Daily Archives: 20 January 2014

A Lawless Law

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President Barack Obama is at it again.  Now he’s unilaterally, without legal authority, delaying another aspect of Obamacare.  He’s having his IRS—his Un-American Activities Committee (at least the members of HUAC were elected by us)—not enforce through tax collections a provision that prohibits employers from providing better health benefits to top executives than to other employees.  His excuse is that, four years after Obamacare was enacted, the IRS hasn’t bothered to write the rules that would effect the collections.

This isn’t the only section of Obamacare that Obama has chosen to…waive.  He has chosen to waive for an entire year the Employer Mandate.  He has chosen to waive for three months enforcement of the Individual Mandate.  He has chosen to waive, for a time, the Small Business mandate.  He has chosen to waive, for a time, provisions that forced cancelation of existing policies that individuals already had and preferred—and begun browbeating insurers into allowing those plans to be renewed if a customer wishes.  He has chosen to provide hardship exemptions, for a year, for those who find buying an Obamacare policy a hardship.  He has chosen….

The Obamacare law is quite specific on these provisions: each one must occur; there are no caveats or except-fors that say “no need to enforce if it’s inconvenient to do so, no need if it’s politically expedient to do otherwise.”  Similarly, the Constitution is quite specific: Art II, Section 3 requires the President to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.  No weasel words here, either, about picking and choosing those laws or those parts of laws that can be ignored whenever the President feels like it.  If Obama, or any President, doesn’t like a law or a part of a law, he must go to Congress and persuade them to pass appropriate legislation making the desired modification.

Whatever we might think of the “benefits” of any aspect of Obamacare or of the “fairness” of any section of it, it is, as the Democrats are wont to say, the law of the land.  It takes a lawless, arrogant President to choose, on his own recognizance, which parts of a law will not be enforced.

Obama has transformed his own signature law, his very legacy, into a monument to Executive lawlessness.

China and “Partnership”

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Sun Guoxiang, Ambassador and New York Consul General for the People’s Republic of China had some remarks about Chinese-American partnership.  I have some thoughts on those remarks.

Over the past three decades, both countries have learned that it is always better to engage in dialogue rather than confrontation, cooperation rather than containment, and deal with each other as partners rather than rivals.

When will the PRC actually act in accordance with this…learning?  Today, the PRC is confronting Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia with land and sea grabs in the South and East China Seas, despite having no legitimate claims, cynically manufacturing, instead, “claims” on the basis of ancient maps that showed that Chinese sailors had sailed there sometime.  On that premise, should Portugal assert its claim to suzerainty over the Philippines on the basis of Magellan’s having sailed there some time ago?  Of course not; it’s a facially specious claim.

Further, the PRC actively is confounding our efforts to prevent a terrorist state from getting nuclear weapons and confounding our efforts to get northern Korea’s nuclear weapons program under control and stood down.  The only purpose in this is to demonstrate the PRC’s ability to face us, with the added fillip that when Iran obtains nuclear weapons, those weapons will be turned against our allies and against us—extending the PRC’s military reach without the military expenditures.

This is not partnership.  The PRC is doing this to confront nearby nations and to provoke us.  And to seize the territory and the resources within those Seas.  And to arm the most aggressive and dangerous of our enemies.

[A]t the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, comprehensive economic and social reforms were presented that will boost China’s economic development and provide even more opportunities for China-U.S. cooperation.

These “reforms” still demand PRC companies to be majority parties in joint ventures with foreign companies, retain PRC government…influence…in foreign business ventures, lack intellectual property protections while demanding technology transfers.  And the “reforms” do nothing to stem the Chinese tide of technology and intellectual property theft, and they do nothing to halt the economic cyberwar the PRC is waging against our allies and against us.

Partnership, indeed.