Unconstitutional Obama
President Obama's Top 10 Constitutional Violations Of
2013
1. Delay of
Obamacare’s out-of-pocket caps.
The Labor Department announced in February that it was delaying for a year the
part of the healthcare law that limits how much people have to spend on their
own insurance. This may have been sensible—insurers and employers need time to
comply with rapidly changing regulations—but changing the law requires actual
legislation.
2. Delay of
Obamacare’s employer mandate. The administration announced via
blogpost on the eve of the July 4 holiday that it was delaying the requirement
that employers of at least 50 people provide complying insurance or pay a fine.
This time it did cite statutory authority, but the cited provisions allow the
delay of certain reporting requirements, not of the mandate itself.
3. Delay of
Obamacare’s insurance requirements. The famous pledge that, “if
you like your plan, you can keep it”; backfired when insurance companies
started cancelling millions of plans that didn’t comply with Obamacare’s
requirements. President Obama called a press conference last month to proclaim
that people could continue buying non-complying plans in 2014—despite
Obamacare’s explicit language to the contrary. He then refused to consider a
House-passed bill that would’ve made this action legal.
4. Exemption of
Congress from Obamacare. A little-known part of Obamacare
requires Congressmen and their staff to get insurance through the new
healthcare exchanges, rather than a taxpayer-funded program. In the quiet of
August, President Obama directed the Office of Personnel Management to
interpret the law to maintain the generous congressional benefits.
5. Expansion of the
employer mandate penalty through IRS regulation. Obamacare
grants tax credits to people whose employers don’t provide coverage if they buy
a plan “through an Exchange established by the State”—and then fines employers
for each employee receiving such a subsidy. No tax credits are authorized for
residents of states where the exchanges are established by the federal
government, as an incentive for states to create exchanges themselves. Because
so few (16) states did, however, the IRS issued a rule ignoring that plain text
and allowed subsidies (and commensurate fines) for plans coming from “a State
Exchange, regional Exchange, subsidiary Exchange, and federally-facilitated
Exchange.”
6. Political
profiling by the IRS. After seeing a rise in the number of
applications for tax-exempt status, the IRS in 2010 compiled a “be on the
lookout” (“BOLO”) list to identify organizations engaged in political activities.
The list included words such as “Tea Party,” “Patriots,” and “Israel”; subjects
such as government spending, debt, or taxes; and activities such as criticizing
the government, educating about the Constitution, or challenging Obamacare. The
targeting continued through May of this year.
7. Outlandish
Supreme Court arguments. Between January 2012 and June 2013,
the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Justice Department’s extreme
positions 9 times. The cases ranged from criminal procedure to property rights,
religious liberty to immigration, securities regulation to tax law. They had
nothing in common other than the government’s view that federal power is
virtually unlimited. As a comparison, in the entire Bush and Clinton
presidencies, the government suffered 15 and 23 unanimous rulings,
respectively.
8. Recess
appointments. Last year,
President Obama appointed three members of the National Labor Relations Board,
as well as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, during what he
considered to be a Senate recess. But the Senate was still holding “pro forma”
sessions every three days—a technique developed by Sen. Harry Reid to thwart
Bush recess appointments. (Meanwhile, the Dodd-Frank Act, which created the
CFPB, provides that authority remains with the Treasury Secretary until a
director is “confirmed by the Senate.”) In January, the D.C. Circuit held the
NLRB appointments to be unconstitutional, which ruling White House spokesman
Jay Carney said only applied to “one court, one case, one company.”
9. Assault on free
speech and due process on college campuses. Responding to
complaints about the University of
Montana’s handling of sexual assault claims, the Department of Education’s Office of
Civil Rights, in conjunction with the Justice Department, sent the university a
letter intended as a national “blueprint” for tackling sexual harassment. The
letter urges a crackdown on “unwelcome” speech and requires complaints to be
heard in quasi-judicial procedures that deny legal representation, encourage
punishment before trial, and convict based on a mere “more likely than not”
standard.
10. Mini-DREAM Act.
Congress has shamelessly failed to pass any sort of immigration reform,
including for the most sympathetic victims of the current non-system, young
people who were brought into the country illegally as children. Nonetheless,
President Obama, contradicting his own previous statements claiming to lack
authority, directed the Department of Homeland Security to issue work and
residence permits to the so-called Dreamers. The executive branch undoubtedly has
discretion regarding enforcement priorities, but granting de facto green cards
goes beyond a decision to defer deportation in certain cases
“Criminal In Chief” — 78
Times President Obama Broke The Law During Presidency ~ Source True
Activist
By: The Free Thought Project
Here’s a list of at least 75 times President Obama violated the
Constitution and/or broke federal law during his presidency:
1) Illegally armed Mexican drug cartels and ISIS militants
In Operation Fast and
Furious, the Obama administration facilitated the sale of
thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and stopped tracking those
weapons once they crossed the border so the administration could later blame
the Second Amendment.
2) Attempting to shut down gun stores outside of law
In a classic case of
criminal racketeering, the U.S. Department of Justice was pressuring banks to
refuse service to gun stores in a program entitled Operation Choke Point.
Under the program started
in 2014 if not before, the DOJ was attempting to shut down legal gun dealers by
coercing financial institutions to close the bank and merchant accounts
associated with their businesses.
In 2012, Bank of America
told a gun company, McMillan Group International, that because the company was
expanding into firearms manufacturing, the bank no longer wanted McMillan’s
business.
3) Spent tax dollars to re-settle illegals inside U.S.
U.S. Customs and Border
Patrol have been purchasing bus tickets and vouchers for illegal immigrants in
order to ship them deeper into the country at taxpayers’ expense, according to
a McAllen, Texas city official.
4) Using executive action to restrict Second Amendment
Obama decided to use his
“pen and his phone” to enact gun control without Congressional approval.
5) Illegally targeted conservative groups via IRS
Obama’s IRS had illegally
targeted conservative groups for additional “reviews” of their tax status applications.
Organizations with the
phrases “tea party” or “patriot” in their names were singled out for
harassment, such as requiring them to provide
information about their family members, their social media posts and a list of
donors.
Obama had met with a key
IRS official who was involved in the targeting just two days before the key
official told his colleagues how to target conservative groups.
6) Secretly obtained phone records from
Associated Press journalists
“The Justice Department secretly
obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The
Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive
and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice
Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of
individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and
Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of
Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not
clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of calls.
In all, the government seized the
records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its
journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used
the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists
work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and
other matters.”
Obtaining these phone
records required approval from former Attorney General Eric Holder.
7) Carried out military interventionism in Libya without
Congressional approval
Obama violated the
Constitution when he launched military operations in Libya without Congressional
approval.
8) Expanded Bush’s unconstitutional government faith-based
programs
Obama actually expanded the federal government’s
faith based programs which had been started by President George W. Bush.
9) Supported Bush’s unconstitutional Patriot Act
Obama renewed the Patriot
Act in 2011.
10) Agrees with Bush’s support of unconstitutional, indefinite
detention of U.S. citizens without filing any charges
Obama signed an
unconstitutional bill that gave the U.S. government the power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens
without any charges being filed or any trial taking place.
11) Supports unconstitutional,
warrantless wiretapping
12) Had four U.S. citizens killed without
judicial process
Obama had four U.S. citizens killed without
judicial process, to which then-U.S. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) said was an impeachable offense.
13) Ordered private company to fire 1,000
employees
After Boeing hired 1,000 new employees to work at its new
factory in South Carolina in 2011, the Obama administration ordered the company
to close it down because the factory
was non-union.
14) Stole money from retired teachers and
police officers
During the Chrysler bankruptcy, Obama violated the Fifth
Amendment and more than 150 years of bankruptcy law by illegally treating
secured creditors worse than unsecured creditors.
15) Fired Inspector General for discovering that Obama’s
friend had embezzled government funds
Obama fired Inspector General Gerald
Walpin in 2009 after Walpin accused Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, an Obama
supporter, of misusing AmeriCorps funding to pay for political activities.
Later on, a bipartisan
group of 145 current and former public officials and legal scholars signed a letter stating Walpin’s
firing was politically motivated.
16) Lied about letting people keep their health insurance
17) Lied about the cost of Obamacare
Before Obamacare was
passed, Obama promised:
“I will not sign a plan that adds one
dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. I will not sign it if it
adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period. And to prove that
I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come
forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”
However, not long after
Obama signed it, the Washington Post reported it would add over $340
billion to the budget deficit over the next decade.
18) Gave tax dollars to campaign contributors and lobbyists,
and falsely claimed the money was for “green energy”
In 2009, the Obama
administration gave $535 million to green-energy
company Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs, but the
company soon went bankrupt.
It was later revealed the
company’s executives had made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign and
that Solyndra executives had had many meetings with White House officials.
19) Had “off the record” meetings with lobbyists
In June 2010, the New York
Times said the Obama administration
officials had held hundreds of meetings with lobbyists at coffee houses near
the White House to avoid the disclosure requirements for White House visitors.
20) Had armed SWAT agents raid a law-abiding guitar factory
because it was owned by a Republican
President Obama had an
armed SWAT team raid the Gibson guitar
factory and seized guitars and other property from the factory – without any charges being filed.
Obama’s so-called justification for the
raid was that Gibson had broken environmental laws from India regarding the
imported wood that Gibson had been using, but C.F. Martin & Company,
Gibsons’s competitor, had used the exact same imported wood.
The difference; Henry E.
Juszkiewicz, the CEO of Gibson, was a Republican donor, whereas Chris
Martin IV, the CEO of Martin, was a Democratic donor.
21) Ignored constitutional requirements for appointees
Late U.S. Senator Robert
Byrd, a Democrat, expressed concerns that Obama’s
dozens of czars appointed in 2009 might violate the U.S. Constitution because
they were not approved by the U.S. Senate.
Another Democrat, U.S.
Senator Russ Feingold, shared a similar sentiment.
22) Tried to outlaw family farms
The Obama administration
wanted to eradicate family farms in 2012 by
trying to prohibit farm children under 18 from working in various farm-related
activities.
23) Auctioned off ambassadorship to the Netherlands
Obama nominated Timothy Broas to be
U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands after Broas donated at least $500,000 to
Obama’s 2012 campaign.
24) Made the TSA even more abusive and ridiculous than it had
been under Bush
Under the Obama
administration, the TSA has been giving very invasive pat-downs on young
children which would otherwise constitute child molestation.
25) Illegally demanded monetary payment for Freedom of
Information Act request
The Obama administration
demanded the Goldwater Institute pay nearly $79,000 before it would
share public records via the Freedom of Information Act.
26) Stole money from retired Delphi employees
Obama eliminated the pensions of 20,000
retired Delphi employees in 2009.
27) Used “off the books” funding for military interventionism
Anti-war activists who
helped elect Obama accused him of using the same
“off-the-books” funding as his predecessor George W. Bush when the president
requested over $83 billion from Congress for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
28) Tried to silence criticism of auto-bailouts
The Obama administration pressured the Ford Motor Company
to stop criticizing Obama’s bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler in a TV ad.
29) Tried to silence video on YouTube
Obama actually asked a Jewish singing group to
take down its video from the Internet in 2011.
30) Illegally gave Obamacare exemptions to unions that
supported the passage of Obamacare
Obama gave some of his
favorite organizations an exemption from some Obamacare
requirements.
Many of these
organizations were unions that had supported the passage of Obamacare, but then
afterwards wanted exemptions from the very same law they forced on everyone
else.
The Constitution, however,
requires the law to treat everyone as equals
No comments:
Post a Comment