Is it time to start openly describing this administration, as tyrannical? I’ve been calling Obama and his left-wing allies in Congress Democrat Socialists for two years, now, (because that is what so many of them are), but this is something altogether different. It’s a stronger, harsher word that conjures up images of leftist dictators like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. But, what else do you call it when the administration flouts the will of Congress, the courts, and the American people to impose its far-left agenda through arbitrary regulation? What other name is there for it?
As Robert Allen Bonelli notes in his Big Government piece, Using Regulation Against The Will Of The People:
Written into the Declaration of Independence is a simple imperative, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Our nation was built on this concept, but the Obama administration is using its power to write regulation to circumvent the will of the people and advance its own agenda.
Three recent examples of this over reach are shocking and all Americans should demand an end to the practice and a reversal of what has already been done. Citizens need to think, whether they agree with the reasons for the circumvention or not, about what is at stake. Using regulation to specifically subjugate the will of the people to the agenda of any president is nothing less than tyranny.
The three examples he cites are the return of the mandate for end-of-life planning, aka “death panels”, the FCC “Net Neutrality” power grab, and the EPA’s move to regulate carbon dioxide.
Ed Morrissey addresses the end-of-life mandate at Hot Air: Surprise! End-of-life advisory incentives return — through regulation:
The process used by Obama and Kathleen Sebelius to get this into ObamaCare is more disturbing, and in a very specific way. Congress made it clear that it didn’t want this incentive as part of the new law. However, thanks to the miles and miles of ambiguity in the final version of ObamaCare, with its repetitive the Secretary shall determine language, Congress has more or less passed a blank check for regulatory growth to Obama and Sebelius.
This is just the opening gambit of a strategy Obama will use throughout the coming year in order to achieve through regulation what a Democrat-run Congress could not deliver through legislation. The new Republican House will have to use its power of the purse to stop this autocratic imposition of regulation, and remain vigilant in doing so on all fronts. Let’s hope the GOP gets used to fighting this process over the next two years.
Peter Ferrera aptly covers the Net Neutrality issue in The American Spectator: Net Neutrality Is Theft:
The FCC starts out by proclaiming that its net neutrality rules are just meant to ensure equal access by all to the Web. But as George Orwell showed us, that is how socialism started out too, until we later discovered that some were more equal than others. Once the founding principle is laid for government regulation and control, then that power can be used to regulate and control access to the Internet “in the public interest.” In English translation, that means in the special interest of the Ruling Class. There are precedents in China and Iran for how that has worked out in practice.
Dissenting FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell explained further in the Wall Street Journal on December 20 why the FCC’s net neutrality regulation makes no sense:
Nothing is broken and 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. Furthermore, the Obama Justice Department and the European Commission both decided this year that net neutrality regulation was unnecessary and might deter investment in next-generation Internet technology and infrastructure.
But what I have learned in life is that when something doesn’t make sense, that means there is something else behind it that people are trying to hide.
And that is exactly what we have here. For what is behind the FCC’s net neutrality crusade is reflected by an organization calling itself Free Press. That is an Orwellian title in this case, because what Free Press is for is the opposite of a free press. Free Press is one of those pseudo-Marxist front groups that Barack Obama has always traveled with so easily throughout his life. It is a grown-up, slick, sophisticated version of those campus radicals who shout down college speakers with whom they don’t agree.
Always look behind the curtain, instead of listening to what leftists say. That’s how you discover the true motives behind their policies.
Bonelli, back at Big Government believes the EPA power grab may be the most dangerous one of all:
Perhaps the most dangerous use of regulatory power hanging over the American people is the judicially extended powers of the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) to regulate specific greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, as pollutants under the forty year old Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act was originally written to regulate air pollutants, not something that is ever present in the air – and certainly not something that is part of life itself!
The Supreme Court made the ruling in April of 2007 in the case The State of Massachusetts v. the Environmental Protection Agency but little has been done since. However, with the support of the Obama administration, the EPA is now ready to regulate carbon dioxide. The Clean Air Act, as it is now written, requires that any source that emits more than 250 tons of carbon dioxide per year be required to capture those emissions. That threshold is so low that not only would it impose higher costs on power plants and refineries, but also farms, rural schools and hospitals.
If the EPA is allowed to follow through on using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide, Washington D.C. bureaucrats will have more control over the lives of citizens and their businesses than the citizens themselves.
New legislation is already being drafted by Republicans to stop the EPA from imposing cap and trade on its own.
Ferrera believes that the option of impeachment is off the table for Republicans:
I have suggested before that one of the reasons to vote Republican for President is that Republican Presidents are subject to the rule of law, a principle established in the early 1970s. But Democrat Presidents are not subject to the rule of law, a principle established in the late 1990s. Democrat Presidents are free in our system of government to flout the law with impunity.
The Republicans in Congress will have to be on its toes for the next couple of years finding ways to combat all of the abusive new regulations that come our way…let’s hope and pray they are up to the challenge.
MORE:
Ed Morrissey covers how Dems think the ‘Pubs are going to proceed: Revealed: How the GOP plans to block Obama’s executive branch power next year
Get this:
“I think what they’re going to do is try to keep on dramatizing the issues that they think are helpful to them,” [Henry] Waxman said. “The next two years I expect all their actions to be campaign oriented…. They’re all about messaging, they’re all about power, they’re all about politics. What they don’t seem to be concerned about is governing.”
PROJECT MUCH????
If you want to know what’s really in the minds of leftists, pay attention to what they accuse their opponents of.
See Also:
Aaron Goldstein in The American Spectator: The Worst of Obama in 2010
Hot Air: Poll: Obamateurism of the Year, Second Chance Flight
UPDATE;
So far, all commenters answer my question with a resounding, YES, it’s time (or well past time) to call Obama a tyrant.
Hyscience weighs in: In answer to the question of using the word ‘tyrannical’ in describing the Obama administration …
Linked by Doug Ross, and Infidel Bloggers, thanks!
Nice Deb 