Waiving Freedom
by Thomas Sowell
Recently by Thomas Sowell: Random Thoughts
Among the objections to ObamaCare, one that has not gotten as much attention as it should is the president's power to waive the law for any company, union or other enterprise he chooses.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provides for "equal protection of the laws" for all Americans. To have a law that can cost an organization millions of dollars a year either apply or not apply, depending on the whim or political interest of the President of the United States, is to make a mockery of the rule of law.
How secure is any freedom when there is this kind of arbitrary power in the hands of one man?
What does your right of freedom of speech mean if saying something that irritates the Obama administration means that you or your business has to pay huge amounts of money and get hit with all sorts of red tape under ObamaCare that your competitor is exempted from, because your competitor either kept quiet or praised the Obama administration or donated to its reelection campaign?
Arbitrary ObamaCare waivers are bad enough by themselves. They are truly ominous as part of a more general practice of this administration to create arbitrary powers that permit them to walk roughshod over the basic rights of the American people.
The checks and balances of the Constitution have been evaded time and time again by the Obama administration, undermining the fundamental right of the people to determine the laws that govern them, through their elected representatives.
You do not have a self-governing people when huge laws are passed too fast for the public to even know what is in them.
You do not have a self-governing people when "czars" are created by Executive Orders, so that individuals wielding vast powers equal to, or greater than, the powers of Cabinet members do not have to be vetted and confirmed by the people's elected representatives in the Senate, as Cabinet members must be.
You do not have a self-governing people when decisions to take military action are referred to the United Nations and the Arab League, but not to the Congress of the United States, elected by the American people, whose blood and treasure are squandered.
You do not have a self-governing people when a so-called "consumer protection" agency is created to be financed by the unelected officials of the Federal Reserve System, which can create its own money out of thin air, instead of being financed by appropriations voted by elected members of Congress who have to justify their priorities and trade-offs to the taxpaying public.
You do not have a self-governing people when laws passed by the Congress, signed by previous Presidents, and approved by the federal courts, can have the current President waive whatever sections he does not like, and refuse to enforce those sections, despite his oath to see that the laws are faithfully executed.
Barack Obama, for example, has refused to carry out sections of the immigration laws that he does not like, unilaterally creating de facto amnesty for those illegal immigrants he has chosen to be exempt from the law. The issue is not – repeat, NOT – the wisdom or justice of this President's immigration policy, but the seizing of arbitrary powers not granted to any President by the Constitution of the United States.
You do not have a self-governing people if President Obama succeeds in having international treaties under United Nations auspices govern the way Americans live their lives, whether with gun control laws or other laws.
Obama's "citizen of the world" mindset was revealed back in 2008, when he said "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that every other country is going to say okay."
The desire to circumvent the will of the American people was revealed even more ominously when Barack Obama said to Russian President Medvedev – when he thought the microphone was off – that, after he is reelected and need never face the voters again, he can be more "flexible" with the Russians about missile defense.
There are other signs of Obama's contempt for American Constitutional democracy, but these should be more than enough. Dare we risk how far he will go when he never has to face the voters again, and can appoint Supreme Court justices who can rubber stamp his power grabs? Will this still be America in 2016?
November 9, 2012
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His Web site is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page.
Replies
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2012 9:53 AM
To: jrolls
I’LL TELL YOU WHAT IT MEANS
By: Jim R. Schwiesow,
Today I picked up the newspaper and was struck by the following title lead-in to an article in regard to the election results; it said:
“HALF OF IOWA VOTERS OVER SIXTY-FIVE CAST THEIR BALLOTS FOR OBAMA”
It means that the liberal progressives have succeeded with their kindergarten thru college socialist/progressive indoctrination endeavors. It means that we, the people were too stupidly caught up in our mundane lives to push back to such an inimical neo communist stratagem. It was a contrivance that was very useful to the socialists and the death knell for a once great Democratic Republic.
It meant that a corrupted and ignorant youth with ultra pliable minds grew into corrupted adults. It means that now, in this nation, the takers are on par and dead even with the givers. It means the absolute end to this nation; it is just a matter of a short amount of time. This nation is dead, it just refuses to fall over and be buried as it should be given that it is no longer useful to any righteous intent or purpose.
Do I care? You’re damn tootin’ I do. I served in the American Military and was greatly proud to be able to do so, such is not the case anymore if I were young enough to be asked, and “I would tell whoever asked to stick it.”
A ROTTEN AND CORRUPT PEOPLE MEANS A ROTTEN AND CORRUPT NATION
It means that legalized first degree murder and infanticide can rage in the absence of any ethics or morals. It means that taxation without representation in this nation is the norm, and that the people no longer rule, but are subject to a totalitarian government. It means that vice and moral weakness has supplanted that which is good, moral, worthy, innocent, and just.
It means that our ass is grass and a progressive government is the lawn mower, when they pass over you they will sing, “so long suckers…we won, you lost.”
And that dear reader is what it means, take refuge in the Lord; He is your only escape from this demonically structured nation.
Maybe Voters Didn’t Know Their Lives Really Did Depend On The Outcome
Many have called the 2012 election the most important in their lifetime. But in citing the economy,unemployment,foreign affairs,gas prices,healthcare,and the burgeoning corruption of the American judiciary,political pundits may have universally ignored the real threat to the American public and the reason it was imperative to remove the Obama Regime from power.
It happened back in March. Republican representative Tom Graves of Georgia asked FBI Director Robert Mueller whether the Administration’s “…policy of extra-judicial killings of American citizens abroad could also apply in the United States.” Incredibly,Mueller responded “I have to go back. Uh,I’m not certain whether that was addressed or not.”
Graves then made it a bit easier,asking whether “…from a historical perspective the federal government has the ability to kill a United States citizen on United States soil,or just overseas.” “I’m going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice,said Mueller.”
What was this all about?
On New Year’s Eve,Barack Hussein Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In language passed overwhelmingly by Congress,the Act provides the president the immutable power to,on his own authority,order the death of anyone he considers an “enemy combatant” (that is,a terror threat to the United States.) It is a command to kill that cannot be questioned or overridden.
Obama alone has the power to assign guilt and mete out the punishment of death. The Constitutional rights of Due Process no longer exist. And as Director Mueller made so patently clear,even the FBI doesn’t know if this death sentence may apply to American citizens both abroad and on US soil.
Language permitting the murder of American citizens by the federal government was added to the NDAA in 2010. There were few complaints either in the House or the Senate as politicians feared accusations of being soft on terrorism far more than they regretted their outright assassination of the Constitution. And now,300 million people face the possibility of being targeted for death by their own government.
Would voters have behaved differently had they known their lives might depend on the outcome? Probably not. Those living on government (i.e. taxpayer) largesse would hardly have cared. Empty-headed females responsible for putting every liberal from Carter to Obama in the White House would have undoubtedly voted in exactly the same way as well,unable as they are to differentiate between stark reality and the fantasy world of Oprah Winfrey.
And would the election of Mitt Romney have changed anything? No. New England liberals are hardly known for their spirited commitment to Constitutional rights. After all,Mitt was the proud engineer of an “assault weapons” ban in Massachusetts,wasn’t he?!
For nearly 30 years,presidential elections have featured everything but a conservative candidate. As a result,more and more Americans have stayed home on Election Day,allowing liberal Republicans and Marxist Democrats to wreak havoc on their nation and their Constitution.
Sooner or later,the lives of citizens WILL be forfeit to a corrupt political class that no longer recognizes or cares about the constitutional rights of their constituents. What’s that about blood watering the tree of liberty? Could be that’s the only thing that will awaken the American public to the loss of their nation.
Photo credit:watchingfrogsboil (Creative Commons)
Video message: TSA Opt-out & film campaign
By Douglas J. Hagmann
9 November 2012: Most people with even the slightest grasp of history know that Hitler exterminated over 11 million people during his tyrannical reign. Over half of the dead were Jews, while the others included Christians, Christian leaders, homosexuals, and those considered to be political dissidents viewed as a threat to his agenda of tyranny and the implementation of his “New World Order.”
Although no one of reasonable sensibilities question the staggering number of people exterminated, few appear to comprehend the methods in which this wholesale extermination was accomplished. After all, just how does a government manage to kill over 11 million people with little resistance, considering that less than 10 percent of Germany’s population actually “worked or campaigned to bring about Hitler’s change?” What were the other 90% doing?
The answers can quickly be found in a short, 96-page book titled How Do You Kill 11 Million People? Why the Truth Matters More Than You Think written by Andy Andrews. For some, it will serve as a refresher for the tactics of the era. For others, it should serve as a loud, clamoring alarm alerting the citizens of America to the present events taking place right before our eyes. Although I am not a book reviewer nor do I have any stake in the book, I do have a stake in my own freedom and that of my family. For this reason, I believe this is required reading for every American who claims to care about the state of affairs in America today.
A pertinent warning
Sadly, it is because so many people have only a fleeting and tenuous understanding of history that they fail to see the historical context of such warnings and the time in which we live. Perhaps the events of this past week will serve to wake up some, while the slumbering majority, entranced by the latest incarnations of their personal entertainment devices, will undoubtedly double down in their mocking of the message and marginalization of the messengers. Most will see the issue as a political one, when it is actually bigger than political party labels and the fictitious right-left paradigm.
Getting back to the point of my message, the mechanisms that served the Nazis well in the 1930s and 1940s have already been implemented and are currently being refined in the United States. The singular agenda of all branches of government, whose members number far less than the population of our vast country they are supposed to serve, has met with little resistance as they push forward their agenda. Shades of Germany in the 30s and 40s.
But don’t look to the mainstream talking heads on the radio and television airwaves to step out of their comfort zones or put down their carefully worded scripts to point this out. Even in the wake of an election that further galvanized the political and social divide, they will continue to distract the masses with political theater as we are being conditioned and controlled. Instead of falling into political lockstep that will ultimately lead to our bondage, I call on everyone to wake up and resist this incremental rending of our liberties – while we still can. While we still have a Constitution that remains somewhat intact, we can exercise our God-given rights as Americans at a specific mechanism that has an extremely soft legal underbelly and is vulnerable to unified resistance: the TSA.
Unite & take a stand while we still can
In less than two weeks, airports, bus stations and highways across the country will be filled with holiday travelers during one of the busiest travel periods of the year. It is here that we will come face to face with the most visible components of a tyrannical, out of control government: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Despite its $8 billion per year price tag to the American taxpayers, the TSA has never once stopped a terrorist or terrorist plot. TSA agents are not commissioned law enforcement officers nor have they undergone any law enforcement training. Yet, they have been given the ability to strip away the rights from every non-thinking American – because we have allowed them.
Since becoming part of the Department of Homeland Security on March 25, 2003, the overreach by the TSA has significantly increased. From nonsensical security theater to a program of aggravated assault against every American, we have mindlessly allowed a motley crew of intellectually hobbled and marginally coherent federal employees to herd us, like cattle, into backscatter body scanners that have been linked to an increased risk of cancer, and millimeter wave body scanners that are potentially damaging to our DNA. Like cattle, a mind-numbed American populace dutifully complies in this process of control and conditioning that has nothing to do with security.
Conditioning & Control
We are being conditioned to accept, as normal, a humiliating and degrading process that is completely un-Constitutional. Everyone must see it for exactly what it is – an increasingly threatening psychological operation to enforce compliance to an out-of-control government. Remember the early years of the Nazi regime; they used criminals and deviants to control the Jews, Christians and other targets of their oppression. Today, among the TSA employment rolls are people with criminal histories and dubious pasts. Anyone denying this would do well to research the growing list of complaints against TSA employees, from theft to outright physical abuse.
TSA Opt-Out & film week
To anyone who understands our current point in history and how perilously close we are to losing all of our freedoms, I ask that you join with us in exercising your rights by signing on to the TSA Opt-out & Film campaign, sponsored by InfoWars (Details here).
We are fully behind this initiative and urge everyone to join us in this campaign to reclaim and preserve our rights as American citizens. But, we must do so together, in unity and in dignity, for the noble purpose of protecting ourselves and our families from this indignity and injustice.
Please watch our video message, and pass it along. Click HERE for video message.
Know that when challenged, they will show their weakness. They will back down, but only if we do it en masse.
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Related: Where are the men of America?
We will not submit, we will not comply
His first term record might make some despots blush. His economic policies are weapons of mass destruction affecting ordinary people. He's got further mass immiseration in mind for term two. He also plans more war on humanity globally.
Throughout his political career, Obama's been a stealth Republican. His voting record proves it."
Privileged elites benefitted enormously on his watch. Others are enduring protracted hard times. Bipartisan complicity calls for making things worse, not better. Huge budget cuts loom. Social programs will be hit hardest.
America's compromised progressive left hailed Obama's victory. Condemnation should have been headlined instead. The magazine the Nation lost its soul long ago.
Throughout their history, it pretended to have one. It scorns truth. It turns reality on its head. It ducks responsible reporting on issues mattering most.
On November 7, it headlined, “A Progressive Surge,” saying:
“While President Obama’s re-election inspires varying degrees of hope among progressives, it has evoked one common sentiment: relief. Democracy may not be reborn, but a living symbol of plutocracy was defeated by the voters on November 6.”
It's hard believing so-called progressive editors would publish outrageous rubbish this offensive. Obama matches Romney's anti-populist agenda blow for blow.
They agree most on everything benefitting corporate favorites and rich elites at the expense of all others. They scorn social America. They don't give a damn about people’s needs. Pretending otherwise is unprincipled, reprehensible, and stupid.
Nonetheless, Nation editors celebrated “exhilarating wins” for Obama and likeminded Democrats. Hail to the party of the rich. It replicates the other rich man's party. America's duopoly calls progressivism a four-letter word.
“We are glad the 1 percent (was) rebuffed at the polls,” said Nation editors… “We are glad that progressive politics… made the difference.”
Perhaps they meant Venezuela's election instead. In October, people power defeated privilege.
Letting Obama lead America's Money Party for another four years assures worse for ordinary people than in term one. It's baked in the cake.
Too bad Nation readers weren't told the truth. Nor regular New York Times adherents. On November 7, its editorial headlined “An Invigorated Second Term,” saying:
“Without question, (Obama) intends to build on and improve the significant accomplishments of the last four years… to keep the economy growing.”
His first term record might make some despots blush. His economic policies are weapons of mass destruction affecting ordinary people. He's got further mass immiseration in mind for term two. He also plans more war on humanity globally.
The editors of Times want his mandate used to "broaden his agenda." How much more scorched earth hell can people stand? They'll shortly find out straightaway.
Top domestic policy is massive social benefit cuts. Newspeak terminology substituted "grand bargain" for "austerity."
"Fiscal cliff" language refers to expiring yearend tax breaks and unemployment benefits, as well as looming $1.2 trillion in largely discretionary sequestered cuts to address them.
The 2011 Budget Control Act mandates them. Automatic reductions will affect vital social programs. Medicare, Medicaid, public pensions, food stamps, and other important ones will be hit hard.
The sequestered $1.2 trillion is for starters. Around $4 trillion over the next decade was agreed on. At issue isn't deficit cutting. Key is protecting corporate handouts and Bush-era tax cuts, as well as expanding them for business and upper-bracket earners.
Bush-era tax cuts cost America at least $3.5 trillion in vital revenue. Important domestic needs were sacrificed. If maintained or increased for 10 more years, another $3.5 trillion or more will be lost.
At the same, deficits will rise. Conservative projections show it. More realistic ones reveal ominous numbers.
America's duopoly already agreed on cuts and increases in principle. When publicly announced, newspeak duplicity will conceal the severity of what's coming. Initial cuts are expected on January 1 or shortly thereafter.
Neither party worries about deficits or debt. Saying so is duplicitous deception.
Working Americans and seniors will bear the burden. Increased corporate and upper-bracket earner benefits are planned. Cuts affecting ordinary people were agreed on months ago. Timing remains to be decided.
It's not about amounts, who pays, and who benefits. Key also is assuring Bush-era cuts are preserved and sweetened.
From now through yearend, four major issues must be resolved:
(1) Extending the 2% payroll tax deduction another year. In fact, it's a stealth drain of hundreds of billions of dollars from Social Security's Trust Fund reserves.
Revenue already lost irreparably weakened its ability to pay future benefits. Lose more and the entire program may be lost. Privatization assures it.
(2) Extending expiring unemployment benefits for millions of laid-off workers.
(3) Another one-year Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) fix.
(4) Delaying the 29% cut in doctors’ fees for serving Medicare patients.
Expect Republicans to drive a hard bargain like they always do. Democrats pretend they care. In fact, they've already sold out. Obama's reelection hinged on it.
He talks tough, then caves at the 11th hour. He did repeatedly throughout his first term. Both parties are in lockstep on defending privilege.
Peoples’ needs don't matter. It's part of a longstanding plan to third worldize America. Safety net protection is someone else's problem.
On November 6, Bill Black discussed what's coming. His article headlined "Wall Street Urges Obama to Commit the Great Betrayal," saying:
Top domestic policy is eroding safety net protections en route to eliminating them altogether.
"Only a Democrat can make it politically safe for Republicans who hate the safety net to unravel it (a process that would occur over a number of years) by legitimizing the claim that (it) must be cut."
Obama was hand-picked to do it. "Wall Street's unholy grail (is) privatizing Social Security."
Doing so will let financial predators "charge tens of billions of dollars in fees annually and the banks that administered the privatized program would be systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) because the consequences of allowing bank failures to cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their retirement savings would require either that all such deposits be federally insured or that the failing banks be bailed out by the federal government."
"Privatization, therefore, is a convenient fiction. The banks’ profits will be privatized. Any catastrophic losses will be borne by the public."
The Big Lie claims no acceptable alternative exists. Safety net cuts must be imposed. Obama's sharpened knife is a dagger at the heart of what matters most to ordinary people. Their welfare, security and futures are up for grabs. They're being destroyed in plain sight.
Force-fed austerity assures the worst of hard times. It's responsible for what Black calls "the four horsemen of the economic apocalypse:" economic decline, job cuts and greater unemployment, increased deficits and debt, and the destruction of safety net protections.
Combined assures third world status. Black said Obama prioritizes it. We're forewarned but does it matter? Few Americans understand what's coming.
Grand bargain betrayal is planned. It's come in stages like boiling a frog. It doesn't know it's dinner until too late.
Social America is on the chopping block for elimination. It's been happening incrementally for decades. Democrats are in league with Republicans. Their agenda assures intolerable pain and suffering for ordinary people.
Standard & Poor's and other rating agencies endorse it. They're corporate tools. They mostly represent Wall Street and other financial interests. S&P's marching orders called for downgrading US credit to AA+. It did so in August 2011, saying:
"The markets have spoken and anyone who continues to insist that entitlements or taxes are off the table is condemning the US to second rate economic status and a permanent downgrade."
"America’s credit rating is at a crossroads. We can choose to heed this message by finishing the deficit reduction job with a balanced plan that is composed mainly of entitlement cuts, closing tax loopholes and defense cuts, or we can squabble while our global standing continues to sink."
S&P’s targeted safety net protections. Including defense and tax loopholes reflected pro forma deception. Whatever benefits America's imperium, Wall Street, other corporate favorites, and super-rich elites is sacrosanct and untouchable.
Expect fast and loose deception to conceal it. Obama's an old hand at it. He's a con man. He's Wall Street's man. They chose him and expect four more years of subservience. He won't disappoint.
Forewarned is forearmed. "(W)e do not need to unravel the safety net and doing so would harm our nation," said Black. Ideologues are wrong about what's best for America.
Throughout his political career, Obama's been a stealth Republican. His voting record proves it. Reelecting him serves elitist interests well. They know what they want and got it.
SL/HJL