Posted on 06/17/2017 10:42:33 PM PDT by MtnClimber
From different directions, conservatives have begun to aim their guns at our “administrative state.” Most of the rules we live by aren’t laws passed by Congress or court decisions. Instead, they’re to be found in the thousands of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations or in the interpretative advice found in agency opinion letters and policy statements. The agencies generally exercise their power in secret, and they’re barely accountable to anyone.
With formal regulations there’s at least a requirement that public notice be given and comments welcomed before new rules are promulgated. But agencies often provide far more detailed handbooks or interpretations of the regulations, not to mention the advice they might give over the phone or in letters to affected parties, and none of this goes through an administrative review process.
To give but one example, the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans granted 5 million illegal immigrants immunity from deportation and gave them work permits. It reads like a statute, but it wasn’t one, and it wasn’t even a regulation or executive order.
Instead, it was a memorandum from the Homeland Security secretary. The Fifth Circuit held this an improper attempt to sidestep administrative review, and the Supreme Court split 4-4. But that was just one case, and virtually none of the nonregulation regulations end up before the courts.
The administrative state has been around for a good long time, but in the last few years it’s become a major political issue. First, the sheer accumulation of rules over time has made the problem seem exponentially greater, and even a threat to democracy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Thanks 0bama and state marxists, not!
“[T]he first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.”The administrative state “democracy-killing”, indeed? or endemic to it?
— Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2, 1848
“[I]t is very clear that in fundamental theory, socialism and democracy are almost, if not quite, one and the same. … Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. …”
— Woodrow Wilson, 1887
Good that the topic is given exposure in such a large paper.
Cultural Marxism is like Jihad in that both, we are assured, aren’t really about Marxism or Islam respectively even though in their every particular they are carried forward in the popular culture of the left.
It’s like watching some progressive say that “critical theory” went no where when without it he’d be unable to recognize the scant tatters of both his party and ideology that might somehow survive it being hacked away.
“The agencies generally exercise their power in secret, and they’re barely accountable to anyone.”
UNaccountable bureaucrats are socialists.
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” - list of grievances; Declaration
https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/a
Socialism Is Legal Plunder - Bastiat
DEFUND/DISMANTLE/DESTROY (when necessary) socialist/totalitarian collectives, foreign and domestic.
live - free - republic
/UNaccountable bureaucrats
The perfect area for a president to flex his Executive Order muscles.
drain the swamp
we got along perfectly fine when the entire government ( local, county, state, and federal ) was 7% of GDP in 1912. Teddy Roosevelt built and operated the Great White Fleet. Wages were skyrocketing. Prices were dropping. We had the world’s best transportation system.
Keep draining until we reach 7%
The real answer to the democracy-destroying administrative state??
Bankruptcy and real money out of their control
I expected a better solution than the one provided.
Thank scotus for elevating despotism to that of republicanism, of enshrining rule by the few with the Constitution.
Just do as we are told and keep voting.
Say what you want about Glenn beck,but when Obama was first elected he talked about who the most dangerous man in America was going to be,Cass Sunstein,Obama’s Regulatory Czar,he was spot on with that one,he just happened to be the husband to the UN Ambassador at the time Left wing loon Samantha Power.
Zero out all of it (except DoD), and tell the states that those powers are theirs, if they even want them.
It matters not what discipline of business you’re in, this is a massive problem. If buro’s can pile on they will. They give force of law to their own opinions, invariably pro-government, and anti freedom. A possible check on this power could be to force any work product they come up with back to the Congressional Committee that has the oversight on their department. Committee votes could at least say “nah, we didn’t mean that, try again”. This isn’t ideal, but, it would SLOW down the proliferation of administrative law that no one voted for, that supports only tiny special interests or pro-govt power.
In survey after survey, when quizzed as to “the most serious threat to our country,” the vast majority answer, “the federal government.” This should have never happened to Americans, who have kept their end of the bargain by paying trillions of their hard-earned wages in taxes and giving lives and limbs to the protection of this country to now have a powerful central government that abuses them.
Whatever happened to “government of the people, for the people, by the people?” Answer: The administrative state which is controlled by those who love power more than the people.
The administrative state is a political child (creation) of progressives who HATE representative government (law enacted solely by elected representatives); it (representative government) gets in the way of “rule by the experts” - a utopian ideal of progressives.
It has been achieved with one-off “democratic” acts that amount legislative acts of abdication of the sole authority handed to Congress by the Constitution - that Congress and no one else is the (required) author of ALL federal law.
There can be no “reform” of the administrative state. It’s authority to make law independently of the legislature - each and every time for each and every regulation, and to enforce anything on its own outside of the courts and without taking requests for that enforcement (just as police must) to “law prosecutors” in the department of justice, who MUST BE REQUIRED to first determine, on their own if in fact a violation has occurred.
Fines, and any restrictions imposed by regulation must be an outcome of a court process - trial - initiated to weigh evidence, provide for defense of any defendant, and let the court system decide; not by actions taken by “regulators” against defendants BEFORE they get their “day in court”.
Apologies for resurrecting a thread from last week, but would you be willing to explain how Article V would be used in your scenario?
I understand that Article V is the section of the Constitution that establishes the right to amend the Constitution, and the process for doing so.
I do not doubt that under your scenario, in which all other avenues have been exhausted, Article V would be the logical recourse.
I’m curious - what particular amendment are you proposing?
For example, if I had to guess from your context what amendment might address the problem of entrenched deep state bureaucracies, I might imagine one that would limit federal support staffers and bureaucracies to the terms of the elected or appointed officials they support.
It would be a sort of “zero based bureaucracy”.
Depending on how the amendment was written, it could even specify what departments and agencies were permanent, and beyond those, require that any new departments, agencies or executive orders created by a congress or an administration would automatically expire at the end of the session or term of office of whichever body established it.
In some cases even an agency designated as permenant could be subject to total restaffing.
Is that similar to what you had in mind?
I’m sure that detractors would argue that it would be too disruptive, there would be no continuity, and replacing hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats every 4 or 8 years would be a logistical nightmare.
My rebuttal? 1) The whole point of term limitations is to disrupt continuity in order to ensure that government is responsive to the electorate. 2) any ensuing logistical nightmare would be a good deterrent to an oversized government.
With respect to your particular inquiry concerning the bureaucratic state which I find increasingly tyrannical because it combines the functions of the first three articles and thus destroys the concept of separation of powers by reposing in often anonymous and unelected bureaucrats the power to make law, interpret law, enforce law, adjudicate violation of law, impose penalties. So not only is the practice undemocratic, it is a recipe for tyranny.
The solution? Mark Levin suggests that when a regulation is weighty enough to cross a threshold of cost to the economy it should be liable to be set aside by congressional vote. You can find his language advocating this reform on the Internet. I prefer a more self enforcing reform, holding all bureaucratic regulations to be null and void if not approved by Congress within a given time limit.
Please note this is a process reform which is the kind of constitutional amendment which I believe will have actual effect. You will read in these threads opponents of Article V declare that the Constitution as it exists is not being followed and therefore there is no warrant to believe that amended Constitution will be followed either. But the contrary is the historical truth, we no longer have slavery thanks to the 13th amendment, we no longer have senators elected by state legislatures, no "thanks" owing to that progressive reform. So history tells us process amendments work and hold up under the test of time.
Such an amendment would not guarantee that the bureaucracy will be overruled in our favor on every issue, but, if there is any science to political science, it does guarantee that the matter will be brought back under the control of the people. The principle of separation of powers will be observed. And that is the only decent long-term objective of one who sets out to create conservative governance.
I am not sure I am for imposing term limits on bureaucrats, that runs contrary to the great reforms which imposed civil service over the spoils system. If there is the check of mandatory approval by the federal legislature as I propose, a further division of power exists with the bureaucrats actually checking the Congress-which in itself could be a good thing but which would be achieved only if the bureaucrats in fact are possessed of an expertise acquired by experience and training. They in their turn to be checked by Congress.
The head of the bureaucratic agency, on the other hand, as a political actor should be cleaned out with every administration.
I see. So the term “Article V” is being being used here as shorthand for “Article V Convention of the States as per Mark Levin”.
With that in mind, I just read parts of an address by Mark Levin to State Legislatures wherein he pleads with them to “Take your Power Back.”
Between that and your thoughtful reply, I think I’m mostly ‘caught up’.
The optimistic side:
I am picturing that map of red vs blue counties, where the blue color representing the democrats is mostly limited to several densely populated urban islands, surrounded by a vast ocean of red.
It is a ray of hope, if one can assume the red republican voters correlate sufficiently with love of liberty and hatred toward an overreaching state.
If the state legislatures heed Mark’s advice, this Article V is clearly the pressure point where Liberty can make its stand against the Tyranny of the urban statists in LA, Chicago, NYC, etc.
The pessimistic side:
My fear is that too few of the young people of today have any respect for the founding principles of limited government. Ironically, those with “higher education” are the most ignorant, having been seduced and corrupted by the leftists that hold Hollywood, academia and the media captive.
Even in the vast rural areas where Liberty is still cherished, those youngsters ambitious enough, civic-minded enough, “sophisticated” enough to go to law school and run for public office, already have their eye fixed on the big city lights. Everything they experience while at the university guides them ever leftward.
Even if their parents or grandparents were farmers or tradesmen hurt by federal intrusion, where will these youngsters’ sympathies lie by the time they take their place in State Legislature?
I hope I’m wrong, but I believe history is devoid of any examples of a people wresting back control over an overreaching state. Instead, the monopoly gets progressively stronger until it self destructs in a super nova of fire and brimstone. Occasionally, a Phoenix rises from the ashes.
Yet, the USA has been exceptional before - who knows.
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