HOW IS IT THAT THIS CRAP IS ALLOWED TO CONTINUE
AND NOT BE STOPPED ONCE AND FOR ALL?? THIS EX ORDER WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN
EXECUTED WERE IT NOT PLANNED TO BE CARRIED OUT AND SOON. SO
THIS AND ALL THE OTHER UNLAWFUL 'EXECUTIVE ORDERS' ARE JUST ALLOWED TO BE
WRITTEN AND CARRIED OUT AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION AND NO ONE IS GOING
TO PUT A STOP TO THIS????
************************
Friday, 12 October 2012 15:30
Another Obama Executive Order Allows Seizure of Americans’ Bank Accounts
The latest executive order (EO) emanating from the White House October
9 now claims the power to freeze all bank accounts and stop any related
financial transactions that a “sanctioned person” may own or try to perform —
all in the name of “Iran Sanctions.”
Titled an
“Executive Order from the President regarding Authorizing the Implementation of
Certain Sanctions…” the order says that if an individual is declared by the
president, the secretary of state, or the secretary of the treasury to be a
“sanctioned person,” he (or she) will be unable to obtain access to his
accounts, will be unable to process any loans (or make them), or move them to
any other financial institution inside or outside the United States. In other
words, his financial resources will have successfully been completely frozen.
The EO expands its authority by making him unable to use any third party such
as “a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, subgroup or
other organization” that might wish to help him or allow him to obtain access
to his funds.
And if the
individual so “sanctioned” decides that the ruling is unfair,
he isn't allowed to sue. In two words, the individual has successfully been
robbed blind.
But it’s all very legal. The EO says the president has
his “vested authority” to issue it, and then references endless previous EOs, including one dating back to 1995 which declared
a “state of emergency” (which hasn’t been lifted): Executive Order 12957.
EO 12957 was issued by
President Bill Clinton on March 15, 1995, which was also obliquely related to
the Iran “problem”:
I, William J. Clinton,
President of the United States of America, find that the actions and policies
of the Government of Iran to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to
the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and
hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.
Clinton’s EO further
delegated such powers as were necessary to enforce the EO to the secretaries of
the treasury and state “to employ all powers … as may be necessary to carry out
the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of
these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government.”
Such EOs are the perfect embodiment of what the
Founders feared the most: the combining of the legislative, executive, and
judicial functions into one body. Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution
says: “All legislative powers herein shall be vested in a Congress of the
United States.” As Thomas Eddlem, writing for The New American, expressed
it, “then it stands to reason [that] none is left for the president.”
But Joe Wolverton, also in The New American, pointed
out the particular piece of language the Founders used to limit the powers of
the president which totalitarians have twisted to allow such powers to expand:
the “take care” clause, to wit: Article II, Section 3: he [the president] shall
take care that the laws be faithfully executed…
With every EO,
the president avoids the cumbersome constitutional safeguards spelled out by
the Constitution, and uses them to implement policies he "knows" are
right. Says Wolverton: "With every one of these … executive orders, then,
the president elevates his mind and will above that of the people, Congress and
the courts."
The current administration has had a lot of help in
justifying and codifying the legitimacy of executive orders, going all the way back to President George Washington who
in 1793 issued his “Neutrality Proclamation,” which
declared that the United States would remain neutral in the current conflict
between France and Great Britain, and would bring sanctions against any
American citizen who attempted to provide assistance to either party. The
language of Washington is eerily similar to that used by President Obama in the
present case:
I have therefore thought fit
by these presents to declare the disposition of the United States to observe
the conduct aforesaid toward those powers respectively, and to exhort and warn
the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings
whatsoever which may in any manner tend to contravene such disposition…
I have given instructions to
those officers to whom it belongs to cause prosecutions to be instituted
against all persons who shall, within the cognizance of the courts of the
United States, violate the law of nations with respect to the powers at war, or
any of them.
When James Madison protested Washington’s usurpation
of powers not intended for the president, Congress acquiesced and passed,
retroactively, the Neutrality Act of 1794,
validating Washington’s usurpation.
President Lincoln engaged in similar usurpations, using
presidential “directives” to run the early months of the Civil War, presenting
Congress with, as Todd Gaziano put it, the decision either to adopt his [directives] as
legislation or to cut off support for the Union army.
Within his first two months
in office, on April 15, 1861, Lincoln issued a proclamation activating troops
to defeat the Southern rebellion and for Congress to convene on July 4.
He also issued proclamations
to procure warships and to expand the size of the military; in both cases, the
proclamations provided for payment to be advanced from the Treasury without
congressional approval.
These latter actions were
probably unconstitutional, but Congress acquiesced in the face of wartime
contingencies, and the matters were never challenged in court.
President Franklin Roosevelt
often overlooked the niceties of constitutional restraints as well. As Gaziano
expressed it, “FDR also showed a tendency to abuse his executive order
authority and [to] claim powers that were not conferred on him in the
Constitution or by statute.”
As far as numbers
of executive orders issued, Obama is a piker. At the moment, although the list
is growing, his administration has issued only 900 or so executive orders. President Theodore Roosevelt issued 1,006 while
President Woodrow Wilson issued 1,791. Even President Calvin Coolidge used the
EO “privilege” 1,253 times.
The granddaddy of them all,
FDR, issued an astounding 3,728 executive orders, but of course he was in
office longer than Obama.
President Bill Clinton issued only 364 executive
orders, but he made the most of them, using this extra-legal power to, among
other things, wage war in Yugoslavia without
congressional approval. Cliff Kincaid collated the numerous EOs issued by
Clinton in 1998 and 1999, and concluded:
Clinton waged his war on
Yugoslavia through executive order and presidential directive. Clinton used
executive orders to designate a "war zone," call up troops, proclaim
a "national emergency" with respect to Yugoslavia, and impose
economic sanctions on the Belgrade government.
Clinton claimed war-making
presidential authority through his "constitutional authority" to
conduct "foreign relations," as "Commander in Chief" and as
"Chief Executive." Under this self-designated authority, Clinton
delegated command-and-control of U.S. forces to NATO and its Secretary-General
Javier Solana, who decided when the air war would be discontinued…
The most outrageous executive order of all time was
that issued by President Roosevelt that allowed the enforced internment of
120,000 Japanese-Americans: 9066.
Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) called
EOs patently unconstitutional. When asked about them by Fox News’ Megan Kelly, Paul
responded:
The
Constitution says that only Congress passes laws. The executive branch is not
allowed to pass laws, nor should the judicial system pass laws. So it is clearly
unconstitutional to issue these executive orders.
They’ve been
done for a long time, both parties have done it, but the Congress is careless.
They allow and encourage and do these deals … to get the president to
circumvent the Congress. If something’s unpopular and he can’t get it passed,
well, let’s just sign an executive order. So I think that is blatantly wrong. I
think this defies everything the founders intended. I think it’s a shame that
Congress does it,
and I think it’s a
shame that the American people put up with it.
1 comment:
All this is 'thanks' to the lame-stream news.
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