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Obama acts is if he’s above the law; he’s not

29 Apr

one bill at at time

Feb. 27, 2014 @ 12:00 AM

What liberals refer to as “obstructionist” tactics by Republicans in blocking the socialist policies of Barack Hussein Obama, conservatives call “preserving the Constitution.”

It’s interesting that while the president has often referred to himself as a “constitutional law professor,” the title is somewhat gratuitous. While never a full-time or tenured professor, he did teach courses in constitutional law at the University of Chicago as a “senior lecturer.”

Unfortunately, rather than use his knowledge to adhere to its provisions, the president has chosen to test the boundaries of our government’s founding document.

Article II, Section 3 of the U. S. Constitution, sometimes known as the “Faithful Execution Clause,” is best read as a duty that qualifies the president’s executive power. By virtue of this power, the president is required to “take care” that our nation’s laws are “faithfully executed.”

But not only has Obama been derelict in his duty to protect our laws, he’s an offender.

As Democrats are so fond of reminding Republicans, Obamacare is now the law of the land.

But despite the fact The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was indeed signed into law in 2010 and ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, President Obama believes it’s within his power to make changes without Congressional action!

Our Constitution clearly grants legislative powers to Congress. The president does not have the authority to arbitrarily “alter” legislation signed into law.

The employer mandate, which requires businesses employing 50 or more full-time employees to provide health insurance or pay a fine, was scheduled to take effect in 2014, but has been delayed entirely or in part, twice, by the president!

The fact that Obamacare is poor legislation doesn’t grant the president powers exceeding those afforded him by the Constitution.

And in the first case of its kind, the Supreme Court is now arguing the legality of four “recess” appointments made by President Obama to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2012. The Constitution allows the president to make temporary appointments to those positions that otherwise require Senate confirmation, but only when the Senate is in recess. The problem is — the Senate was not in recess!

Three federal appeals courts have already ruled that Obama overstepped his authority in these appointments.

It’s obvious the president is following the “executive version” of the liberal playbook which calls for continuous contestation of preconceived limitations designed to “progressively” tilt the scales of totalitarian power to the left.

President Obama is arguably the most liberal president in our nation’s history. If he’s successful in these attempts to bypass our nation’s laws, what leftist policies will he pursue in his remaining years in office?

The U.S. Constitution is not merely a guideline to be consulted by those it was written to regulate. It’s the supreme law of the land written to protect the rights of all Americans and must be protected.

It’s time Americans “tether” President Obama to the Constitution and hold him accountable for adhering to its precepts.

This president is not above the law.

Mark Caserta is a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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20 PERCENT OF FAMILIES HAVE NO ONE WORKING

29 Apr

family

CNSNews.com) – In 20 percent of American families in 2013, according to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), not one member of the family worked.

A family, as defined by the BLS, is a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent–no one had a job.

The BLS designates a person as “employed” if “during the survey reference week” they “(a) did any work at all as paid employees; (b) worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm; (c) or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family.”

Members of the 16,127,000 families in which no one held jobs could have been either unemployed or not in the labor force. BLS designates a person as unemployed if they did not have a job but were actively seeking one. BLS designates someone as not in the labor force if they did not have a job and were not actively seeking one. (An elderly couple, in which both the husband and wife are retired, would count as a family in which no one held a job.)

In 20% of American Families, No One Works-1

Of the 80,445,000 families in the United States in 2013, there were 7,685,000—or about 9.6 percent—in which at least one family member unemployed.

The BLS has been tracking data on employment in families since 1995. That year, the percent of families in which no one had a job was 18.8 percent. The percentage hit an all-time high of 20.2 percent in 2011. It held steady at 20 percent in in 2012 and 2013.

The data on employment in families is based on Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey of the civilian noninstitutional population, which includes people 16 and older, who are not on active duty in the military or in an institution such as a prison, nursing home or mental hospital.

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Mark Caserta: Agenda 21 pushes more farm regulation

21 Apr

Another “prophetic” column I wrote in 2011 before Agenda 21 was even on the radar:

farmland

Aug. 10, 2011 @ 10:20 PM

West Virginia is blessed to have a number of family-owned and operated farms.

According to the most recent Census of Agriculture by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, West Virginia is home to over 23,000 farms, with about 50 percent of the state’s farmers considering farming their primary occupation.

It’s easy to take the value farmers offer our economy for granted. The closest many of us get to a farm is the occasional roadside stand or “farmer’s market.”

“Agenda 21” is a two-decade-old United Nation’s plan drawn up at the U.N. “Earth Summit” in Rio in 1992 supporting global “Sustainable Development.”

On June 9, President Obama signed an executive order to ensure the acceleration of rural America in the participation of the Agenda 21 goals.

The order, which established a White House Rural Council consisting of 25 branch departments, is designed to “enhance federal engagement with rural communities.” It covers 16 percent of the American population who live in rural counties and supply our food, fiber and energy and safeguard our natural resources.

To fully appreciate the potential impact of this regulation, one must understand the UN’s longtime stance on the issue of individuals owning land.

The Preamble of the UN’s land policy states:

“Land … cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes.”

Where is the connection?

One of the executive branch departments of this newly created White House Rural Council is the Department of Transportation.

Recently, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, part of the DOT, proposed a rule change for farm equipment that would reclassify all farm vehicles as commercial motor vehicles and require all farmers and equipment drivers to obtain a commercial driver’s license to operate any farming equipment.

This proposal, if enacted, would place significant regulatory pressure on small and family farms across America, narrowing margins and potentially forcing many out of business. It could override the rights of the states and claim regulatory control over an estimated 800,000 farm workers.

Americans should be watchful and vigilant.

Any provision which provides the government this much control over food and real estate under the guise of “sustainability” is unsettling.

Mark Caserta is a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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Mark Caserta: Liberals’ only interest is fundamental change

17 Apr

holder

hillary

lerner

sebelius

Apr. 17, 2014 @ 12:00 AM

Few government entities have the capacity to impact Americans more than the Justice Department, the State Department, the Health and Human Services Department and the Internal Revenue Service. All are led by individuals appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate.

With a combined annual budget approaching $1 trillion of taxpayer money, these agencies shoulder significant responsibility in managing the infrastructure of government and taking care of the people’s business.

Yet despite the substandard performance of each of these government agencies during the Obama administration, liberals seem more focused on advancing their progressive movement than strengthening our nation and seeking justice.

In 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt by the House of Representatives for refusing to turn over documents tied to the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-running operation. Two guns found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s fatal shooting were determined to be linked to the Justice Department operation. While the investigation is ongoing, Holder insists the tragedy is simply being leveraged for political advantage.

On the night of September 11, 2012, a heavily armed group of terrorists attacked the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing four brave Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. In the days following the attack, the State Department would engage in what appeared to be a cover-up of what actually happened during the attack with a fabricated story claiming the uprising was in opposition to an anti-Muslim film that had triggered protests in Egypt and elsewhere.

Recently, shouldering the weight of a miserable Healthcare.gov rollout and feeling the pressure of an upcoming election, Kathleen Sebelius resigned her post as secretary of Health and Human Services. But timing is everything in politics, so it was important for the Obama administration to “accept” her resignation in the wake of the announcement that 7.5 million people already had signed up for Obamacare. Interestingly, the White House will not provide answers to key questions, such as how many enrollees were previously insured and how many have actually paid their first month’s premium.

But this administration has proven it won’t allow facts to get in the way of advancing its agenda. It’s mind-numbing for liberals to be so infatuated with this president it means absolutely nothing to them that he repeatedly and unrepentantly lied to Americans about the Affordable Care Act!

And just last week, The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved a resolution to hold ex-IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify at two of the panel’s hearings. Lerner, who headed an IRS division that reviews applications for tax exemption, invoked her Fifth Amendment right at both hearings when asked about targeting of Tea Party affiliated organizations.

Now, we’ve always had government corruption, but the scope and practice here is unprecedented. Despite the Obama administration’s autocratic, unfettered approach, liberals don’t seem to care.

They simply want fundamental change.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page

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AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY EVENT – CHARLESTON, WV.

8 Apr

americans for prosperity

I couldn’t agree more with the vision of this fine organization.
Government spending is bankrupting our children’s future and “Americans For Prosperity” is at the front lines working for the American taxpayer.

I want to thank Wendy McCuskey, WV State Director, for her endeavors for the people for several years now. I also plan to do whatever I can to support her in her new position with AFP WV.

Godspeed Wendy!

AFP WV TAX Day of Activism

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The Cloward-Piven Plan to Destroy Governments

4 Apr

20120516_Cloward-Piven
by FRANK SALVATO May 17, 2012

In 1966, two Columbia University sociologists, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, collaborated on a theory to end poverty in the United States. This theory, today, is referred to as the “Cloward-Piven Strategy.” People who are familiar with the likes of Saul Alinsky and William Ayers are familiar with the strategy, as are the full complement of the Progressive Movement.

In a nutshell, the underlying principle of the Cloward-Piven Strategy is to so overload the entitlement system – to add so many to the entitlement rolls, that the country’s economic system collapses, unleashing chaos and violence in the streets, thus affecting radical Leftist political change in government. Up until recently this theory has been just that, a theory, and a theory that anarchists and Progressives have salivated over for their want of execution. But today, we are seeing the fruits of the Cloward-Piven Strategy played out to success in Greece and several other financial destitute countries in Europe.

To summarize briefly the Cloward-Piven Strategy, I turn to Richard Poe who wrote an article of the same name, which is featured at DiscoverTheNetworks.org.

Mr. Poe observes that Mr. Cloward and Ms. Piven sought (and “seeks,” in the case of Ms. Piven) to facilitate the fall of Capitalism by “overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.” Mr. Poe explained that Cloward and Piven saw the so-called “ruling class” as using entitlements to “weaken the poor”; to make the poor dependent on government, thus “dousing the fires of rebellion,” following the “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” theory.

In a 1970 New York Times interview, Cloward is quoted as saying that poor people can only advance when “the rest of society is afraid of them.” He then theorized that activists should refrain from demanding that government provide more for the poverty stricken and, instead, should strive to pack as many people on the welfare (read: entitlement) rolls as possible, creating a demand that could not be met, facilitating the destruction of the welfare system and massive financial crisis. As a byproduct, rebellion would be ignited amongst the people; chaos would rule the streets and governments would be damaged beyond repair, many falling to history making it possible for new radicals to assume the roles of oligarchs, ushering in new systems of government and the dismantling of the Capitalist system in particular.

Both Cloward and Piven understood that it would take pushing the American citizenry to the point of anarchy, to the point of the populace affecting violent chaos in the streets, for there to emerge an opportunity to damage our Republican form of government and our Capitalist system to the point where people would accept radical political as well as economic change. Cloward and Piven, using the philosophy of Saul Alinsky (who, by-the-by, was their inspiration in fomenting their “strategy”), knew that they would have to achieve chaos, so as to introduce the Progressive political ideology – the ideology of Democratic Socialism – to the masses as a saving grace.

In an article titled, The United States of America Is Not a Democracy, in introduction to a spectacular presentation that puts into plain words our misinterpreted political spectrum of “Left v. Right,” I explain how the Progressive Movement seeks to achieve chaos to smooth the progress of governmental transition:

“Those who possess nefarious and/or ideological agendas for our nation often refer to our system of government as a Democracy, knowing full well that Democracy is a transitional state between a Republican form of government and an Oligarchic form of government; a vehicle for transition to first, majority rule, which, in light of the corruptible and narcissistic frailty of human virtue, eventually leads to the establishment of an Oligarchy – or, rule by an elitist class – and the trampling of the rights of those in the minority. The implementation of this transition is facilitated by a distracted, agitated and uninformed citizenry and a people who exist constitutionally illiterate…

“…those who promote the misnomer that the United States is a Democracy infer direct governmental control by the people, thus usurping the established governmental system. In most cases, this cultivates a false sense of entitlement and in some cases promotes anarchical behavior among factions of the citizenry.”

Getting back to The Cloward-Piven Strategy, chaos and how the violent protests in Greece and Spain relate directly to us here in the United States…

It is easy to see how our expanding entitlements and our population’s expanding dependency on government, combined with the purposeful engagement in reckless fiscal policy, plays directly into the demise of the country by accelerating the poison of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

A recent PJ Tatler column at PJMedia.com offers this observation:

“Voters in both France and Greece, two countries ruinously addicted to government entitlements, rejected the ‘austerity’ model of debt-reduction and instead doubled down on unsustainable spending sprees. France elected Socialist Francois Hollande as president, and in his acceptance speech he promised to increase government benefits and amp up ‘stimulus’ spending programs – the exact things that got France into a metaphorical debtors’ prison in the first place. But exactly as Cloward and Piven had surmised, once you get 50+% of the population hooked on ‘free’ government money, there’s no turning back – they will vote for socialists every time. The election of Hollande is the culmination of Cloward-Piven; the strategy worked, but in the wrong country…

“The message is clear: Once enough voters are on the dole, regardless of your party’s ideology or what label it has, you will win elections if you promise to keep the free money flowing. This was Cloward-Piven’s point, and they turned out to be frighteningly correct.”

I will take this a step further.

As we watched the so-called Arab spring play out, we saw that international labor unions – international labor unions, the likes of the SEIU – had boots on the ground, honing their organizational skills, as violent chaos reigned supreme. In Greece, as in Spain, France, Italy and every other European locale wrestling with financial insolvency, labor unions – international labor unions – were on the frontlines of the protests, antagonizing the anarchists and fomenting discontent amongst the masses. In each locale the tactic was the same: Get the masses irate enough to demand, “Give me what I deserve,” even if they don’t deserve it; even if they haven’t earned it. To those provoking the anger it makes no difference if there is nothing to give; that these governments are in such massive debt that there is a very real possibility that they will all fail, one domino after another.

(Note: I would suggest that the citizens of Wisconsin, Ohio and every other State combating the mathematically impossible demands of narcissistically enraged labor union tools realize this reality better than most as it is happening in these States as well…at least in the beginning stages.)

It cannot be denied that those in power today in Washington are incredibly reluctant to embrace the sweeping reforms needed to make our bloated entitlement system viable. In fact, as the actuaries at Social Security and Medicare sound the alarm about impending insolvency should drastic reform not be implemented, the tax and spend Progressives in Washington are adding to the entitlements rolls, even as a natural spike is about to occur with the retirement of the Baby Boomers. Today, as our unfunded liabilities stand at $118 trillion, the House Minority Leader has the unmitigated gall to say of the expanding unemployment rolls, “It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”

Today, as the SEIU provides the anarchists of the Occupy Movement with office space at the SEIU affiliated Institute for Policy Studies office building at 16th and L Street NW, in Washington, DC, we need – we need – to ask ourselves:

▪ Do Progressive international labor unions mean to re-create the political change realized in Europe; in Greece; in France, here in the United States?

▪ Do the Progressive international labor unions mean to create the anarchy, the violent chaos in the streets, needed to affect the “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”?

▪ And are Progressives who exist in elected federal office purposefully exploiting their power to engage the efforts of the Progressives in the international labor unions to accelerate the metastasis of Cloward-Piven?

These answers are essential and they need to be answered using a mentality sequestered from the inanity and self-effacing mandate of political correctness; an instituted dogma originated by the Progressive Movement.

If Greece, and the whole of the Eurozone, was the ideological Petri dish for whether Cloward-Piven would actually work, the results are in and they are not good. They are not good for freedom, liberty or Capitalism, the only “ism” that has every elevated people out of poverty. If the overthrow of governments achieved in the Arab Spring and the financial assassinations of governments achieved in the Eurozone are the affects of a successfully implemented Cloward-Piven Strategy at the hands of the Progressive Movement, the results are frighteningly disastrous for you and me.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal. He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative.

Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-cloward-piven-plan-to-destroy-governments#ixzz2xyTp4LBi
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

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