Monthly Archives: 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.

Attacking the Institution of the United States Senate

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) had some thoughts on the matter last Thursday in a Senate floor speech.

Our late colleague Senator Robert Byrd liked to say that there have been two great Senates in history: the Roman Senate and the US Senate.  He understood the special and crucial role the Senate fulfills in our Constitutional Republic.

And

Yet, in the last few years, we have witnessed the dramatic erosion of Senators’ rights and the dismantling of the open legislative process.

We fund the government through massive omnibus bills that no one has had the time to read or analyze.  Senators are stripped of their right to offer amendments.  Bills are rushed through under threat of panic, crisis, or shutdown.  Secret deals rule the day, and millions of Americans are essentially robbed of their ability to participate in the legislative process.

And

One of the tactics by which Majority Leader [D, NV, Harry] Reid has suppressed Senators’ rights and blocked open debate has been a technique called “filling the tree.”  What this means, basically, is that when a bill comes to the floor, the Leader will use his right of first recognition to fill all of the available amendment slots on a bill and block any other Senator from offering amendments.  One man stands in the way of his 99 colleagues.  But, not alone really.  His power exists only as long as his majority concurs and supports his actions. This…prevents Senators from being held accountable by their votes on the great issues of the day.
…
In so doing, the Leader denies the citizens of each state their equal representation in the Senate.  Majority Leader Reid, in his effort to protect his conference from casting difficult votes—in order to shield his Majority from accountability—has essentially closed the amendment process.  He has shut down one of the most important functions that Senators exercise to represent the interests of their constituents.

And

Recently, this tactic manifested itself in a dramatic way.  To the surprise and shock of many, the December spending agreement contained a provision that cut the lifetime pension payments of current and future military retirees—including wounded warriors—by as much as $120,000.  I and other Senators had many ideas for how to fix this problem, but we were blocked from offering them by the Majority Leader.
…

So I would ask my colleagues: … Do you believe the Senate should operate according to the power of just one man?

There are other avenues of attack, also.

The erosion of the Senate has also been front and center in the budgeting process.  We are now in our fifth year without adopting a congressional budget resolution.  Instead, taxpayer dollars are spent through a series of backroom deals and last-minute negotiations.  Then we face a massive omnibus that is rushed to passage without amendment or meaningful review.  The American people have no real ability to know what’s in it or hold us, their elected representatives, accountable.

And

[U]nder the tenure of Majority Leader Reid, the budgeting process has been totally mismanaged.  We have ceased consideration of appropriations bills altogether, relying more and more on autopilot resolutions and catch-all behemoth spending packages.  In fiscal year 2006, for example, every single appropriations bill was debated, amended, and passed in the Senate.  In 2013, none were.

And

A more ominous development, however, is how the breakdown of the appropriations process in the Senate is now infecting the House of Representatives, and spreading like the plague.  In the first year of their majority, the Republican-led House marked up six appropriation bills and sent them to the Senate.  The Senate didn’t consider a single one.  Last year, the House passed eight appropriation bills and sent them to the Senate.  Again the Senate didn’t act.  This year, the futility of the House efforts began to show as the House passed only four bills.  But why should they?  Why should the House expose their members to politically tough votes when they know the Senate won’t?

Finally [emphasis added],

All of us owe our constituents an open, deliberative process where the great issues of the day are debated in full and open public view.  Each Senator must stand and be counted—not hide under the table.

Remember all of this, as you consider for whom to vote for your Senator in the upcoming primaries and mid-term elections.

Bigotry at the UN

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What a surprise.

A UN exhibit created as a joint venture between the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization—UNESCO—and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the People, Book, Land – The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel, and scheduled to open Monday, has been canceled, and cynically so: it was done at the last minute, leaving little time for the Center to respond.

Why?  The Arab League claimed the exhibit “could create potential obstacles related to the peace process in the Middle East.”   Never mind that the obstacle to peace there has been Palestinian terrorist refusal to take peace negotiations seriously (and President Barack Obama’s insistence on acquiescing to Palestinian demands while not supporting our ally in the slightest, but that’s another story).  Never mind that the PLO (under the rubric “Palestine”) is a member in good standing of UNESCO and in that capacity had review and input into this exhibit as it was being developed and scheduled.

Never mind the extortionate threat the Arab League’s…objection…represents.  Chairperson of Group V(b) (Arab States), Abdulla al Neaimi of the UAE, proclaimed in a letter to the UNESCO MFWIC, Irina Bokova,

The subject of this exhibition is highly political though the appearance of the title seems to be trivial.  Most serious is the defense of this theme which is one of the reasons used by the opponents of peace within Israel.  The publicity that will accompany…the exhibit can only cause damage to the peace negotiations presently occurring, and the constant effort of Secretary of State John Kerry, and the neutrality and objectivity of UNESCO.

For all these reasons, for the major worry not to damage UNESCO in its…mission of support for peace, the Arab group within UNESCO is asking you to make the decision to cancel this exhibition.

This is nothing more—or less—than anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish bigotry by the Arab League and the timid acquiescence to it by UNESCO (and by the Obama administration, which meekly accepted Neami’s charges and Bokova’s agreement with them).

It’s time we cut off funding to the UN until the UN goes back to its founding principles.  We have other uses for our money in an era of enormous deficits and runaway national debt.

Obamacare Runaround, State Level

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A Maryland woman is getting the Obamacare runaround treatment in Maryland’s state “exchange” (exchange of what, exactly?).  The woman, after months of trying, finally got signed up—she thought—through one of Obamacare’s Navigators and was given a confirmation number and a printout of her selected plan.

Her Democrat Representative, Barbara Mikulski, has declined to help (help with what?  The woman is signed up, isn’t she?  See below); Mikulski would only commit to empty words of…commiseration:

I am just as frustrated as you are about the launch of health reform.  I am particularly disappointed that the exchange websites did not operate smoothly for Marylanders.

Yeah, that’s helpful.  And Mikulski plainly still thinks the problem is just with the software of a Web site, and not in the law itself.  Hmm….

Again, signed up for what?

the selected insurance company has no record of her

the state navigation system has no record of her

Never mind the printout and confirmation number.  Especially never mind the confirmation number.

both the Maryland Health Connection and the troubleshooting site assured the woman “that somebody would get back to me within two to three days;” nobody has.

The governor’s office—not the Governor or his head of the Maryland Office of Health Care Reform apparently, just a staffer—called the woman and assured her that they would send a manual application “next week.”

However.  The Catch-22 gotcha:

she would have to pay two months of premiums this week

the provider doesn’t have any record of her (see above)

and so the provider is  unable to tell her the premium

It just doesn’t get any better than this with government-directed (I hesitate to say “-managed”) health coverage and health care programming.