President Obama and the United States Constitution

President Obama has made his disdain for the United States Constitution well known. He complained before his first term as United States President in an interview on Chicago’s public radio station WBEZ FM in 2001 that the United States “Constitution is a charter of negative liberties” and not of positive liberties. He further explained that the Constitution “says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.” Keep in mind that this interpretation comes from a man who as a Professor taught courses in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, so he presumably knew what he was talking about and understood the reasons the Constitution was crafted in the manner of limiting government. Apparently Professor Obama, and we can assume President Obama, vehemently disagree with the founding fathers and their vision of limited government allowing for maximum freedoms and liberties for the people. So, perhaps we should look into the consequences of President Obama’s view of positive liberties against the founder’s ideals of negative liberties, or more accurately compare President Obama’s view of empowering government against the founder’s ideas of empowering the people.

First we will summarize the philosophies behind the founding fathers Constitutional limitations on government and how that impacts the people. The founders were strong believers in the ability of man’s capability for self-rule without having to rely on having to be ruled by their supposed betters. They were also mostly strongly religious and this enhanced their view as mankind as a noble being different from the animals and having a divine spark, a divine spirit. They believed that the Creator gave man life and with life certain rights which could not be denied by government or other men if society was to be free and have maximum liberty. As such they placed mankind above government and judged government as being a necessary evil which was best when kept as powerless as possible. Government was to only be permitted to wield those powers requested and permitted by the people. Even then, the layers of government were to have limited power by making each layer removed from the people dependent on the next closer level for its powers. Thus the people requested and allowed a set of powers to be transferred to government at the most local level which then assumed these powers and would also be tasked with adjudicating differences between contesting individuals. This local level of government would in turn permit some of these powers which were beyond their capabilities to be granted to the next level of government along with the adjudication of differences between any competing local governments. This level of the government then passed along those powers beyond their scope to the next level which also adjudicated any contentions of the lower governments. This continued until the least amount of power would be vested in the Federal Government which also adjudicated between the State Governments. Any adjudication could potentially have a judgment appealed to the next higher authority until reaching the final level of adjudications, the Supreme Court. The founders believed that all power comes from the Creator and the most powerful entity was the individual. This also implied that the individual along with the most freedoms and liberties also carried the most responsibilities. Thus, the higher up the government tree one climbs, the lesser powers relegated to each governmental level until reaching the Federal Government which would have the least power and the greatest restrictions on its powers and responsibilities of adjudication. Thus, under the United States Constitution the people are to be vested with maximum powers being permitted all responsibilities, abilities, powers and decisions with the minimal exception as listed within the Constitution. The best description was probably framed within the Bill of Rights, more specifically the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment reads:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

President Obama does not believe that the government should be limited in its powers but instead believes that the government should dole out limited powers, responsibilities and options to the people while retaining maximum control at the highest levels. President Obama believes that the Constitution should empower government and dictate what it is that the government is required to perform for the people. This results in the government deciding what rights it is willing to remit to the people and what privileges it will grant to the people. As a result, the people only receive the privileges which the government determines they may be allowed and any power thus vested with the people may also be taken back by the government at their slightest whim. In President Obama’s world, the people are only granted the rights and responsibilities which the government determines or believes they are capable of while the remainder of power is retained by the government. Furthermore, the Federal Government also determines what responsibilities and powers the States are permitted who in turn decide the same for local government with the final determination of what the people are allowed granted at the local level. Since government passes down the powers, rights, responsibilities and all functions in life with strict limitations retaining the bulk of available oversights and control with itself at every level, the people are basically power starved.

The difference between the United States Constitution and President Obama’s ideas of governance are stark and somewhat counter-intuitive. When President Obama speaks about his disdain for the limitations of the constitution, he speaks that he believes that people would have more power if instead of limiting government the constitution should insist that government perform expressed function for the people. Despite intuition might have one believing that if government is commanded to provide enumerated functions for the people that the people will have more privileges and rights, the United States Constitution actually grants the people far greater flexibility, rights, powers, liberties, and responsibilities. Where President Obama’s idea of government permitting certain services to the people as demanded does allow for the people not to have to assume many, if any, responsibilities as that remains with the government as they are granting items while retaining the real control. With the Constitution written by the founding fathers begins by leaving all responsibilities with the people and as such also gives all powers, freedoms, liberties, and abilities also with the people and the people decide that which they will permit the government to possess. So, if you desire to be responsible for your own actions and taking care of your own needs and expressing yourself however you please while standing by your words, then the United States Constitution was designed for such as you. But if you wish to have all decisions and consequences taken care of by a greater power that gives you that which it decides is in your best interest and requires minimal responsibilities or efforts from you, then you would love President Obama’s world of unlimited government granting you, the people, what is best for you, well, actually granting you what is best for government.

Beyond the Cusp

So You Want to Change Government in Washington

I hear the same complaint all the time. I hear it on talk radio, on the Sunday television talking heads interviews, waiting in line at the grocery store or getting prescriptions filled and in conversations with friends. Time and again people complain that their vote makes no difference and they have no say in what goes on in Washington. They have it all wrong as our vote is seldom the deciding factor in any election, but there is a better way to be heard and heeded in Washington. Some of my friends and I have got this idea and we wish to share it and enlist your help. Together we can change government in Washington, and this also would work at the state and local level just as well if not better. All it will take is a few days of talking, tweeting, Facebook posts, ICQ, e-mail, texting, or even using the phone to call people, or if you’re really brave, talking to people in person. The best starting point is friends and family which happen to share your political outlook. You get a few friends; three is enough to get your own lobbying group started. You draw up a questionnaire with as few as three or as many political subjects you can think of and get anyone willing to help to simply fill out one. On the form you list the subjects you wish to influence and whether you support or oppose the idea. An example might be, “I want to repeal Obama Care,” or “I am in favor of requiring showing a picture ID in order to vote.” Have a check list for agree and disagree and give it to a few friends or paste it on your Facebook page and invite those you have friended to take the survey. Collect a fair number, at least five but the more the merrier.

Once you have a small group who agree on each subject they will serve as your core group, the seed group from which you expand. You can make a group for each issue or you might decide to stress just one issue, it will work either way. Then you have your core group send the same questions, or whatever subject you all agree with, to friends and gather more into your group. This will be most effective if your group all live in the same voting district, or at least the same state, but that is not hard and fast required. You organize and take turns watching the news and reading up and look for any legislation which the group has a consensus about and then you take action. Once you decide to act, everybody in the group should call to the local office of your Representative in the House of Representatives and both State Senators and express your views. The local office is usually easier to reach and they will contact your elected official when they get sufficient numbers contacting them on an issue. The staff of elected officials place great weight on contacts as most of their constituents never bother to contact them. The rule of thumb is for every person that contacts the office they figure that person represents approximately one-thousand others who did not call. So, you can see what effect having ten or twenty people call them on any single issue.

On issues you have extremely strong feeling about, you might consider not only calling their office, e-mailing their office, but also make the effort to go in person and talk with them. If your group decides that a face-to-face visit is necessary, space your visits out over two to three weeks depending on how many of you there are. Secondly, have some of you go in small groups of two to five and some as single visitors, this will have a greater affect as it will make it seem like people are talking and taking action together as well as separately. All the while you continue to collect more people into your group. I believe you see where this is going. You might even eventually gather people from not only your home area but extend your actions over a wider area. With social media one could make a national grassroots lobbying group and have a large influence on the future of the country. Furthermore, since these contacts will be done at the local level, you will find you have more sway and influence than those high paid lawyers and ex-Congress-critters that work and live on K Street just off Connecticut Avenue in Washington D.C.

This is the idea behind such groups as AARP, the Sierra Club, and many Unions who all claim to represent thousands of people simply because they have these people on their mailing lists. The difference is that since you are contacting your elected official as an individual, they know for a fact that you are one guaranteed voter who likely will vote even if there is a blizzard. You may want to name your group but you never want to use this name when contacting your elected officials’ offices. You will have more clout contacting them as individuals until you grow your group into thousands and thousands of voters and have met the requirements to file as an official lobbying group. Trust me when I say you will wish to avoid such action, that is unless you think you can make a living doing so. Since that would require moving to the Washington D. C. area, I will bet most will be happy just to maximize their influence and keep things comfortably manageable. This is not something brand new which has not been done before and many will read this and say that this is already being done in your area. My question to those is, “Are you in such a group and if not what influence do you have? If you know of such a group, then join it and add your voice, each one counts like thousands, loud and firm.”

The sole reason I am even writing about this is not because it is a revolutionary idea but because if I influence just a dozen people to take the time and act on this then our government will be better serving the people. I hope those who I do activate agree with my views more than disagree. Where this has been done for years even at local levels, I have not heard of many small individual private groups which are not members of some club, organization, religious group, or some form of a structured setting doing such work. I know of many people who do this kind of politicking on their own and it is these people who would likely benefit most of having a bug in their ear telling them to broaden their influence by trying this. With the explosion of social networking and other electronic communications making people being in touch and organizing as easy as making a Facebook page, a Facebook friends grouping, a tweet circle, an e-mail list, a chat room, Skype conferencing, or whatever your imagination can invent to keep everyone up on the latest actions; who knows what you might start by giving this a shot. The worst that could happen is you become more active and have at least some amount of influence in our governance and you might even make a few new friends along the way.

Beyond the Cusp

GSA and Secret Service Why Such Total Corruption?

Before diving into the irresponsible and tawdry actions by government employees which was plastered on the front pages of the news of late, we need to first off recognize that those caught partaking of these misadventures are not indicative of government employees in general. The vast numbers of government employees are dedicated professionals who work diligently giving 100% efforts. Those who we refer to in what follows are the few bad apples in the barrel. Despite the joke about a substandard performance at a task as, “close enough for government work,” does a disservice to those who toil away, often thanklessly, in the services of the many layers of government. Most tasks performed by government employees are required to meet the same standards as similar professions must meet in the private sector, there are entire departments in government which hold their employees to an even higher standard. This editorial is about those government employees who have failed to maintain a high standard of discipline and judgment and have earned any aspersions thrown at them.

With the latest of the malfeasance and misappropriation of our tax monies have many questioning how could such actions have been committed and with such disregard for allowing it to become public knowledge yet nobody even seems to feel the slightest guilt. Granted, some of the Secret Service did pay for their sins with their jobs, but that was more for their breaking protocols established for securing the President and others whose lives they are held responsible for guarding more than it was for such poor judgments and misconduct. As some of the agents involved will remain in the department, the sin was not in the act but in the poor judgment to allow these actions to have taken place in their rooms within what was presumed to be a secured environment. And how many heads were placed on the chopping block from the GSA extravagance? The count thus far is the chief of the General Services Administration Martha Johnson resigned, two of her top deputies were fired and four managers were placed on leave. Perhaps that was sufficient but I question why those who did the actual planning of this disgrace were not also shown the door along with the compliant chiefs as they were the ones who presented the initial arrangements and had they done their jobs responsibly instead of making a lavish joke out of what was supposed to be a working conference, then none of this could have transpired. This is one of those times where the underlings were just as guilty as were those who as supervisors should have refused their plans.

But the question which often asked is how can the amount and expanse of corruption of the Federal Government in Washington DC be so extreme and beyond that found at almost any other level of government in the United States. Believe it or not, I have a theory on this; what a surprise, huh? When you consider the corruption we find from our elected Senators and Representatives we need to keep something in mind; these are not simple, ordinary politicians, the majority are true professional politicians. These are the product of years of holding public offices. Many started as township, city, or county office holders who then graduated to state level offices and after a decade or more they finally make it to the big show, the United States House of Representatives and eventually even into the Senate. These are people who have been living in the make-believe world of politics where they have the power to solve most of the problems brought before them by the lesser, little folk simply by having a staffer place a phone call or send off a memo to some bureaucrat whose salary they control through their power of appropriations. They attend lavish parties thrown by those seeking influence and as they get higher up the ladder the parties get more and more lavish. By the time they get to Washington DC their taste has been refined to caviar and champagne, and not the cheap stuff. Many of these lifetime politicians have ten, fifteen, even twenty years of experience of being pampered, primped, perfumed, and treated as almost royalty and it has often gone to their heads. They honestly feel they are above the people, above the law, above reproach, basically above everything they see before them and that is what creates the problem which leads to the graft, corruption, and excesses of virtually any kind.

The corruption in many of the elite levels of the upper ranks of the Civil Service personnel have the same track record except they simply held government jobs moving up regularly and eventually they are at what I call the convention level. This is the level that invents reasons to hold training sessions or hold a convention for some legal sounding excuse and it is almost always held in Las Vegas, Hawaii, Bermuda, or other vacation Mecca, possibly even the French Riviera, if your GS Level is at a minimum of twelve. Such is more often an inter-department event where almost everybody is a GS 15 or higher. These are the true professional people whose ability to make expenditures is of the highest orders and quite beyond the imagination of mere mortal taxpayers. These are government employees who have government provided chauffeurs driving them around in a Lincoln, Cadillac or even a Mercedes. By the time you get to the highest level of our Federal government you have been rewarded and rated as exemplary at your job for so many years and for levels of work that are often the butt of jokes for comedians performing in the Nation’s Capital. Actually, after having been raised in the suburbs of our Nation’s capital, I am surprised that there are not far more instances of such extravagant and over-the-top malfeasance by our highest level miscreants, sorry, government employees. The sorry thing is many actually do attempt to work diligently and competently, but the ones who are along for the ride give the whole a bad name. The only thing I can recommend we, the tax paying public, can do is to thank those who work in the government at any level when they treat their job and the public they serve with respect and show diligence. Complaining about the others will usually not accomplish anything except supply the water-cooler circle with grist for their comedic mills.

Beyond the Cusp