Posted on 04/18/2014 3:06:46 PM PDT by Jacquerie
With Congress paralyzed, President Obama has promised to use his “pen and phone” to overcome the ongoing dysfunction and get some work done. And the White House has already acted several times to help improve America’s economy. But such policies, no matter how valuable, will achieve little if we do not fix our broken democracy.
Allow me to suggest some ideas for how the president can do just that.
First, some historical context. Presidents have long acted within their authority, from Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana without consulting Congress to Lincoln’s freeing the slaves by proclamation. In recent decades, at a time of divided government, presidents have found ways to act in the arena of domestic and social policy.
In the face of divided and dysfunctional government, it’s little wonder that presidents have found ways to push policy and prod the bureaucracy without waiting for congressional action or approval that may never come. But Obama’s executive orders have not yet focused on ways to make government work better.
My colleagues and I have suggested 15 steps the administration can take to overcome dysfunction, strengthen democracy, secure justice, and further the rule of law. The president should take them. And he has explicit legal authority to do so.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
It would be interesting to see what this writer would do if it was a GOP president doing what he suggests Obama do
By claiming and using such powers he degrades democracy.
“Michael Waldman is President of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a nonpartisan law and policy institute that focuses on improving the systems of democracy and justice. Waldman is one of the nation’s most prominent public interest lawyers, and is an expert on the presidency, democracy and the Constitution. The Brennan Center is a leading legal voice on election law, Constitutional law, government reform and racial justice.”
To the Left, this guy is a moderate, with a towering intellect. Now, what can we do to combat his poison?
Well, seeing as how we are not a democracy, the question is a non sequiter.
Except when the lawless and exempt Hussein is in charge.
REPUBLIC...woot, Levin is on it!
I keep reminding my liberal friends what a field day the next Republican President is going to have with all of these new-found Executive powers, llike stopping gov-paid abortion, etc...
After a blank stare for a few moments, the ONLY response I ever get is that there won’t ever be another Republican President.
How about declare his policies illegal and repeal what he singed into law? And we are a constitutional republic, NOT a democracy.
They may be right. See voter ID, amnesty, etc.
Well, shouldn't we regard the 2012 stomping of the Tea Party as a warmup for 2016? The FEC, IRS, DOJ are still at it, and Obama doesn't have to worry about reelection. His powers are so immense, why should the rat party consider giving them up to the enemy?
Your Left friends may be more prescient than they know.
We don’t have to worry about the poison. We will come to the point (if we aren’t there) where HIS PERSON and those like him need to be “combatted”. That we can and will manage. He is the one “stuck on stupid”, to borrow a phrase. He will refuse to go backward in his “progress” against us and he cannot go forward at this point without going over us which is something we will not allow. Check and mate. He can’t “stay here”. His is the untenable or unstable position. We are where we are. All we have to do is dig in.
Not exactly.
The author is an ignoramus. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation only addressed slaves in states that were actively fighting against the Union.
He had no power, nor did he claim any such power, to abolish slavery across the board by using his pen and phone.
It took a Constitutional amendment to do that.
Democracy:
2 wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner.
“...and to the Republic, for which it stands...”
Certainly, having a monarchy that pays lip service to the old plan of a Republic worked for the Romans for quite a long time. I don't see that happening in the U.S., though. They couldn't have an armed population on the Italian side of the Rubicon. We already have one here.
If the people participate . . . in the development and creation of laws, why does Obama increasingly make executive law without input from a popularly derived congress?
The BEST thing odumbo could do to “improve our economy” is to resign and move to Indonesia. I truly despise that man for what he has done and will continue doing to this country.
Sentence himself, cabinet, and staff to Prison.
It sounds as though Mrs. Waldman’s little Mikey is a big fan of Barry’s Pen and Phone style “government.”
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