Posted on 11/18/2010 10:10:08 AM PST by My Favorite Headache
The liberal Center for American Progress doesn’t believe significant GOP gains in the House and Senate should stop the President from implementing more of his polices. The group released a report Tuesday suggesting ways Obama can bypass Congress to accomplish a progressive agenda, and it cites the president’s power as commander-in-chief to make its point.
“I think most of the conversation since the election has been about how President Obama adjusts to the new situation on Capitol Hill,” Center for American Progress head and former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta told the Daily Caller. “While that’s an important conversation, it simply ignores the president’s ability to use all levels of his power and authority to move the country forward.”
How does one “move the country forward”? In the center’s report, Podesta explains that Obama can use executive orders, rulemaking, and even the armed forces “to accomplish important change” and that such means “should not be underestimated.”
What exactly does Podesta think the president should use such powers to “accomplish”? Among others, the report suggests “job creation,“ ”quality affordable health care,“ ”sustainable security,“ and ”a clean energy future.”
The report cites specific goals such as mitigating the effects of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, supporting a Palestinian state, and reducing greenhouse gasses by 17 percent by 2020.
“The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy,” Podesta writes. ”Congressional gridlock does not mean the federal government stands still.”
Statement from John D. Podesta November 15, 2010
In the aftermath of this month’s midterm congressional elections, pundits and politicians across the ideological spectrum are focusing on how difficult it will be for President Barack Obama to advance his policy priorities through Congress. Predictions of stalemate abound. And some debate whether the administration should tack to the left or to the center and compromise with or confront the new House leadership.
As a former White House chief of staff, I believe those to be the wrong preoccupations. President Obama’s ability to govern the country as chief executive presents an opportunity to demonstrate strength, resolve, and a capacity to get things done on a host of pressing challenges of importance to the public and our economy. Progress, not positioning, is what the public wants and deserves.
The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy. These authorities can be used to ensure positive progress on many of the key issues facing the country through:
* Executive orders * Rulemaking * Agency management * Convening and creating public-private partnerships * Commanding the armed forces * Diplomacy
The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through these powers should not be underestimated. President Bush, for example, faced a divided Congress throughout most of his term in office, yet few can doubt his ability to craft a unique and deeply conservative agenda using every aspect of the policymaking apparatus at his disposal. And, after his party lost control of Congress in 1994, President Clinton used executive authority and convening power to make significant progressive change. For instance, he protected more great spaces in the lower 48 states than any president since Theodore Roosevelt, established for the first time significant protections for Americans’ medical privacy, and urged the creation of the Welfare-to-Work Partnership that enlisted the help of 20,000 businesses in moving more than 1 million welfare recipients into the workforce.
The upshot: Congressional gridlock does not mean the federal government stands still. This administration has a similar opportunity to use available executive authorities while also working with Congress where possible. At the Center for American Progress, we look forward to our nation continuing to make progress.
Read the full report (pdf)
Download the executive summary (pdf)
Download the report to e-readers and mobile devices from Scribd
To speak with our experts on this topic, please contact:
Print: Megan Smith (health care, education, economic policy) 202.741.6346 or msmith@americanprogress.org
Print: Anna Soellner (foreign policy and security, energy) asoellner@americanprogress.org
Print: Raúl Arce-Contreras (ethnic media, immigration) 202.478.5318 or rarcecontreras@americanprogress.org
Radio: Laura Pereyra 202.741.6258 or lpereyra@americanprogress.org
TV: Andrea Purse 202.741.6250 or apurse@americanprogress.org
Web: Erin Lindsay 202.741.6397 or elindsay@americanprogress.org http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/11/executive_orders.html/#statement
So what is your answer? What should the senior enlisted do? Obey his officers or not?
glad you have confidence that there will BE an election in 2012.
ARe you familiar with what Martial Law can mean?
The first thing is, it shuts down Congress for 6 months.
We'll be very lucky to survive the next 2 months until our new Congress is seated. But if an "emergency" presents itself and obummer declares Martial Law - and has another 6 months to rule supreme - do you really think we will have any freedoms left?
In the meantime - I have son whose job takes him back and forth,up and down the country day after day - we are not being told how bad it is out there.
Word to the wise: store up some food.
So what is your answer? What should the senior enlisted do? Obey his officers or not?
The only way he COULD give an executive order or act as CINC is if he was authorized by the Constitution. So if his EO is not under the Constitution then it’s not an EO. It would have as much authority as if I went on my rooftop and shouted out orders.
The Blaze was quoting what was in Podesta’s report. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Cindie
No, you stop playing stupid. There are serious ramifications to morale, order and discipline involved with a senior officer’s refusal to deploy.
This has been a conundrum for military personnel forever. The answer as I have always understood was: If it will not involve immediate harm register a protest with the order giver, but follow the order and then after following report immediately to superiors in the chain/ombuds/chaplain/ legal.
If it involves immediate harm, then traditionally enlisted were considered a “protected class” that must follow orders, per their oath - though since ‘nam the protection has not been upheld. Some would say WWII, but the camp guards in question committed atrocities considered beyond any need to have orders protect them and often went beyond the minimum needed to meet their orders becoming complicit.
Officers have been held to the standard of resisting illegal orders or facing the same punishment as those who gave the original - in other words they are accomplices if they pass it on.
The answer to the enlisted is still to follow the orders in immediate conflict or face CM as good order and discipline in combat must be maintained for the good of the whole and they may not be privy to information of those giving the order. It is the duty of the officer who has not been sworn to uphold unlawful orders to discern the nature.
This conundrum is the whole basis for the bogey movie “The Caine Mutiny” a classic in military leadership (along with a movies about army air who’s name I forget). Should the crew overthrow a captain who was putting his crew in harm’s way? It was a war situation, the weather was pounding the ship to ribbons - should they have pushed on as the other ships in the fleet - some of which went on to sink, or should they have mutinied and turned the ship to safety as they eventually did? Yes the capt was nuts - but all the officers got their comeuppance in the end.
Now where are those strawberries?...
I’ll bet if Obongo turned the military on the U.S. citizens he wouldn’t impose the ROE that are imposed on the military in Afghanistan.
Make “smart cards”(3x5)..simply show parts of the paragraph from John Jay to Washington..show the paragraph of the Law of Nations requring two citizen parents to be a natural born citizen, then..the Constitution..natural born citizen.
Pass them out to some of the senior enlisted to keep in their in their wallets.
>>The enlisted man has sworn both to defend the Constitution and obey the orders of officers.<<
Does the order infringe on the mans right to the “free exercise of” of his religion to not associate with homosexuals?
In short, there is no comparison between,
1. “LTC Lakin, deploy to Iraq.”
and
2. “LTC Lakin, waste that Iraqi village.”
Thanks, you explained all.
Marxism has never succeeded in taking over governments without force and/or deceipt. It is axiomatic. And it is happening in America. Only problem is the swine took their mask off too soon. The conniving bastards have foisted progams on Americans that Americans don’t want—Onadacare,for example—and are doing everthing in their power to destroy the American economy.
Most voting Americans get it. I may be wrong, but I do not think the American military—Active Component, Guard or Reserve—will allow itself to be drawn into the Marxist web. The American military’s first responsibility is to protect Constitutional America from “all enemies, foreign and domestic”. Podesta is living in a Marxist make pretend world. But his statement clearly indicates, despite over 50 years of plotting by the commies, they have lost the covert struggle. If they think they can brute force communism on us they have no clue as to the heart and soul of this country. Even apart from the military, too many of us have guns to allow a violent take over of the country.
If he were not so dangerous—like a thief lurking in the night—he would be a caricature of your typical Bolshevik comic book character. You remember, the little man with a thin moustash and wide fedora making little round bombs in some rat hole somewhere.
Calm down - this will come down to each individual officer and enlisted making their own choice. This is a nation of individual freedom and it will come down to individuals making their choice. Should this come about, there will be those who believe they are doing the right thing on both sides.
This is why there was such grief and hardship during the civil war, both believed that they were on the right side of the issue - the south for states rights, the north for maintaining the union. (Slavery was just the fuse lit during the development of the Constitution)
It won’t just be those in the military making those choices either, the majority during the revolution did not take sides one way or the other. However there were both tory and patriot leaners in the population who did not take arms.
None of us will have a hand in any of the individual choices, outside of how we may have raised, taught, trained, or interacted with them until that point.
The rest lies with the Lord...
Sure you haven’t seen any strawberries?
You can shout all you wish.
It does not change the fact that you cannot respond to simple questions regarding the impact of your statements. Our troops live in reality, not your imaginary world.
bingo
The courts have decided a lot of stuff wrongly. Once it’s run the course of the Constitution’s process for resolving cases it has to be abided by. At that point the way to resolve the issue is to amend the Constitution so that it specifically and explicitly states the matter.
But Congress is not allowed to make laws or regulations that violate the Bill of Rights, so Congress can’t make rules and regs that disallow blacks from serving in the military merely because they are blacks, for instance. And those are the grounds that are being used to argue the DADT - that it is discrimination based on sexual orientation. I don’t believe that it is discrimination against the person but a measure to protect everybody from exploiting or being victimized by a situation where people of the same gender bunk, shower, etc together. A person could say it is discrimination if the military says an officer can’t sleep with somebody under their command, but the officer could still sleep with that person if they wanted to - they’d just lose their job. The bill of rights don’t ever say that a person has to be free of any consequences for their actions. An employer has the right to establish standards and order within the ranks. So basically I don’t buy into this being a Bill of Rights issue.
But the process that allows us to have order gives the courts the final say. If the public believes that a decision has violated the Constitution they can bring other cases and hope for a different result, which would probably only happen if they first impeached a justice or two or if some justices were replaced. Or they can amend the Constitution.
That’s how the process works. If the courts refuse to resolve a question of Constitutionality, then an officer can only go by their conscience. SCOTUS needs to know that the consequence of refusing to do their Constitutional duty is the breakdown of military cohesion. If they won’t rule then the officers have no choice but to act according to their own consciences, and that puts the nation in potentially critical risk. That is how serious SCOTUS’ constitutional duty is.
That is where we’re at right now. This Constitutional crisis is far more serious than most people believe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.