Abuse of power

The same court that upheld Rule-by-Obamacare did this

 Prosecutorial abuse  No Responses »
Nov 142012
 

I’m pretty sure this is the same Supreme Court that upheld the ObamaCare method of ruling the people.

Not hearing the case obviously doesn’t affect the ability to invoke the Hyde Amendment in future instances of malicious prosecution. But the appeals court ruling means that no matter how inappropriate the prosecution’s conduct is in the pursuit of a conviction, as long as they can prove they had probable cause to try the case, defendants have no financial recourse, and the prosecution cannot be held accountable under the Hyde Amendment.

via Supreme Court Declines to Tackle Prosecutorial Misconduct Case – Hit & Run : Reason.com.

Petraeus is a proven multitasker. He can testify.

 Abuse of power  No Responses »
Nov 112012
 

Petraeus is a proven multitasker, if you get my drift. He can put his life together, whatever that means, and testify at the same time.

But isn’t it a national security risk to have the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee saying such stupid things?  It risks making us all stupid just listening to stuff like this.

Though Petraeus is not expected to testify at the committee’s closed-door hearing next week, Chambliss said on ABC’s This Week that Petraeus’s testimony will likely happen later. “He’s trying to put his life back together right now and that’s what he needs to focus on,” Chambliss said….

Chambliss praised Petraeus’ career and said he did the right thing by resigning, commending President Obama for accepting his resignation as well.

via Senators: Petraeus Will Eventually Testify on Libya – NationalJournal.com.

HHS Awards Another Multi-Million-Dollar Obamacare PR Contract

 Abuse of power, Health care reform  No Responses »
Oct 052012
 

Proof that President Obama is not a socialist: He is using advertising to sustain his health care program.  We have been taught since we were young that advertising is a hallmark of capitalism.

As Congress probes expensive public-relations contracts to market the unpopular Obamacare law to the American public, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently announced that it has inked a deal worth more than $3 million to promote Obamacare’s “exchanges.”

via HHS Awards Another Multi-Million-Dollar Obamacare PR Contract.

Criminalizing political differences

 Abuse of power, Authoritarianism  No Responses »
May 192012
 

The WSJ suggests that President Obama put in a word with the perps who are attempting to criminalize political opponents in Mongolia and Ukraine.

All this strongly suggests an effort by Mr. Elbegdorj to use raw government coercion to head off a legitimate political challenger—in other words, to criminalize democratic differences. A similar drama is also unfolding in the Ukraine, where former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been jailed on dubious corruption charges by the government of Viktor Yanukovych, who will also be showing up in Chicago this weekend.

(via Review & Outlook: Genghis Democracies – WSJ.com)

President Obama is an unlikely ambassador for a healthy two-party system with minority rights and a loyal opposition, though.   His own use of power to bully political opponents has kept Kimberly Strassel busy writing about little else lately:

On the other hand, maybe President Obama would be just the person to explain things to Elbegdorj and Yanukovych, given that the three could easily see themselves as brothers engaged in a common struggle to consolidate power and oppress the people.  Maybe Elbegdorj and Yaukovych would be more likely to listen to one of their own who hasn’t gone quite as far as they have, than to a person such as Václav Havel (if  such a person could even be found anymore).

Republican vs Democrat guitars

 Abuse of power  No Responses »
May 192012
 

I hadn’t realized there have been allegations that the government likes to raid Gibson Guitars because it has given aid and comfort to Republicans, and is leaving Martin guitars alone because its Democrat contributions are in good order.  The Wikipedia explanation of the controversy that is quoted in a Treehugger.com article ( “Gibson Guitar Corp. Investigated Again On Legality Of Rainforest Wood Imports“) is no longer on Wikipedia.  On the principle that the government is guilty until proven innocent, this is not a topic on which we should withhold judgment.

Buttress

 Abuse of power  No Responses »
Jan 142012
 

church with buttress

News blurb on the front page of the WSJ (Friday, January 13):

A Justice Department opinion buttressed Obama’s contention that his recess appointments last week were constitutional.

Um, considering scandals such as Fast and Furious and the its handling of the 2008 voter intimidation case, wouldn’t that be like saying Newt Gingrich buttressed Herman Cain’s contention that there was no affair?

Solyndra Stonewalling

 Abuse of power, Budget reform, Crony capitalism, Energy policy  No Responses »
Nov 062011
 

Stone wall on Inishmaan, Aran Islands, Galway Bay

The White House response to the Solyndra subpoena has been referred to as “rejecting” and  “pushing back”.   In the days of the Nixon administration it would have been called stonewalling.

Stonewalling is the term I’ve used in comment sections in various places on the web.   But more recently I’ve read the subpoena and the exchange of letters.  (Links are at the web site of Fred Upton’s Energy and Commerce committee.)  I haven’t exactly changed my view of what’s happening, but I do think some of us have allowed this scuffle to distract us from the main point.

I still am amazed that the White House can have already produced 85,000 pages of documents and then complained that providing the rest could distract the President from his constitutional duties.   If there are that many documents, it  seems that the White House’s dealings with the Solyndra loan have been a distraction from the President’s constitutional duties from the beginning.

It’s also interesting that the most political of presidents, the president who uses a tax paid trip to bash Republicans while campaigning for his jobs bill, would find it in himself to complain that Upton’s committee was engaging in political partisanship.

The fact that the White House saw fit to time its rejection for the Friday night news dump suggests that it isn’t completely comfortable with its own behavior.

But why is it necessary for the Energy and Commerce committee to go through this subpoena exercise?    If it’s just to find some grounds for damaging President Obama’s re-election prospects, that’s not really behavior any better than the government’s funneling a $1 million consulting fee for evaluating the options to Lazard Ltd., one of the biggest DNC contributors.

The problem is that when the government gets in the loan business, there are vast opportunities for political corruption — opportunities for insider dealing in government funds.   The fact that it’s difficult to determine whether or not the White House was doing special deals for its friends is all the information that the committee needs.  It doesn’t need any more documents to know that it should terminate the opportunity for corruption by terminating the loan program.   Going after one particular President doesn’t do anything about the root problem.

Bad guys

 Abuse of power, Limits on government power  No Responses »
May 262011
 

My comment in response to Don Boudreaux’s article at The Freeman, “Stop the Bad Guys.”

“Excellent. I have for some time been saying the hubris of Obamacare’s invasion of our health care system is similar to the hubris of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. I thought I was the only one to notice, but this article explains it a lot more completely than I ever knew.”

How is he not a true socialist?

 Abuse of power, Egalitarianism  No Responses »
May 162011
 

From an article by David Gauthier-Villars and Bob Davis in today’s WSJ:

Recently, Mr. Strauss-Kahn faced public-relations bungles. Last week, French media published a photo showing the IMF chief and his wife entering a Porsche Panamera, property of a French spokesman, during a layover in Paris. The photos rekindled a debate over whether Mr. Strauss-Kahn, known for a taste for fine food and luxurious vacations, was a true Socialist.

How is he not a socialist?   He doesn’t let the opinions of a lone individual, and especially not those of a hotel maid, interfere with grand plans for the reordering of society to make everyone equal, and in which there is a forceful governing class to make sure there are no exceptions.   He makes sure the middle class and poorer class are taxed to pay for bailouts in order to keep the governing class living in the style to which it has become accustomed, which is necessary in order to provide them with sufficient incentive and social position with which to enforce equality and egalitarianism.      He is the head of an organization that puts hard pressure on countries to accept bailouts, reminiscent of the ways in which 19th century treaty commissioners in America turned the screws on the Native Americans and forced them to take bailouts.

So I repeat, how is he not a true socialist?

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