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In an article by Terrence Jeffrey:
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President Obama used the first-person singular pronoun "I" 34 times on Monday when he announced he was nationalizing General Motors. He used “Congress” once and “law” not at all. As Obama described it, the government takeover of General Motors was Obama’s decision made for Obama’s reasons. |
What law now gives Obama authority to buy General Motors? The White House says, when pressed, it is the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But that legislation was written specifically to allow the Treasury Department to purchase assets from “financial institutions.” It says nothing about buying auto companies. And where does the Constitution say the government can take ownership of an auto company, let alone at the individual initiative of a president who cannot point to a duly enacted law that clearly expresses the deliberated will of the people that he should have that power. [I add that a 39 yr. old who admits that he knows NOTHING about automobiles has been put in charge - by President Obama.]
Capturing the news this week is the fact that President Obama has fired AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Top executives at the corporation which runs Americorps were unhappy with his investigation into the misuse of AmeriCorps funds by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, California and a prominent supporter of President Obama.
President Obama’s options here are circumscribed by the Inspector-Generals Reform Act of 2007, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama. The IGs are appointed by presidents but do not serve at the Chief Executive’s pleasure as do other presidential appointees. The AmeriCorps case illustrates why IG independence must be maintained. Walpin found that Johnson used about $850,000 of AmeriCorps funds for personal and political benefit. Johnson was not charged and the half of the grant money that was supposed to be returned under an agreement with the government has not been received. The key issue now is whether Congress will permit this latest illustration of what
The Examiner’s Michael Barone calls Obama’s “gangster government". News comes today that there are also similar problems regarding the NYCU....and the ways in which government have been put to use at that institution.
Last week President Obama appointed yet another “czar” with massive government power, answering only to him. Even before this latest appointment, the top-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Robert Byrd, wrote President Obama a letter saying that these czars are unconstitutional. President Obama’s “czar strategy” is an unprecedented power grab centralizing authority in the White House, outside congressional oversight and in violation of the Constitution, said Byrd.
He criticized the president’s strategy of creating czars to manage important areas of national policy, saying that these appointments violate both the constitutional system of checks and balances and the constitutional separation of powers, and is a clear attempt to evade congressional oversight. [
Didn’t this White House promise unprecedented transparency?]The man behind the plan to bulldoze a wide area of depressed Flint, Michigan, in order to bring it back to some state of abundance, is Dan Kildee, the treasurer of Genesee County, Michigan. President Obama absorbed his vision and now believes that it would be a good thing for the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT to choose parts of 50 failing cities which he, or his next Czar, perhaps, would deem ripe for bulldozing. These cities include Detroit and Philadelphia. Big Brother is expanding his grasp of America...