management Agency must not have been available.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, conservatives were roundly criticized when they characterized Obama as a power-hungry demagogue. If nothing else, our 44th president’s zeal for avoiding congressional oversight has validated those claims.
Timothy Mathis is a history junior and may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com
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PJzaBruin #10908 from CALIFORNIA says But IBD's point WAS to criticize Obama for it, Arby...
and I agree with Byrd, that this centralization of power flies in the very face of our Constitution. It does now, with Obama as President, and it did previously, with Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, or WHOEVER the President was.
Yes, the political appointees need to be answerable to the public in some manner, and confirmation by the legislature is probably the best way to address that.
Remember all the uproar when Democrats wanted to just know the membership of Bush's committee on energy policy? And how Bush and Cheney fought all the way through the courts against releasing that information?
What was the Republican justification for that? How did IBD feel about that?
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Arby from TEXAS says I really can't say what the justification was since....
I'm not a Republican.
I don't really care what IBD's motive was in publishing the article...I'm more interested in the content and it's veracity as opposed to the party affiliation of the author.
Senator Byrd is criticizing the Administration as well for the practice and he is a ranking Democrat...I think that he speaks the truth as well...he is, in my opinion, the only Congressman who really cares what the Constitution says.
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Arby from TEXAS says Actually PJ... it is good that someone criticizes the Administration when it ...
starts leading us down the garden path...surely you aren't saying that is is wrong to criticize the Government.
I can probably find a couple of hundred things to criticize the Administrations for, going back to FDR right up through the present...as well as finding hundreds of things to praise them for.
I find party wrangling to be very tiresome and totally counter productive
Criticizing the Government is a very, very large part of our form of Democracy.
As I have said before Ben Franklin's definition of Democracy and Liberty pretty much says it all.
"Democracy is two Wolves and a Lamb discussing, what is for dinner. Liberty, is a well armed Lamb contesting the vote."
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PJzaBruin #10908 from CALIFORNIA says Arby, every administration deserves -- and NEEDS -- its critics
this one no less than the ones that preceded it.
Still, you say "I find party wrangling to be very tiresome and totally counter productive." It is my contention -- backed up by numerous IBD editorials to prove it -- that party wrangling is EXACTLY what IBD engages in.
I stand with Theodore Roosevelt on this, Arby. Patriotism is NOT standing with the President because he is President. (Nor is it standing against him because he is of the other political party!) Patriotism is standing with the country and the ideals upon which it was founded. Stand with the President as much as he stands with those ideals.
Sadly, it has meant standing with the President only in fits and spurts for my 33 years of adulthood.
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Arby from TEXAS says PJ.... I can't argue with you here...From what I have seen so far....
we are in for a long hard ride. Around and around she goes and where she stops nobody knows.....
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mac (Doyle McEwen) (71.139.191.155) from CALIFORNIA says PJ, you and Arby
Have both nailed the situation..I was born during the FDR era and have seen and read about every President since..None have been perfect by any stretch, although all have accomplished some good (even though in some cases that may be most difficult to recognize and may not be recognized at all until some future date)..They also have had their short comings, sometimes those are what ends up defining their term(s) in office..In some cases their weaknesses have proven over time not to be so weak and their strengths often have proven to be less so..Most are judged by the right now, providing few if any real results to base a judgement on..All we can do is try and make our judgements according to how we see events or policies shaping up..If one looks hard enough, they can probably find fault with just about anything..
mac
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