“Is Barack Obama A Tyrant?”: Spoiler Alert, The Answer Is No
A typical State of the Union address is criticized for being a “laundry list,” little more than an endless string of proposals the president would like to see enacted. The criticism usually has two parts: first, most of the items on the laundry list will never come to pass, and second, it makes for a boring speech (the pundits who make the criticism seem to care more about the second part). Last night’s SOTU didn’t have the usual laundry list (which of course meant that it was criticized for being too vague), but the one specific proposal getting much attention today is President Obama’s idea to require that on future federal contracts, all workers be paid at least $10.10 per hour. So naturally, Republicans are crying that this is the latest example of Obama’s tyrannical rule, in which he ruthlessly ignores the law whenever he pleases.
As Ted Cruz wrote in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the president’s persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat.” Is there anything to this criticism? Is Obama more of a tyrant than, say, his immediate predecessor? Let’s take a look.
We’ve seen this again and again with Republican critiques of Obama, that a substantive criticism over a policy often gives way to a process criticism. For instance, Republicans often complain that the Affordable Care Act was “rammed through” Congress before anyone had a chance to know what was happening, by which they mean it was debated for over a year, sent through endless hearings, and eventually passed by both houses of congress and signed by the President, and how could that be legitimate? In this case, they know that debating the merits of a minimum wage increase is a political loser, since an increase is supported by between two-thirds and three-quarters of the public in every poll. So it’s much safer to criticize this executive order as inherently unlawful.
In this particular case, however, there’s no question that what President Obama has proposed is neither illegal nor particularly tyrannical. Does the president have the authority to set rules that federal contractors must abide by through an executive order? Yes he does. Does that extend to the wages of the employees who work on federal contracts? Yes it does. If Congress wanted to pass a law rewriting these rules, it could, but unless it does, the president can do it himself. And of course, the next president could reverse Obama’s rules if he or she chose.
So there’s nothing illegal or oppressive about this executive order; the problem conservatives have with it is substantive. It’s possible, however, that they have a broader case to make that Obama is a tyrant. This is a familiar debate, because all presidents chafe at the limits on their power, and many have tried to test those limits. For instance, George W. Bush pushed at the limits of presidential power mostly in the area of national security. I myself can recall using the “tyranny” word with regard to the case of Jose Padilla, whom you may recall as the “dirty bomber,” though the government eventually gave up their assertion that he planned to set off a dirty bomb. What was so dangerous about the Padilla case was that the official position of the Bush administration was that the president had the authority to order a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil, then imprison him for life without charging him with any crime or giving him a trial. It also held that the courts had no right to examine their decision to do so. I do not exaggerate; that was their position. (In the end, when the Supreme Court was about to rule on the case and it was clear the administration would lose, they changed course and put Padilla through the civilian criminal justice system, after holding him for years without charge and subjecting him to a program of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation that quite literally drove him insane.)
There were other memorable ways the Bush administration asserted, sometimes quite openly, that it was above the law. Sometimes it would simply attach a new name to what it was doing; torture is illegal, so when we torture prisoners, we’re not actually torturing them, we’re using “enhanced interrogation.” My personal favorite may be when Dick Cheney proclaimed that as a member of the executive branch, he could use executive privilege as a justification for ignoring congressional subpoenas for documents, but that he was also exempt from laws covering the executive branch, because the vice president is also President of the Senate and therefore part of the legislative branch, though he isn’t subject to their rules either. Cheney declared himself a kind of quantum government official, existing simultaneously in both places yet in neither place, so that he was subject to no laws that restrained either branch.
As for President Obama, there are certainly some areas in which he has tested the limits of presidential power. Just like every president before him, he has made recess appointments when Congress is in something that may or may not qualify as a “true” recess (the Supreme Court is taking up this question). He ordered that deportations of “dreamers”—young people brought to America illegally who are completing school or military service—should be a low enforcement priority, which was a legal way of temporarily creating a situation similar to a law (the DREAM Act) that hasn’t yet been passed. And he has delayed some of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act like the employer mandate, which conservatives cried was outside his authority to do, complete with the requisite invocations of King George III. But as Simon Lazarus noted, delays of regulatory enforcement are common, and the courts rarely find the delay illegal unless it goes on indefinitely and can’t be justified.
In all these cases, it’s true that Obama sought ways to bend the law to his policy preferences. But in every case, he found a way, completely within the law. (As it happens, Obama has issued relatively few executive orders—168 so far, compared to George W. Bush’s 291, Bill Clinton’s 364, Ronald Reagan’s 381, and Franklin Roosevelt’s 3,522. The volume doesn’t tell you how many of the orders were constitutionally questionable, of course, but if he were really a tyrant one might think he’d work harder at it.) That’s what’s happening with the minimum wage; he can’t raise it for all workers without Congress passing an increase into law, but he can raise it for those who work on federal contracts, so that’s what he’s going to do.
You may recall that some conservatives have been calling Barack Obama a tyrant almost from the moment he took office. That’s because they viewed his very occupation of the White House as fundamentally illegitimate, so anything he does must by definition be outside the law. For months they railed angrily against White House “czars” who were supposedly wielding unaccountable power and were the prime evidence of Obama’s tyrannical rule, even though none of them could explain what a “czar” was and how it differed from a person who works on the White House staff. But that lessened their fury not a whit. And none of them were concerned in the least about the ways George W. Bush circumvented the law. That’s because they agreed with the substance of Bush’s policies.
So no, Barack Obama is not a tyrant. If conservatives want to argue that it would be a bad thing if people working on federal contracts made an extra buck or two, they should try to make that case. But I doubt they will.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, January 29, 2014
“Obama’s Best State Of The Union Speech”: Pretty Sure The Last Three Years Of His Presidency Won’t Be Boring
With a strong, optimistic beginning and an unforgettable ending, that may have been President Obama’s best State of the Union speech. Apparently none of the commentators who have been saying his presidency is on its last legs bothered to let him know.
He opened with a portrait of the country – not an America gripped by crisis or mired in despondency, but a sunny place where unemployment is falling, school test scores are rising, housing prices are recovering, deficits are shrinking and manufacturing jobs are coming home. “I believe this can be a breakthrough year for America,” Obama said. The big problem, he said, was the performance of the people sitting before him in the House chamber: “We are not doing right by the American people.” He went on to excoriate Congress for its insistence on trench warfare, challenged his opponents to “focus on creating new jobs, not creating new crises” and pledged that if Republicans won’t work with him, he will take executive action where possible.
But the president’s tone throughout the speech was buoyant, not sour. His defense of the Affordable Care Act was an observation that House Republicans’ first 40 useless votes to repeal the law really should suffice. Even when he bludgeoned the GOP over long-term unemployment benefits or the minimum wage, he did it with a smile. His argument for equal pay and family leave? “It’s time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a ‘Mad Men’ episode.” His call for raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10? “Join the rest of the country. Say yes. Give America a raise.”
There was much that Obama did not say. I heard only one vague, substance-free sentence about domestic surveillance. There was no real discussion of foreign policy until the speech neared the one-hour mark, and the really tough problems where U.S. ideals and interests are out of alignment – Egypt, for example – were not grappled with. The specific executive actions he has vowed to take are significant but not earth-shaking – with one exception: Obama promised to use his authority to regulate carbon emissions. If he is as serious about tackling climate change as he said tonight, this may turn out to be one of the most important speeches of his presidency.
The end of the speech, a tribute to wounded Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg, was an indelible moment. To end with such a powerful story of bravery and resilience gave emotional depth to the overall theme of the speech: America is back. I don’t know how much of his agenda Obama will achieve. But I’m pretty sure the last three years of his presidency won’t be boring.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 29, 2014
State Of The GOP: Misguided And Obsessed
Three years ago, obsession took hold of Republicans in Congress.
In the third week of January 2011, John Boehner’s newly-elected House held its first-ever vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and go back to letting insurance companies do whatever they want. Fast forward to today — nearly 50 votes to repeal or undermine the law later — and it’s clear to the American people that Republicans in Congress aren’t on their side.
Pick an issue: Jobs. The economy. Education. Infrastructure. Minimum wage. Unemployment insurance. Immigration reform.
The list of failures, neglected issues and missed opportunities goes on and on — and shows without question that Republicans are on the side of special interests and the Tea Party, not the American people. No wonder poll after poll still shows House Republicans standing at record lows.
Boehner’s misguided agenda and one-note tenure have ignored what the American people want. In fact, independent, mainstream polls show that most Americans want to improve and fix the law, not repeal it. Americans know what repeal would cost them: giving the power back to insurance companies to discriminate, deny care, drop coverage, raise rates and drive hardworking Americans into bankruptcy.
On the Affordable Care Act and so many other issues that matter to the middle class, the message House Republicans have sent is clear: They are not on the side of hardworking American middle class families, and instead will do everything in their power to protect those who need help the least: the Washington special interests.
While House Republicans have obsessively voted to turn our health care system back over to insurance companies, that is far from the only damage they have inflicted on the people of this country. Their disastrous government shutdown — which they launched to oppose the Affordable Care Act — cost our economy $24 billion. They won’t extend unemployment insurance for struggling Americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and who are looking for work — all while they make sure that Big Oil gets its $40 billion in subsidies. They refuse to raise the minimum wage, while seeking maximum tax cuts for the rich. They have yet to pass anything that remotely resembles a jobs bill.
Those wrong priorities will come back to haunt them in November.
A few Republicans are making the first motions to run away from this unpopular approach and to deny their repeal-only agenda. They’re hoping that voters will think that they’ve woken up and found some common sense — but voters won’t forget nearly 50 votes, and they won’t forgive them for turning their backs on hardworking people.
Republicans’ flawed priorities are hurting real families in this country. With every repeal vote, John Boehner might get a kick out of conservative news headlines and the talk radio echo chamber, but what regular Americans see is a politician who cares more about wealthy insurance company contributors than helping their families.
Voters will have a choice this fall between Republicans’ wrong priorities, and problem-solving Democrats who have dedicated their lives to helping middle class families get ahead. I believe that choice will be clear.
By: Rep Steve Israel, Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, CNN Opinion, January 28, 2014
“GOP Post Campaign Buckraking”: When Politicians Embrace The Power Of Spam
As a notable Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain was able to pull together an email list of several hundred thousand people. His campaign obviously didn’t turn out well, but Cain eventually created an online media venture called Best of Cain, which continues to send out messages to former supporters on a wide range of topics.
How wide a range? Those on Cain’s mailing list recently received an alert with an all-caps subject line about a “breakthrough remedy” for erectile dysfunction. It was, of course, an ad – and a rather clumsy one at that. Cain supporters were told they were at risk of losing their loved one unless they got their “manhood mojo back.”
For many of us, it would appear as if Herman Cain has begun spamming Americans who supported his presidential campaign. But as Ben Adler reports in a fascinating piece, Cain and other Republicans believe they’ve come up with a lucrative business plan.
While [Cain] has been particularly unabashed in his embrace of the practice, he is not the only past presidential candidate hawking sketchy products. Newt Gingrich now pings the e-mail subscribers to his Gingrich Productions with messages from an investment firm formed by a conspiracy theorist successfully sued for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mike Huckabee uses his own production company’s list to blast out links to heart-disease fixes and can’t-miss annuities.
The joke about Cain and Gingrich during the 2012 campaign was that they weren’t at all serious about their pursuits of the presidency but instead just lining up future paydays. After Huckabee, who’d parlayed a strong showing in 2008 into publishing deals and his own Fox News show, declined to run again, some wags snickered that his new livelihood must have been too hard to give up. Now all three seem to be proving the cynics right…. Collectively, Cain, Gingrich, and Huckabee are pioneering a new, more direct method for post-campaign buckraking. All it requires is some digitally savvy accomplices – and a total immunity to shame.
There’s a reason I love this Chris Hayes comment from a while back: “Much of movement conservatism is a con and the base are the marks.”
One of the striking things about the ventures launched by Cain, Gingrich, and Huckabee is the odd incentive dynamic they’ve helped create: political activities that used to be based on partisanship, ideology, and/or ego are now profit-making opportunities.
A Republican may not have any interest in actually becoming president, but he or she now knows that a presidential campaign can create a lucrative mailing list. So why not run anyway for the sake of future paychecks?
It’s not just elections, either. Last summer, for example, as conservatives prepared for their government shutdown, Brian Walsh, a former spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said, “[T]his is about political cash, not political principle.” Far-right groups were getting the base riled up, collecting contributions and email addresses, and weren’t especially concerned with the policy outcome.
More recently, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) made the rounds on conservative media, talking up a possible lawsuit he might file against the NSA. In practice, the senator was encouraging interested Americans to visit his campaign website, submit their contact information, and chip in a donation while they were there. (The lawsuit he vowed to file hasn’t materialized.)
At the intersection of politics and profit is a Republican machine in search of email addresses, clicks, and cash. It’s not that conservative causes are irrelevant; it’s just that they’re hardly the only motivation for GOP players as interested in list-building as coalition-building.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 28, 2014
“A Change That Can’t Come Soon Enough”: The Poor Deserve Equal Protection By The Law
If you’ve been a tourist or business traveler recently in Kenya, India, Guatemala or any other developing country, you probably saw uniformed guards in the stores and offices you visited or hotels where you slept. The sight of these guards is so common that their presence most likely faded into the background. But they are emblematic of a massive social transformation that is passing unnoticed: Throughout the developing world, public justice systems are being replaced with private systems of security and dispute resolution. The implications for the world’s poorest people are devastating.
Businesses and economic elites in developing countries left frustrated by incompetent police, clogged courts and hopelessly overburdened judges and prosecutors are increasingly circumventing these systems and buying their own protection. In India in late 2010 the private security industry already employed more than 5.5 million people — roughly four times the size of the entire Indian police force. A 2009 World Bank report showed roughly the same ratio in Kenya. The largest employer in all of Africa is a private security firm, Group4Securicor, and in Guatemala, private security forces outnumber public police 7 to 1.
The repercussions extend far beyond the elites and businesses that buy safety: When protection must be purchased, the poorest are left with nothing to shield them from violence. In many developing countries, if you want to be safe, you pay to be safe. And if you can’t pay to be safe — you aren’t.
As elites abandon the public security system, their impoverished neighbors, especially women and girls, are left relying on underpaid, under-trained, undisciplined and frequently corrupt police forces for protection and all-but-paralyzed courts for justice.
This is not a small problem isolated to a single context. It is the terrifying truth of everyday life for billions of our poorest neighbors. As a U.N. commission found in 2008, a stunning 4 billion poor people live outside the protection of law.
When a justice system descends into utter dysfunction, those who exploit and abuse vulnerable people may do so without fear of apprehension or prosecution. As a result, violence is an everyday threat, as much a part of what it means to be poor as being hungry, sick, homeless or jobless. World Bank data suggest that, globally, women and girls ages 15 to 44 are at greater risk of being killed or disabled by gender-based violence than by cancer, traffic accidents, malaria and war combined — with poor women and girls absorbing the vast majority of the abuse. Appallingly, for many girls in the developing world, school is the most common place where sexual violence occurs.
This result cannot be attributed solely, or even primarily, to the elites’ abandonment of the public justice system. For one thing, the colonial-era justice systems that linger in most of the developing world were never designed to protect the poor from common crime, nor were they meaningfully re-engineered to do so after independence. For another, trillions in aid have been provided to the developing world, but virtually nothing has been spent on improving criminal justice systems to meet the basic needs of poor people.
It is perfectly rational for wealthy citizens and businesses to protect themselves and their property. But when elites, including government officials, have no stake in professional and reliable public security, it deteriorates, just like libraries and schools do when affluent families opt out of public facilities and pay for such services in the private sector.
In the midst of great and worthy efforts to help the global poor build better lives, donors and development institutions have paid little attention to the painstaking work required to ensure the things that are indispensable to stopping violence: professional and accountable police; and functioning prosecutors, courts and child welfare agencies.
Even with the widespread recognition that everyday violence undermines health, education and opportunity, it has been assumed that poor communities can move forward without basic law enforcement systems — a notion none of us has been willing to bet on for our own communities.
The United Nations is in the process of revising the 2000 Millennium Development Goals. Although the original eight goals inspired enormous progress toward addressing poverty, the issue of violence against the poor wasn’t even mentioned. It’s time to add a target for providing the poor basic law enforcement protections from everyday violence.
Identifying the right to safety and justice as a crucial development goal is a first step toward including those marginalized by violence and exploitation in the world’s drive to end extreme poverty. For children, women and men plagued by violence as they try to climb out of poverty, it’s a change that can’t come soon enough.
By: Gary A. Haugen, The Washington Post, Opinions, January 26, 2014
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