Posted on 08/05/2021 10:53:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
The president knows what he ordered the CDC to do is illegal. He did it anyway to appease the left wing of his party.
An astonishing thing happened this week in Washington that didn’t get much critical coverage from a media establishment loath to criticize President Biden. At the behest of congressional Democrats, Biden flouted the Constitution and broke his oath of office by issuing a ban on evictions that he and his advisers know to be illegal.
By “ban on evictions” I mean the president issued a blatantly unconstitutional decree that renters all across America don’t have to pay rent. If landlords try to evict tenants for not paying rent, they could face criminal penalties including fines and imprisonment.
The eviction moratorium is one of the most important stories of the COVID-19 lockdowns but also one of the least covered, partly because its effects are so diffuse and partly because the left doesn’t want to draw undue attention to its evisceration of property rights under the guise of public health.
But the way all this has gone down illustrates a deeply disturbing reality about the Democrats running the pandemic response in Washington: They’re lawless, and as the pandemic drags on, they’re becoming bolder about it.
The background here is that a nationwide ban on evictions, first instituted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last September under President Trump and renewed under Biden, expired on Saturday. Since then, Democrats in Congress have been agitating for an extension of the ban despite a determination by the U.S. Supreme Court in June that the CDC has no legal authority to do that, as anyone with a passing familiarity of the U.S. Constitution could tell you.
That includes most everyone in the White House. Gene Sperling, who oversees the Biden administration’s rollout of COVID-19 relief, told reporters on Tuesday that the president “has not only kicked the tires; he has double, triple, quadruple checked” the legality of an eviction ban, but the CDC told Biden it was “unable to find the legal authority for even new, targeted eviction moratoriums.”
Indeed, the notion that a federal agency tasked with the control and prevention of infectious diseases could simply by fiat impose an “eviction moratorium” on the entire country, effectively nationalizing housing, is shocking and outrageous. Biden himself knows this. At a press conference on Tuesday, he said that “the bulk of the constitutional scholars say it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.”
It sure isn’t. But later that same day he did it anyway. The next day, White House press secretary Jen Psaki came out and lied to reporters’ faces about the moratorium, claiming it wasn’t an extension of the old ban but a brand new one, “a more limited moratorium that was going to be impacting and helping areas that were hardest hit by COVID.” But Sperling had just said the day before, with Psaki standing at his side, that the CDC had determined that it had no legal authority even for a more limited moratorium.
So why the breathtakingly dishonest about-face? Because of pressure from left-wing Democrats who don’t give a damn about the rule of law or constraints on executive power — so long as their side is wielding it.
The pressure campaign of left-wing Democrats took the form of an embarrassing reality TV stunt. Members of “the squad” — Reps. Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley — along with other Democrats, began camping out on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Friday. A clip of Bush, surrounded by bags of potato chips and Oreo cookies, wringing her hands and seeming to fight back tears, circulated on social media to considerable and much-deserved derision.
Just after sunrise @CoriBush is still out on the steps demanding the House reconvene to pass eviction moratorium extension pic.twitter.com/y1KzXHoFT7
— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotnbc) July 31, 2021
But the stunt worked. Biden’s CDC issued the order even though everyone in the administration knows it’s illegal and will eventually be struck down by the courts. The purpose of such a stunt is that because it will take a little while for the courts to act, the moratorium will provide some relief in the interim.
The utter contempt for the rule of law shown in all of this is simply staggering, as is the contempt shown for actual landlords, nearly half of whom nationwide are small-time landlords, people who own a second house or apartment that they rent out. Many of these people have gone a year without receiving any rent, yet they’re still liable for taxes, upkeep, and mortgage payments. Contrary to the cartoonish framing of the issue by Democrats and much of the corporate press — wealthy landlords throwing impoverished tenets out on the street — not all landlords are massive hedge funds or evil corporations.
This is so obvious even the New York Times acknowledged it in a recent piece about a woman in Queens who rents the first floor and basement of her two-story home but hasn’t been able to collect rent in 15 months. Her tenants, who began tormenting her and eventually left after the woman got an order of protection and then a warrant for the tenants’ arrest, owe her more than $36,000.
Landlords like this woman are supposed to be able to survive because of a $46.5 billion federal government rental relief fund. The problem is, the money isn’t being used, partly because many renters know they don’t risk eviction for not paying rent. With trillions of government aide already creating incentives for people not to return to work, the eviction moratorium creates an incentive not to pay rent — or even to apply for government assistance to pay it.
Beyond the terrible economics of all this is the abject disdain for the rule of law that it reveals. Not that Democrats are all that concerned about the law these days. The southwest border has descended into chaos amid an historic surge of illegal immigration fueled by the Biden administration’s stubborn refusal to enforce federal immigration law.
Democratic state lawmakers in Texas have fled their constituencies — and broken state law — to assemble in Washington and pressure Congress to pass a dubious and far-reaching federal voting law that would preempt a GOP-backed law back home and effectively nationalize elections in the U.S. They were joined this week by Democratic state lawmakers from all over the country.
Such examples abound. It should be clear by now that whatever else is constraining the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress, it isn’t the law. The law, for now, is whatever they say it is.
“The president knows what he ordered the CDC to do is illegal.”
Please tell me something he has done that is legal.
News flash: The Democrat Party embraced lawlessness a LONG time ago.
The Rats openly stole the election.
I’m declaring a moratorium on paying income and property taxes. My authority? I don’t need no stinkin’ authority.
Fully agree. Sanctuary cities. Refusal to charge rioters. Release of convicts due to coronavirus fears. Planting violent demonstrators in public hearings like Kavanaugh hearing. Unequal treatment under the law depending on political affiliation. Refusal to enforce laws against vagrancy, panhandling, nuisances. Refusal to enforce immigration laws. Crossfire hurricane. Fast and furious gun running. Legislation manipulation to create trojan horse bills for later defining. Entrapment. Refusal to prosecute shoplifting. Distributing fines levied against corporations to liberal activist groups. Attempts to effect federal takeover of elections. Selective leaking of information to the media. Recommending unconstitutional acts for the purpose of taking advantage of delays in getting them reversed at court. (By the time the eviction moratorium is ruled upon by our intimidated Supremes, it will be the cold months and “surely no one would support evictions during these cold holiday months.”)
This recent action is wrong, illegal, unconstitutional and invalid. NO branch of the government has the right to invalidate the terms of a legal contract. Not the pres, not congress, not the judiciary, not CDC. None of them. Threatening jail time?
By taking this action they have violated the rights of millions of Americans.
The brain-dead American public is walking around with its finger up its nose, not caring about what’s happening. What it doesn’t know is that they are next: their homes, their cars, their IRAs, their 401Ks.
I was thinking of 1992, but yes all that also.
I’m sure Nancy Pelosi’s renters are paying up.
seems to me that the only lawlessness they are supporting is theirs. Anyone else like the Jan 6th gang, not so much.
Congress will vote to extend the eviction ban once they reconvene in September. I will guess they will vote to extend it one year.
Yeah, the rule of law is kaput.
Just keep voting. As if it matters.
Communism
Socialism
Marxism
Riots
Murder
Looting
Chaos
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