Newsweek: Despite campaign promises to refrain from using executive powers to bypass Congress, President Barack Obama is increasingly doing just that, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. One thing we have all realized and seen by now is President Obama’s healthy self-regard.
WND: WASHINGTON—After being buffeted by Republican victories in the 2010 midterm elections, White House aides saw education as ripe for bipartisan cooperation. Both parties wanted to address complaints about the No Child Left Behind law. Congress seemed prepared to act.
But while the White House talked up cooperation in public, in private it was preparing Plan B. In December that year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned top Democrats that if Congress didn’t act, the administration would use executive authority to essentially rewrite the law on its own.
Nine months later, the administration did just that. It soon began granting states waivers … BY LAURA MECKLER
From helping rebels in the Libyan revolution to granting states waivers from the No Child Left Behind education act, Obama is finding it easier to push his agenda without asking for approval from elected senators and representatives, the paper said.
And that is not sitting well with either Republicans or Democrats who are keen to defend their own turf against what they see as an overreaching executive.
“When he ran for president, Barack Obama promised to roll back President George W. Bush’s use of executive power, a defining point of the Bush presidency,” Laura Meckler wrote in the Journal piece. “The pledge was part of a broader pitch about Mr. Obama’s governing style, which he said would focus on solving problems in a pragmatic, cooperative way.
“The allure of executive power, it turns out, is hard to resist,” Meckler added. “Most every chief executive has found ways to escape the shackles of the legislature and expand the power of the presidency. Three years into his first term, Mr. Obama has developed his own expansive view of going it alone, asserting new executive powers and challenging members of Congress in both parties.”
White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler told the Journal that Obama has developed a broadr view of executive power since his days as a U.S. senator. “Many issues that he deals with are just on him, where the Congress doesn’t bear the burden in the same way,” she said. “Until one experiences that first hand, it is difficult to appreciate fully how you need flexibility in a lot of circumstances.”
When you look at Obama you realize he is either the biggest flipflopper of all time or the biggest liar. You be the judge… and what how they try to put those titles on the GOP candidate, Alinky style. And we have
PATTERSON: Obama kills coal – as promised
Higher electricity prices will most affect those who can least afford them
“Under My Plan…Energy Prices Would NECESSARILY SKYROCKET”… Barack Obama 2008
By Matt Patterson – Thursday, March 29, 2012 – Illustration by Linas Garsys
“If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” –Candidate Barack Obama, 2008.
Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned. This week, the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency released a set of proposed rules designed to target greenhouse gas emissions. If enacted, these rules would virtually destroy the coal industry – just as President Obama once promised he would do.
Under the proposed rules, new power plants will be required to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of electricity; coal plants average 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt. As Jordan Weissmann writes for theAtlantic, “Natural gas plants already meet this requirement. But if a utility wants to burn coal for electricity, it will need to install carbon capture technology – and that’s really expensive.”
Carbon capture and storage technology allows carbon-dioxide emissions to be stored in the ground instead of being released into the atmosphere. But the technology is, for many coal-energy producers, prohibitively pricey. Even assuming new coal plants are actually built under this regulatory regime, to whom do you think those new expenses will be passed on to? That’s right – energy consumers.
Rich people will be able to pay those extra costs, though they may gripe about it. But middle-class households will see a rise in their energy bills that will put them in even greater financial distress than they already are under in this abysmal “recovery.” Poor and working-class people will be especially hurt, of course, as is almost always the case when wealthy pencil-pushers hatch a brilliant plan to “save the planet.” Among the pencil-pushers is EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, who crowed: “Today we’re taking a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect the planet for our children, and move us into a new era of American energy.”
Will coal-power producers try to forge ahead with new facilities under these proposed regulations? Doubtful. Remember, this is an industry already groaning under the weight of a slew of new regulations imposed by the Obama EPA, including emission limits on mercury and sulfur dioxide, “which would require utilities to eventually upgrade old plants or build entirely new ones,” Mr. Weissmann notes.
True, the EPA is taking pains to stress that the new regulations would apply only to new plants. Gina McCarthy, EPA assistant administrator for air and radiation, assured lawmakers at a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the agency has “no plans” to curb greenhouse gas emissions for existing plants. But no one believes that, not Republicans who grilled EPA officials at Wednesday’s hearing, nor environmental groups who have long sought the death of King Coal.
David Doniger, climate program policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council notes that the Clean Air Act likely will make it inevitable that the EPA will train its anti-carbon guns on existing coal-fired power plants. Just so we know where the council stands, Mr. Doniger promises, “We look forward to reaching an agreement with EPA on a schedule for completing the standard for new sources and developing standards for existing sources.” Doubtless, Mr. Obama’s EPA won’t need much of a nudge from Mr. Doniger’s group.
Unlike his promises to close the terrorist detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, keep lobbyists out of the White House, and oppose an individual mandate for health insurance, at least we know that Mr. Obama was true to his word when he promised to bankrupt an entire industry that employs tens of thousands of Americans.
Well done.
Matt Patterson is the Warren T. Brookes Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and senior editor at the Capital Research Center.
For those that paid attention and did their homework… They are not surprised at what is happening. President Obama told us what he planned to do and was purposely vague about the rest. Book after book was written, but most people chose to be mesmerized and ignorantly hopeful. But as we are hearing more and more… If you voted for Obama last time to prove you weren’t a racist, you need to vote him out this time to prove that you are not a idiot!
A book to start with if you haven’t read it: The Obama Nation
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!
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