Posted on 12/27/2010 7:11:42 AM PST by La Lydia
The 111th Congress, the most unpopular Congress in the recorded history if the United States, ended last week with a flurry of legislative activity that set a record for lawmaking done by a Congress that had just been rebuked by the American people. Some in the media are eager to make the case that last week’s events portend a new era of bipartisan accomplishment led by the White House that will extend into the 112th Congress. They are half right.
Last week’s events in Washington were a preview of lawmaking in 2011, but Congress was not where the real action was. While the media was distracted by the last breaths of a defeated leftist majority in Congress, it was the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that gave true picture of how the Obama Administration will advance their agenda in 2011.
First on Tuesday, the HHS unveiled new price controls for the health insurance industry. Using new powers granted by Obamacare, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that starting next year, health insurance companies must receive permission from the Obama Administration before they can raise rates by more than 10 percent. The experts at HHS believe these price controls will help decrease rising health care costs. They are wrong. Price controls attack the symptoms of runaway costs, not the cause. As any Econ 101 student can tell you, they will cause only shortages, not better health care. This is only one of thousands of new powers Obamacare granted the HHS. Left unchecked, there are many new health care regulations to come.
Later on Tuesday, the FCC released its “net neutrality” rules, which will allow the federal government to begin regulating the Internet. This despite opposition from Congress and a contrary federal court ruling. Dissenting FCC commissioner Robert McDowell described the unprecedented power grab last week: “Nothing is broken that needs fixing, however. The Internet has been open and freedom-enhancing since it was spun off from a government research project in the early 1990s. Its nature as a diffuse and dynamic global network of networks defies top-down authority. Ample laws to protect consumers already exist.” And just how competent is the Internet’s new rulers? Just before the FCC decision, visitors to the commission’s Web site couldn’t even access the 1,900 pages of documents pertaining to the net neutrality ruling. The very commission seeking to regulate the Internet saw its Web site go down due to “scheduled maintenance.”
Then on Thursday the EPA announced that it will begin regulating power plants and oil refineries in an attempt to stop global warming. The new regulations will seek to cut greenhouse gas emissions by making it more expensive to turn fossil fuels into energy. But the Obama Administration did not stop there. Later in the day, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Bureau of Land Management was issuing new rules that would make it harder to develop natural resources on government-owned land. Both of these measures will not only drive up the cost of electricity but will also make us more dependent on foreign sources of energy.
The ability of the Obama Administration to step up their leftist agenda even after it was thoroughly “shellacked” at the polls is not an accident. It is the purposeful design of the Progressive movement, which has been working to undermine the Founders’ vision of our republic for over a century now. Thomas G. West, contributor to The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science, explains:
The Founders thought that laws should be made by a body of elected officials with roots in local communities. They should not be “experts,” but they should have “most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society” (Madison). The wisdom in question was the kind on display in The Federalist, which relentlessly dissected the political errors of the previous decade in terms accessible to any person of intelligence and common sense.
The Progressives did not intend to abolish democracy, to be sure. They wanted the people’s will to be more efficiently translated into government policy. But what democracy meant for the Progressives is that the people would take power out of the hands of locally elected officials and political parties and place it instead into the hands of the central government, which would in turn establish administrative agencies run by neutral experts, scientifically trained, to translate the people’s inchoate will into concrete policies.
This will be the fight of 2011: the unelected central planning “experts” of the Obama Administration versus the newly elected House of Representatives and state and local governments. The people are not powerless. Congress still has the power of the purse and can withhold funding for implementing Obamacare or writing global warming regulations. There is also the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to review and overrule regulations issued by government agencies. State and local governments can also thwart the federal administrative state by asserting their rights whenever possible. We can return power from Washington back to the people. Saying good-bye to the 111th Congress is a great first step.
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Jan 5th 2011 the demolition of it all begins.
We’ll see I guess
There should be no lame-duck sessions of Congress.Nor should any presidential appointments be legal without congressional hearings before the appontee takes office.Let the under-secretary or whomever fill the post for a little while;after all, a deputy is supposed to be qualified to step up when needed.
ended last week with a flurry of legislative activity that set a record for lawmaking
They should have wrote Law Breaking because the 111th Congress was a corrupt criminal enterprise and a few of it’s leaders should be behind bars pending trial.
The 111th Congress reminded me about the Nazi party and how they took Germany on the road to ruin.
If you don’t believe me Go to YouTube and search for Triumph of the Will.
It’s Nazi Propaganda celebrating the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. Listen closely and you’ll swear your hearing the democrats and their policies.
The new majority in the House know the reality. They have 2 year terms, a sense of urgency plus the jackboot of us contributors and activists on their throats.
The real battle will between conservatives and idiot RINOS who are collaborating with the enemy. [”enemy”: Obama’s term for those that disagree.]
I would like to think you are right, but in my damn near 70 years on this earth I can remember but a few laws, rules and regulations that were over turned.
Probably just a few new layers of BS added to the already huge pile of manure and we will be told it is icing.
Read post#7 and quit your belly aching.
We have already raised hell with certain people in the GOP and made threats. They get it. Just watch Allen West.
ping
Reread post#7 several times and let this sink in.
Darth Baby. Just a little reminder
I am still and American and can say what I want. So if you or anyone else here on Free Republic want to say different: YOU CAN GO TO HELL.
You’re a defeatist who complains before the battle even begins.
“YOU CAN GO TO HELL”
You are on the path to go there in reality.
I am no where near as confident of that as some seem to be. RINO’s always show their true colors over issues like these.
I am not a political strategist, however there does seem to be a pattern that I think displays the New Strategy from the 0bama Regime emerging from the Election Shellacking.
They knew they had to respond to the election and what i think they have done is to simply ignore the results of the election as if they had NEVER happened, ignoring any formal demand from the country to enact a C-Change, and rely on the MSM to give them “Air Cover”.
They know they have the MSM as their weapon so this is how they seem to be utilizing that advantage in the face of the demand from the Owners of the Country to cease and desist.
Not ONLY are they getting away with this complete refusal to accept the message given by the people, indeed it is working EXTREMELY WELL.
We see stuff like the DADT, START, the Tax Plan, etc with a negative mandate (angering many in America) and also scenes where Brian Williams signs off stating this Lame Duck session “the most successful Congress since the 60”.
Its working really well for 0bama, just ignore the voice of the people and do your talking via the sycophant MSM that feed the people Propaganda 24/7.
In fact it works SO well that its really beginning to sort of scare me, imagine if a true despot had the reigns of power and the MSM?
I hope you are right. History says your faith may be misplaced.
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