Today’s Topic: Another Bush Grab for Power
I’ve read the Executive Order President Bush signed the other day and I have to say this is just one more piece in the puzzle of George W. Bush.
I’ve said before that he will never give up power, and it appears that his consistent grabs for more power into the Executive Office only work if he is the one that continues to control the use of those powers.
I just read an article by Ian Welsh published on the blog Firedoglake on Saturday, 21 July 2007. Ian has a lot of the picture correct, and his historical analysis is right on. He even includes a statement by a Paul Craig Roberts "going so far as to say it was the last necessary piece being put in place before a possible coup".
Now if anyone has read my blog, I declared in 2001 that George W. Bush was part of a coup. And I’ve said many times since that this man has no inclination to simply leave office when his term is due.
And here is a list of some facts to support my supposition.
- Voter Fraud
- Signing Statements
- Executive Orders
- Expansion of Presidential Power to Subordinates
- Executive Privilege
- Politicization of Career Governmental Professionals
- Department of Defense closings of numerous National Guard stations
Voter Fraud
Much has been repeated in today’s media about the political requirements to clamp down on voter fraud, but the fact is that voter fraud has proven over the years to be a red herring. Fully 97% of all voter fraud investigations turn out to be wasted time. The large amount of voter fraud prosecutions are exceedingly small and the number of convictions usually spread amongst a few people without the wherewithal to actually defend themselves properly.
Ian Welsh’s article has a very good take on the numbers of people incarcerated and what rights have been trampled upon in this endeavor to give the Executive Office supreme power, but what I’m talking about is different. Whilst there are innumerable instances of power wielded badly, there are more specifics towards the power grab of this person, George W. Bush, to consolidate his position far longer than which the Constitution allows.
It’s funny that when Georgie boy couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer to the problem in Iraq, George’s daddy’s fix-it man became the head of the Iraq Study Group. But what is really funny is that James Baker was leading the charge of intimidating Florida election officials and vote counters in the 2000 election by creating "near riot" conditions at many of the "contestable" counting stations. At least it is funny that the American people don’t remember this.
Remember that it wasn’t but 8 months ago when the American people placed their trust in James Baker and his ISG to come up with a solution that George W. Bush could not ignore.
But ignore the suggestions is exactly what George W. Bush did, whilst stacking the deck of the Executive branch with political officers foisting the administration’s ideological viewpoint upon the governmental career professionals.
This is the fun part. Ronald Reagan started the concept of dumbing-down the American people by cutting education whilst giving large tax breaks to the richest in the country (a policy that George W. Bush truly believes is a sound fiscal policy). And George W. Bush has expanded that dumbing-down to the executive agencies that are most responsible for providing support and relief to the American people (does anyone trust FEMA anymore?)
Virtually all of the career lawyers in the Justice Department have left en masse. The new appointees and hires are from questionable schools of virtually no academic standing, and they obviously are pressured to expand the Bush doctrine into the very arm of government that is supposed to be above political chicanery. But I’ll speak more specifically of this later.
The real point of all of this is that whatever entity directing the 2000 elections somehow managed a coup dé tat and life in America has gone down the drain since. If we allow George W. Bush to complete this coup then it is on our own heads.
And the reason this administration chose voter fraud as the primary importance is totally misperceived, because most think it is to control the election cycles. The reason is more dastardly than that. We are talking about placing the onus on the 93 US Attorney’s to concentrate on voter fraud so that they wouldn’t be investigating the likes of Duke Cunningham and others that might be Republicans taking bribes.
Another funny is that this administration chose to use the FBI to INVADE Congress and search for damaging evidence against Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson just after a loss of majority in both houses of Congress. Never before has the FBI been used to intimidate Congress, but yet again the people of America have had the wool pulled over their eyes. $90 thousand in cash stuck in the man’s deep freeze? And with no witnesses to the discovery but the authorities? Now I’m not saying the man is innocent, but I’m saying that the Constitution says he’s innocent, and it takes much better evidence to honestly bring a man to justice. However, since a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, as has been oft quoted, then we’ll have to see just how this turns out.
But one Democrat amongst hundreds of Republicans, the number of investigations which continue to grow, doesn’t make a case against Democrats.
And if a state’s choice for representation can be intimidated by storming Congress to find evidence of wrongdoing, then how is it that Ms. Lam, the US Attorney for San Diego was let go for "poor performance" just after she had obtained a guilty plea from Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham and had "other" investigations in the cue.
Perhaps if Ms. Lam had paid more attention to the Justice Department guidelines on wasting time investigating questionable voter fraud she’d still have a job. This one thing is certain. The people involved with the continuing investigation have gotten away without further scrutiny. The American people will never know just how many people were involved with the Cunningham scandal, but I can say with reasonable certainty that the Washington Madam has phone records which will reach into the very bowels of the previous Republican majority, and somehow new heads will roll. And again Watergate will figure prominently in the Republican’s demise.
As an addendum since this entry is taking some number of days to compose, today, 27 July, 2007, we have additional White House and DOJ documentation which shows implicitly in politics of the Republican Party having invaded the numerous agencies of the Executive. These documents also show that the RNC (with White House approval) designed a system to eliminate probable Democratic voters from some of the key states in the 2004 elections, including Ohio and Florida. The documents show the requirement to purge as much possible Democratic votes as they could, whether legal or not. They also show that voters be damned, any level of chicanery was reasonable to guarantee George W. Bush’s re-election.
And even a post addendum, which is a report that enough of the Ohio votes have been misplaced or destroyed so as to make any questions about the 2004 Ohio presidential election votes moot. Without all the information, we have no information. And this is after a Federal Judge ordered the records held until a Federal lawsuit was completed.
I mean, what do you say when a Federal Judge says "hold all the ballots until a decision has been made in the lawsuit" and Ohio State officials do the exact opposite? Admittedly they didn’t destroy ALL of the records, but just enough of the records that a true determination of the count couldn’t be accomplished. This is pure Bush politics, or should I say Rove politics.
Politics are supposed to play a part in our representative form of government during elections, and yes, even in deliberation of legislature. But politics are not supposed to leak over into the professional career agency employees, and the dirty games of politics are not to be given free reign to deny the ability of the American people’s votes being counted properly, much less from having one’s vote be denied due to politics.
Signing Statements
I’ve written about this before so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the subject. Historically signing statements represented what a president didn’t like about a particular bill but found no reason to veto the bill, thus signing it into law.
Never before this president has anyone had the balls to suggest that the president himself has the right to determine whether a signed bill is up to his standards on whether the bill itself is Constitutional or not.
There’s also this "assumed" concept of the Unitary Executive, which simply means that the president is in charge of the entire executive branch, regardless of how that branch came into existence. Now in case some don’t know, Congress has the right to establish new administrative functions and agencies within the Executive, not the president. So when Congress decides to set up such entities as Inspector Generals for the agencies within the executive, Congress also is the controlling entity for purposes of its ability to provide Constitutional checks and balances.
The concept of a unitary executive is specifically designed to eliminate congressional oversight and the concept itself originated with a young lawyer in the Reagan administration who has now become Supreme Court Justice Alito.
With the concept of a unitary executive and the possible legal standing of such, the Constitution will become so much paper that cost taxpayers millions of dollars to try to maintain. Perhaps it will become a far greater dollar value to maintain the paper the Constitution was written upon than the dollars spent upon the meaning of the words contained within. For surely if the president claims the right of determining whether a bill passed by Congress is Constitutional, then why do we need a separate Judicial branch to make the same determinations?
Doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? Either we have Constitutionally designated checks and balances between the three co-equal branches of government, or we all just have to throw up our hands and praise King George W. Bush.
I kind of like the Constitution idea.
Executive Orders
I first wondered about George W. Bush’s intent whilst in office when the first publicly acknowledged Executive Order he signed classified previous presidential records so that they were no longer available to the American public, conceivably even withheld under a request on the Freedom of Information Act.
Now it didn’t make a whit of difference if the records in question might have already been researched for differing projects because the new secret classification meant that the release of information would become a matter of national security.
Why did George W. Bush do this? In the days when the executive order came down I assumed that it was because all of the skeletons in the Bush’s closets would be well hidden, but I couldn’t come to grips with the fact that former President Bill Clinton would fall under this mantle also. What did it mean?
Well, it didn’t mean squat for anyone that this administration wished to denigrate. It meant that the availability of presidential records were subject to the executive office’s determination whether they wanted the requested information disseminated or not, and whether, by that dissemination, they would gain or lose ground.
Politics have never been played this ingeniously nor as baldly in history. Hence no one took notice. But the fact is that this president wanted the ability to alter history to his political advantage, and anyone who was alive during the Clinton administration knows that the history has been altered and the facts obscured. At the least they have been obscured by the classification that denies people the right to know the facts.
The easy thing is to say that every executive order from that day forward has gone downhill. And it must be noted that the presidential records order was about 1 month after Bush took office, not after 9/11.
If one doesn’t have an extreme reason to deny the American people the records of fact, then one shouldn’t be able to get away with an executive order that denies the American people the facts. Bush did, and well before 9/11, so his stated concept of being a compassionate conservative really doesn’t mean anything unless we define whom he is being compassionate to. The Republican Party and big business would be my immediate guess.
Expansion of Presidential Power to Subordinates
Herein lies one of the most diabolical threats to the concept of democracy in America.
In America the people have the right to vote for their representatives in this government. That means the people vote for their direct Representative to the House, and for two state representatives to the halls of the U.S. Senate.
We have one election every four years that goes to our representative to the world and that position is President of the United States.
Now notice something here. There is a position in this country called the President of the United States of America, but only a person elected can have the affectation of Mr./Ms. President for a maximum of eight years..
What I’m talking about is that the person doesn’t define the job, the job defines the person. A person elected to the office HOLDS the title of President, but indeed does not become the President. The person and the office are two distinct entities, one holding sway over hundreds of years of history, one holding title for a few scant years, essentially a placeholder in history for the next person to inhabit that office.
But that person is elected to a position and is expected to carry out that position to the best of their abilities. One of those expectations is described in the oath of office, which is to "uphold the laws and to defend the Constitution of the United States of America."
Although the job is tough, the requirements aren’t all that demanding in the scope of understanding. You are there to keep the law and make sure that the Citizens of the United States of America’s constitutional rights are not trampled asunder.
The point of accountability in terms of congressional oversight of those elected by the people means that the President must abide by the Constitution if he is going to protect it. And while I’ll admit that any President does have the right to gain counsel without the fear of negating the privileged communications, no President has the right to simply ignore Constitutionally directed congressional oversight by virtue of Executive Privilege.
I’ll get to Executive Privilege in the next subject as the point isn’t Executive Privilege, but the purposeful transfer of power off the one person who is accountable for actions of the Executive to those that are not normally in the loop and consequently outside of the area of accountability.
In 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney held a meeting of a group of people who talked about the American people’s business towards concerns about America’s energy prospects, yet we have no record of whether indeed those discussions were in the people’s interests or the interest of the people attending the meeting.
One must assume that any effort to conceal the dialog of the meeting means that the dialog had nothing to do with the people’s business but rather those discussing the matter’s own wellbeing. The fact that this administration fought so vehemently to maintain control over the exposure of that meeting means that there is nothing there for the American people to see. For if there were information from said meeting that equated to the interests of the American people, such information would have been supplied so all could see that this administration has the American people at heart when conducting the business of the American people.
The result is a primary target in this administration’s primary benchmark of the Iraqi government’s legislation. Only will this administration be glad to call Iraq a victory when the Iraqis pass legislation which gives American and British big oil the rights to exploit the petroleum under the sands of the Iraqi people.
If this president can give a subordinate such power as to direct exploitation and negotiations affecting the American and Iraqi people’s rights, then the concept of delegating authority has gone well beyond what any American should accept.
Thus the concept of expanding executive branch authority and then authorizing execution of that authority to those not elected by the people is a morphing of our governmental system into a different form of government called an oligarchy, which is defined by one source as follows:
"1. a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few."
The problem is that the few aren’t specified and for those few there are no avenues of accountability in a system of government which requires checks and balances.
Executive Privilege
Actually, since Executive Privilege is bound for the courts in the case of Harriet Myers not even appearing at a hearing after subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee, we’ll have to let this one play out. The results may well be more informative to the American public than anything I could say.
However, to just cover a few instances of the claimed Executive Privilege, let’s just say that Harriet Myers wasn’t required to do anything but appear and then exert her rights to Executive Privilege to end the Committee’s involvement with the line of questioning they wished to apply. But since Ms. Myers wasn’t a part of the congressional approval mandated for all agency political appointments, the supposition was that she was above reprisal by Congress simply because this President ordered her not to appear.
This is a power no president has ever had associated with his office. A subpoena from any level of Congressional committee is not an area the president has the authority to ignore, much less order a subordinate to ignore.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out as both Harriet Myers and Josh Bolton currently are being held in contempt of Congress. It will also be interesting how the White House Political Director, Karl Rove, will respond to a subpoena from the same Senate Judiciary Committee issued yesterday, 26 July 2007. If he, too, is ordered to ignore the constitutionally required congressional appearance due to a subpoena, then the floodgates will be opened.
The really funny thing about this, (ironic, not ha ha) is that this administration’s statements have been that we have an "out of control party using investigation after investigation to garner today’s headlines".
Now how it is funny is that from day one of the Republican Congress’ capture of the majority in 1994 (minus a Jeff Jeffries change to Independent in 2001), President Clinton was inundated with investigation after investigation in order to not only garner the headlines of the day, but to place the White House in a continual environment of playing defense against unfounded accusations. Supposedly that would have slowed down the office of president from doing the people’s business. Surprisingly, the people’s business was done quite well, with a balanced budget and the best record of putting people back to work, not only in the country, but in the world.
This president uses Executive Privilege like a shield against both friend and foe. The consequences do not even require the wait until historians make their judgement. We have plenty to judge this president by now.
But the fact is that historians won’t have a chance to wade in with their judgements. The people are going to be presented with just what lengths this president is willing to go to in order to fool the American people and garner as much power unto him as is feasibly possible. Don’t be fooled. We’re not talking about gathering power to the presidency, but to George W. Bush.
Politicization of Career Governmental Professionals
This particular topic has many ramifications, but the beginning of the obvious politicization was prior to the American invasion of Iraq, when Chief of Staff General Shinseki told Congress that it would take 3 or 400,000 American troops to effectively change the Iraqi government and supply stability to the nation as it changed governmental hands.
The problem is that General Shinseki was effectively fired and Bush administration choices from the "yes" men of the military started to think of their careers rather than the overall question of whether indeed it was possible that Donald Rumsfeld’s concept of small decisive strike forces could actually accomplish the goals.
The firing of the Chief of Staff or the military is not something taken lightly by the military. The same act isn’t simply lost on the other agencies of the executive branch as if such circumstances wouldn’t apply to them if they actually gave an honest assessment that was diametrically opposed to what the administration wanted people to say.
Politicization of the executive branch negates all of the experience and knowledge those of career positions within that executive have fought long and hard to gain. The loss includes those of the CIA, the FBI and numerous agencies who would be instrumental in our ability to fight a new threat like international terrorism, which has the possible availability of agents of mass destruction.
For your information, at least 8 million documents, this past year alone, from this administration were classified as "secret" or incorrectly classified as to maintain a high level of secrecy in the administration’s interaction with both the Legislative and the Judicial branches of government. This means hiding facts that aren’t even of concern and it means negating the co-equal branch status of both the Legislative and Judicial branches of our government.
Now no one argues with the fact that the president has the authority to ask for anyone’s resignation within the executive at any time. How not if General Shinseki was ousted as the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? However, when the nature of resignations comes down to the obvious possibility of failure to follow a political agenda, then this becomes a matter of true national interests.
Generally the concept of national interests means "self interest", which means that the goals of the country are directed by the goals of the few.
Our government is based on the concept of the goals of the majority with acquiescence to the desires of the minority. There is no majority rules in our system of government nor is there any historical documents of our governing bodies that suggests the majority could reign over the minority as did the Republicans over the Democrats from 1994 to 2006.
We saw both the concept that only those matters which pertained to the majority, as Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert declared, were the issues that would be debated and voted upon in the House, and we saw the threat of changing 219 years of Senatorial rules to allow a straight up vote, which the Republicans are now threatening to filibuster if such is applied to their minority.
These are decisive indicators of politicization of the government, which means that none of the people’s work is being done. The concepts of the Founding Fathers are so far out of touch with our governmental representatives that nothing can or will be done in our names.
The past 6+ years show us that an American government can ignore the will of the people and determine a roll for America that doesn’t fit with the America we grew up with. With the secrecy we can only say that we have no true idea of just how far this government is willing to go against the will of the people, and yet here we are. We know for a fact that President Bush isn’t listening to the people’s mandates by the 2006 election returns, and we know for a fact that this administration has it’s own ideas of what level of secrecy is necessary to overcome the will of the people and their representatives.
We also know that laws have been broken by the very words of the Justice Department’s Liaison to the White House, Ms. Monica Gooding, who apparently chose to ask questions of political affiliations in hiring Justice Department career employees. This is decidedly against the law. In case one doesn’t remember this young lady, she chose to execute her Fifth Amendment rights prior to her testimony to Congress, thus establishing her train of thought that she might have somehow violated the rule of law in her actions. The Constitution says she isn’t guilty by accusation, but her actions suggest she had concerns about her legal standing, which required a congressional grant of immunity.
There are so many examples of politicization of executive agencies that one simply doesn’t have the space to tell the entire tale. I’m already at 9 pages on this particular article and the end isn’t in sight. Somehow I have many topics yet to cover.
Department of Defense Closings of Numerous National Guard Stations
Ostensibly the closing of numerous National Guard Stations across the United States was based on a Stand Down order concerning the lack of an enemy such as the Soviet Union, but the fact is that the Stand Down is based on a number of new views towards how to handle national concerns.
We only have to look at the outcome of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans, leaving 1900+ dead and showing ineptitude in the government’s handling of a national emergency. This happened in the last days of August and the first days of September of 2005. Today the city is virtually no better off due to governmental involvement. In fact, the city is worse off due to federal governmental involvement.
But I don’t bring New Orleans up as just another failure of this administration. Rather I bring it up to prove a point.
Whilst this administration has been working towards standing down National Guard units they have been employing National Guard units in their war of choice. The net effect is that when the poor New Orleans population was dying there were virtually no National Guard units available once Louisiana’s Governor made it absolutely clear that this was a national disaster. Even then we are talking about the inability of fully 40% of the National Guard contengent being able to respond because they were in Iraq. Not only were they in Iraq, but 60% of their equipment which allowed them to respond to national emergencies was in Iraq.
Bad day for Bush, but a worse 2 years for the people of New Orleans. Can one even question the statement that the administration didn’t know what was happening in New Orleans when we have video of President Bush being appraised of the circumstances involved with the city on day one. How is it that Bush isn’t being held responsible by the American people for 1900+ deaths from Katrina? Is it because Americans don’t care about the death of poor people, or they don’t care about the death of poor blacks?
About the only white people who died during Katrina were either poor from the St. Bernard’s parish or those murdered by the hospitals and old folk’s homes because there was no means for evacuation and no real chance for survival.
So much for the National Guard not being needed during national emergencies.
And so much for the institution of deploying mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans as a test to over-riding Posse Commitatus.
The end of Posse Commitatus was accomplished by the government employing "free market" companies to do the business of government, implanting contractors who’s allegiances might be questionable in place of federally paid employees or military, whose allegiances have been a given for 200+ years. Worse yet, we now know that our intelligence agencies are fully staffed by 60% contractors who may well have their own agenda towards continuing the constant of war for profiteering. And thusly we show that hiring mercenaries for the purposes of doing the business of America is a bad idea.
These same mercenaries claimed to have both arrest powers and "shoot to kill" authority in New Orleans, vested in them by "the powers above". Since these are some of the same people who were employed by the United States as mercenaries (oops, Contract Security Personnel) in Iraq, and considering they were still employed by the same companies who deployed them to Iraq, one has to consider that this administration is willing to hire mercenaries to quell public unrest as well. Only one section of the Executive Branch has the power to authorize armed civilians with arrest and shoot to kill authority being placed upon America’s streets. It happened in the old west with the Pinkertons and it is happening now, even though the laws have changed.
Since the time of paramilitary boots on the streets (or in the water) of New Orleans this administration has opted to hoist a flag of total authority over what has traditionally been the domain of State’s Governors, which is to claim the ability to mobilize the National Guard without State Governor’s approval.
This action would obviously mean that the President holds the keys to the total mobilization of not only the active military and it’s civilian mercenary contingent, but the very Militias the second amendment refers to, which by the Constitution are delegated control by the individual states.
When one person holds the power to invoke all of the military and civilian contracted paramilitary might of a country, then the only question becomes where and upon whom that might would be wielded. How not the civilian population of America if all of this is done in quasi-secrecy? And by quasi-secrecy I mean misleading statements and misdirection of actions. If one is confused it is the same result as one being ignorant of the facts.
Confusion seems to be top most in the mind of Congress these days as they try to make heads or tails out of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ numerous appearances on Capitol Hill. This administration continues to hold back information and find legal precedence to ignore Congress, thus prolonging the day when all of these other pieces of the puzzle of a true coup in America fall into place.
But the plan itself is falling apart at the seams. The National Guard has been decimated, that is true. But the spirit of what is the National Guard has not been decimated, and in that one fact the wheels that have been slowly turning, moving cogs that may well no longer move pertinent other cogs which no longer have a place in today’s social-political environment, and the goals of the Neo-Con politically astute may well be falling on deaf ears.
In the one case, a federal judge, the first appointed by George W. Bush, rules against the Bush administration in a case very important to the maintenance of unequivocal power of the Executive. In another case another Bush appointment rules that all of those decimated by Katrina, who sued insurance companies for their ill-defined "water damage" clause in the insurance contracts, just decided that "water damage" was good enough, regardless of whether a hurricane tore the roof off of your house and then preceded to rain on your house and destroy the rest of the structure.
The mismatched cogs continue to turn and the outcome is usually to the detriment of the people of this great country, but those cogs will ultimately break when the force is increased and the breaking point is achieved. All of the eggs are in one basket of this administration, and the fact is that the basket is bulging from the weight. Some of the eggs are currently leaking. Ultimately when the omelet is made it is going to taste bad to all of the American citizens, even those who created the omelet. You can’t mix bad eggs with good eggs and end up with a good omelet. And you can’t mix bad government with good government and still have good government.
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