Category: Politics

Fun with Socialists

You know what my favorite thing about socialists is? The amount of cognitive dissonance required in order to continue supporting the socialist ideal. Proponents claim socialism will bring in a new wave of freedom, plenty, and prosperity but history has demonstrated that it brings war, famine, and totalitarian rule. I should stop here and bring up the fact that I’m referring specifically to socialism and not communism, which has never really appeared.

Communism, although I don’t believe it will work either, is different than socialism in that there is no state. Socialism, in the eyes of many communist proponents like Marx, was a means to an end, which was communism. According to Marxists socialism, that is the dictatorship of the proletariat where the state completely controls all means of production, would eventually lead to the withering away of the state and birth true communism. The problem with this theory is that is relies on the all powerful state to eventually ceded its power, something that is almost entirely unprecedented in human history. Needless to say I respect anarcho-communists far more than socialists because the anarcho-communists are least acknowledge the fact that an all powerful state is unlikely to cede power and thus the socialist stepping stone will ensure communism never appears.

Why do I bring this up? Because it’s relatively important information for the opinion letter I’m going to rip apart:

I agree with Milos Forman that the word “socialism” is almost invariably misused (“Americans shouldn’t fling the ‘socialist’ label so casually,” July 13). President Obama is far from being a genuine socialist, and Obamacare is the furthest thing from socialism.

I agree with the author here, Obama isn’t a socialist nor is Obamacare socialistic healthcare. Obama and his healthcare strategy are fascist, that is to say it’s a marriage between the state and its favored corporations. A socialistic healthcare system would be one akin go that implemented in the Soviet Union and various European countries where the state has total control. Obama’s system mandates that everybody purchase health insurance from various insurance companies. Under the Obamacare system everybody is forced to do business with health insurance companies whereas a socialistic system forced everybody to do business with the state (instead of paying premiums to a private business you have to pay taxes to the state).

Unfortunately the author’s letter goes downhill from there as he needs to do some hand waving in order to make excuses for the previous failures of socialism:

However, Forman’s portrayal is also off-base. He was a victim of Stalinism in his native Czechoslovakia, so one can understand his rancor. However, to equate the regimes that existed in the USSR and Eastern Europe with genuine socialism is a travesty.

Socialism has quite the body count as pointed out by R. J. Rummel in his book Death by Government. His book demonstrates that there is a positive correlation between state power and people killed by the state. One cannot claim the history of socialism in this world was merely a victim of Stalinism since Stalin only ruled in one country and nothing really changed in that country after his rule. For example, North Korea was never ruled by Stalin but their regime is certainly as lethal as Stalin’s was. Cambodia is another example as the Khumer Rouge regime ruled by Pol Pot ended up wiping out anywhere between 1/5 and 1/3 of the entire population of Cambodia.

The author continues in his quest to dispel criticisms of socialism but defining “real” socialism:

Genuine socialism — as espoused by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky — is about genuine political and economic freedom and democracy.

Interesting, I wonder what definition of freedom the author uses. Socialism, by definition, lacks political and economic freedom because the entire economy is lead by a dictatorship of the proletariat. It should be noted that dictatorship, in this case, isn’t used in the traditional sense. When proponents of socialism, such as Marx, say the dictatorship of the proletariat they mean that the entire political system is controlled by the proletariat and that all members have say democratically. Unfortunately, democracies are not bastions of freedom but tyrannies of the majority. With democracies everything, including your supposed rights, becomes conditional. If a majority of the people vote one way then that’s the way things will be, even if their vote is to sieze your property. Freedom cannot exist if everything in society becomes conditionally based on majority rule because the minority will always be oppressed.

Economic freedom is another thing that doesn’t exist under socialism as all means of production are controlled by the state. One cannot build a factory, hire locals as employees, and begin selling products in a socialist system because the state will come and sieze the factory. In the Soviet Union members acting under market principle were labeled speculators and, well…

All these data show that the workers of Petrograd are monstrously inactive. The Petrograd workers and soldiers must understand that they have no one to look to but themselves. The facts of abuse are glaring, the speculation, monstrous; but what have the mass of soldiers and workers done about it? You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action. A plenary meeting of the Soviet must be called to decide on mass searches in Petrograd and the goods stations. To carry out these searches, each factory and company must form contingents, not on a voluntary basis: it must be the duty of everyone to take part in these searches under the threat of being deprived of his bread card. We can’t expect to get anywhere unless we resort to terrorism: speculators must be shot on the spot. Moreover, bandits must be dealt with just as resolutely: they must be shot on the spot.

Emphasis mine. Those were words penned by Lenin, who the author claims is a “real” socialist by the way. Not only was Lenin advocating that speculators be shot on sight, but he also demanded anybody unwilling to help with searches be deprived of their food. When the state controls the means of production, and thus food distribution, they can coerce you into actions you don’t wish to take by threatening you starvation. The author’s claim that political and economic freedom exists under “real” socialism is laughable.

What is socialism, according to the author, truly about? Mostly free shit:

It is about full employment; universal health care and education; a shorter workweek; safe, affordable housing, and infrastructure. The only thing standing between a world of plenty and the world of misery and inequality we live in today are the enormous profits of the billionaires — the 1 percent.

In this paragraph the author shows his true economic ignorance. According to the author the only thing standing between us and all that free shit he mentioned are those wealthy bastards. Using the author’s logic removing the “1 percent” would mean every natural resource would become infinitely abundant. At least that’s the only way one can reconcile what the author said as one cannot have plenty unless we live in the Garden of Eden, for almost all wants of humanity derive from one form of natural resource or another. Computers require silicon, copper, steel, plastic, etc. to build. In order to produce food one needs arable land, seeds, fertilizer, water, etc. Although I accept the fact that I could be wrong, I don’t believe there are actually an infinite amount of resources available. Is there really a conspiracy amongst the “1 percent” to hold the infinite amount of resources from the people? If so, where are they putting those infinite resources? Perhaps they’re hiding them one their infinite land located in their strange pocket of time/space where time (which is a scares resource in itself) is also infinite.

That’s the issue most socialists and communists have, they claim there will be a new wave of plenty if we can merely get rid of the bourgeois but seem to miss the fact that all resources are limited. There is also the issue of the economic calculation problem brought up by Ludwig von Mises. How could a socialist paradise ensure plenty? To ensure plenty one must know what people will want in the future and direct scarce resources towards fulfilling those wants. What happens when a majority of agriculture is put into wheat production but a majority of people want soy?

We also have the issue of labor, something socialist rarely address. How could one have universal healthcare if there aren’t enough people willing to work in the healthcare industry? Under socialism all are supposedly equal, which means paying somebody more for one job than another person for a differing job leads to problems. Why be a doctor if being an auto-mechanism pays the same but requires far less time investment? Who is going to maintain sewage processing systems? Let’s be honest, nobody really wants to do that job but they do it because the economic reward is high:

I’ll bet you never thought that a job existed for landfill divers. It does. The salary is around $3,500-4,000 a month. Not bad.

Socialists have never really addressed the issue of getting undesirable jobs done when there is no benefit. Usually they claim that people will do such jobs out of realizing the social necessity but in practice they usually do such jobs because the state has a gun to their head. Let’s move on:

People are increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo and long for a more rational way of organizing society. This explains the growing interest in the ideas of socialism and Marxism. As a supporter of the Workers International League, based right here in Minneapolis, I invite my friends and neighbors to learn more about what these ideas truly represent, and to make up their own minds at www.socialistappeal.org. After all, if socialism is “dead and buried,” why expend so much energy “disproving” and misrepresenting it?

JOHN PETERSON, MINNEAPOLIS

A society where everything is conditional based upon the desire of the majority and economic freedom isn’t allowed to exist is more rational? I’m not entirely sure what the author’s definition of rational is but it certainly doesn’t match mine. I also wonder if the author’s claim that interest in socialism and Marxism is actually growing. The few socialist gatherings I’ve seen here in the Twin Cities have been more sparsely populated than local Libertarian Party meetings (which is saying a lot). In all honesty, most people in the United States don’t fall into the socialist or individualist category, they fall into the Republican or Democrat category. Most people realize they’re being screwed but don’t understand the why and how so they look for answers with one of the two major political parties. The only proponents of communistic ideals with any number of members in the Twin Cities that I’m aware of are the anarcho-syndicalists and anarcho-communists, neither of which support socialism.

Proponents of socialism seem to believe the solution to a corrupt all-powerful state is to replace it with another corrupt all-powerful state. This belief likely stems from the fact that the new all-powerful government would have their socialistic views in mind (for a very short while, until the next Stalin gains power). As a general rule any philosophy built upon the idea of granting complete power over individuals by other individuals is doomed to fail (unless the intended goal is achieving power and nothing more). Socialists suffer from an inability to learn from history.

If at First You Don’t Succeed Rename the Legislation and Try Again

What happens when you’re a power-hungry state that wants to offer up some terrible piece of legislation but the people keep expressing distate for the legislation? Rename it and try again:

Last week, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject ACTA, striking a major blow to the hopes of supporters who envisioned a landmark agreement that would set a new standard for intellectual property rights enforcement. The European Commission, which negotiates trade deals such as ACTA on behalf of the European Union, has vowed to revive the badly damaged agreement. Its most high-profile move has been to ask the European Court of Justice to rule on ACTA’s compatibility with fundamental European freedoms with the hope that a favourable ruling could allow the European Parliament to reconsider the issue.

While the court referral has attracted the lion share of attention, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) reports that there is an alternate secret strategy in which Canada plays a key role. According to recently leaked documents, the EU plans to use the Canada – EU Trade Agreement (CETA), which is nearing its final stages of negotiation, as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions.

The article compares the two proposed treaties and it’s rather amusing to see how similar the language between the two is. Both treaties will effectively implement the same thing but ACTA was shot down so the promoters of the treaty had to do something, and that something was a quick name change with some minor language changes.

It’s nice to see that this kind of behavior isn’t restricted solely to the United States.

So Much for Conservative Supreme Court Judges

I’m not trying to turn this blog into wall-to-wall healthcare coverage but there are many things to be said about last week’s Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Healthcare Act. During the ramp up to this year’s presidential elections many people have been saying we must elect Romney because two Supreme Court justices are getting up there in age and will likely retire. Proponents of this argument claim that Obama would pick left judges, which would lead this country even further towards socialism. Thanks to judge Roberts dissent in the Affordable Healthcare Act we have come closer to socialism, and he was one of George W. Bush’s picks.

As far as I’m concerned this ruling entirely invalidates the argument that we need to elect Romney in order to prevent Obama from picking new Supreme Court judges (not that I gave any validity to the argument before). People still buy into the right versus left view of politics. It’s not about right versus left, it’s about us versus the state. Whether the state is right or left is irrelevant, it’s still an entity that is using a monopoly on force to take our stuff and make us obey its decrees. It won’t matter who picks the next Supreme Court justices because the picks will be statists. We’re not going to see Supreme Court judge Andrew Napolitano because he opposes the statist agenda.

Regardless which of those two clowns gets elected we’ll be in for more war, more debt, and more tyranny.

The Affordable Healthcare Act was Upheld

I’m sure you’ve all heard the news by now that the Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Healthcare Act:

In a dramatic victory for President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court upheld the 2010 health care law Thursday, preserving Obama’s landmark legislative achievement.

The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who held that the law was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to tax.

Many of my friends are cheering this ruling while many of my other friends, and much of the liberty sphere, are decrying this ruling. Personally I’m ambivalent. This ruling merely confirms what we’ve known all along, the federal government can put a gun to your head and force you to buy something. The way I see it the federal government is now being more honest about its intentions. In fact this ruling really helps rake in a the new wave of government transparency that Obama has been talking about.

I’ve said that two of the most egregious clauses in the Constitution are the ones granting the federal government a monopoly on interpreting the Constitution through the Supreme Court and the power to tax. It appears both of the clauses I hate so much have conspired to further erode our liberty. I’m not sure if this conspiracy was done to spite me but it proved my point and there is little I love more than having my ego inflated by being proven right. I hereby both thank the Supreme Court for helping inflate my ego and damning them for upholding the statist agenda.

I’m curious about the future, this precedence really sets up the federal government for future cronyism the likes of which we’ve never seen. If the federal government can force me to buy health insurance under the power to tax what else can they force me to buy? Can they claim high speed trains are such a social benefit that I must purchase yearly passes? Can they claim global warming is such an extreme danger that I must purchase carbon credits? Where will the lines be drawn? How far will this go? Will future bailouts come in the form of individual mandates instead of direct transfers of taxpayer money to failing businesses? We certainly live in interesting times.

With all of this said I believe the next question that must be answered by Obama’s supporters is this: Does the karmic value of passing this law and getting it upheld outweigh the karmic loss of murdering people overseas?

Some Lessons are Hard to Learn

Last month news came from Massachusetts that an attempt would be made by the local Republican Party to unseat Ron Paul delegates. They made their move:

But earlier this month, Kenney was one of 17 delegates and alternates disqualified by a Republican committee deciding who gets to represent Massachusetts Republicans at the national convention in Tampa. Kenney and others had failed to deliver in time an affidavit swearing, under the penalty of perjury, that they would support Mitt Romney’s nomination for president.

An affidavit is never mentioned in the Republican Party’s rules for selecting delegates and has never been required of delegates in the past, GOP critics say. Suspicions are steep this year because Kenney and the others are supporters of Ron Paul, the libertarian candidate whose quixotic campaign for president culminated in an effort to take over state caucuses nationwide. The delegates must vote for Romney, based on his strong primary win in Massachusetts, but Paul’s supporters hope to use the convention to draw attention to his agenda, including auditing the Federal Reserve and requiring wars to be declared by Congress.

What can I say? This was the only outcome I was expecting. The Republican Party, like any political entity, has a long list of forgotten rules that can be pulled out whenever the need to suppress an attempted party hijacking occurs. While it sounds like the signing of these affidavits hasn’t been enforced previously it was likely a convenient rule to pull out at this point in time as it stood a high likelihood of unseating some Paul delegates. Some good has come out of this, more people are starting to realize what politics really is:

“I’ve been rudely awakened to the realities of politics,” Kenney said. “I feel I’ve been cheated.”

Welcome to politics son, it’s the art of cheating, stealing, and using force. This is why libertarians suck at politics, we generally have little interest in forcing others to obey our decrees so we’re not familiar with the processes needed to accomplish such goals. Politics is similar to Global Thermonuclear War, the only winning move is not to play.

Holder Found to be in Contempt of Congress

Yesterday the House Oversight Committee found Eric Holder to be in contempt of Congress:

A US House of Representatives committee has voted along party lines to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.

[…]

Shortly after the committee vote, House Speaker John Boehner tweeted an ultimatum, saying a full House vote would be held unless Mr Holder co-operated with the inquiry.

Mr Holder’s reaction was swift and combative.

Committee chairman Representative Darrell Issa has “chosen to use his authority to take an extraordinary, unprecedented and entirely unnecessary action, intended to provoke an avoidable conflict between Congress and the Executive Branch,” Mr Holder said.

“This divisive action does not help us fix the problems that led to this operation or previous ones and it does nothing to make any of our law enforcement agents safer,” he said, calling it “an election-year tactic”.

Unprecedented and entirely unnecessary action? Really? After refusing to hand over documents requested by Congress and receiving help to coverup his crime from Obama he feels that the vote to find him in contempt was unnecessary? He is partially correct, this action was avoidable. Had here handed over the documents requested the contempt vote would not have been necessary. If we go back even further this entire investigation would have been entirely unnecessary had the United States government not been smuggling guns into Mexico and arming the drug cartels.

I wonder if we’ll ever find out exactly who knew what in this case. Will Holder eventually hand over the documents or will they be destroyed in order to prevent the public from learning what really happened? Yes, after all that has happened so far I wouldn’t be surprised if Holder and his goons went so far as to destroy evidence in an attempt to cover their tracks.

Obama Moves to Coverup Fast and Furious

It’s official, Obama has moved to help coverup Fast and Furious:

President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House.

I’m not surprised that a man who orders the assassination of others would try to help coverup an operation run by one of his goons that has lead to the death of a border guard and an unknown number of Mexican citizens. On top of that the documents in question probably show Obama knew about Operation Fast and Furious much earlier than he admitted to, which could make for an undesirable situation this close to the elections. On the upside Issa isn’t playing ball:

Rep. Darrell Issa said Wednesday that he is pressing ahead with a committee vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, despite an 11th-hour move by President Obama to exert executive privilege over the Fast and Furious documents at the heart of the dispute.

It will be interesting to see what’s in these documents if they’re ever unveiled to the public. My primary interest is learning who knew what and for how long although I suspect these documents may hold far more incriminating evidence considering the amount of effort going into keeping them a secret.

About that Crown

Obama (and, let’s face it, every president before him) has been wielding executive orders like they’re going out of style. Congress has done a little pissing and moaning but otherwise have been entirely complicit. This combination has basically made the Office of the President a royal position, a king.

All that work the fighters of the Revolutionary War did to overthrow the king has been entirely undone and we’ve effectively returned to a monarchy. All is not lost though, in fact there is a major advantage to monarchies.

The best thing about a monarchy is that everybody knows who to blame. Democracies and republics appear to be designed in such a way as to push blame around so the people can never figured out who screwed them. Look at popular conservative sites, they blame Obama for everything. The popular progressive sites blame the republican controlled congress for everything. When there is an actual king the people blame him for everything. The English Civil War was sparked because people were pissed and the monarch was the target of their aggression. Likewise, the French Revolution was started under similar circumstances. The American Revolutionary War was also started by people upset with a king.

When there is a monarchy and things go bad the people get shit done. Arguing about who brought unfavorable conditions upon the people is unnecessary, there is only one man in charge.

Finally stating the obvious, that the United States isn’t a representative republic but a form of monarchy may be advantageous. I’m willing to give it a try, let’s issue the crown and see where we end up.

The Meaningless Drone Legislation Introduced by Rand Paul

Rand Paul’s endorsement of Mitt Romney sure created a schism in the libertarian camp. One side believes Rand Paul to be nothing more than a game playing neocon who tries to appease the libertarians when it’s convenient while the other side believes Rand Paul is really a super secret libertarian who is merely maneuvering to gain the presidency in 2016 where he’ll then bring a wave of liberty to this country. The latter camp has used Rand Paul’s introduction of legislation to protect American against unwarranted drone surveillance. It would be great if that’s what Rand Paul actually did but the Devil, as always, is in the details. The legislation in question is S 3287, the Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act of 2012. The bill claims “To protect individual privacy against unwarranted governmental intrusion through the use of the unmanned aerial vehicles commonly called drones, and for other purposes.” It then goes on to state:

SEC. 3. PROHIBITED USE OF DRONES.

Except as provided in section 4, a person or entity acting under the authority, or funded in whole or in part by, the Government of the United States shall not use a drone to gather evidence or other information pertaining to criminal conduct or conduct in violation of a statute or regulation except to the extent authorized in a warrant that satisfies the requirements of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Sounds good so far, right? Let’s have a look at the exceptions mentioned in the above paragraph:

(1) PATROL OF BORDERS- The use of a drone to patrol national borders to prevent or deter illegal entry of any persons or illegal substances.

So drones will continue to be used to monitor the 100 miles “Constitution free zone” that 2/3 of the United States population lives within? It appears as though Rand Paul’s bill only protects 1/3 of the population from these unwarranted drone uses. That appearance is deceiving though as there are more exceptions:

(2) EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES- The use of a drone by a law enforcement party when exigent circumstances exist. For the purposes of this paragraph, exigent circumstances exist when the law enforcement party possesses reasonable suspicion that under particular circumstances, swift action to prevent imminent danger to life is necessary.

There it is, the one exception that makes this entire bill meaningless. Law enforcement don’t need a warrant to use a drone if they have “reasonable suspicion” that circumstances are such that imminent danger to life exists. “Reasonable suspicion” is another way of saying “because law enforcement wants to.” It’s a catchall phrase that has been used by law enforcement agents to avoid that pesky Forth Amendment. Worth noting is that probably cause and reasonable suspicion are legally different as laid out in the Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio:

On the one hand, it is frequently argued that in dealing with the rapidly unfolding and often dangerous situations on city streets the police are in need of an escalating set of flexible responses, graduated in relation to the amount of information they possess. For this purpose it is urged that distinctions should be made between a “stop” and an “arrest” (or a “seizure” of a person), and between a “frisk” and a “search.” Thus, it is argued, the police should be allowed to “stop” a person and detain him briefly for questioning upon suspicion that he may be connected with criminal activity. Upon suspicion that the person may be armed, the police should have the power to “frisk” him for weapons. If the “stop” and the “frisk” give rise to probable cause to believe that the suspect has committed a crime, then the police should be empowered to make a formal “arrest,” and a full incident “search” of the person. This scheme is justified in part upon the notion that a “stop” and a “frisk” amount to a mere “minor inconvenience and petty indignity,” which can properly be imposed upon the citizen in the interest of effective law enforcement on the basis of a police officer’s suspicion.

In other words, reasonable suspicion grants an officer the power to stop and frisk an individual but does not grant them the ability to make an arrest. What is reasonable suspicion is really up to the police officer as no judiciary input is required. Nice little cop out for this bill that’s supposed to protect use from unwarranted drone use, isn’t it? Finally, just to make extra sure that this bill means nothing, a third exception exists:

(3) HIGH RISK- The use of a drone to counter a high risk of a terrorist attack by a specific individual or organization, when the Secretary of Homeland Security determines credible intelligence indicates there is such a risk.

The risk of terrorism has become the de facto standard for ignoring constitutional protections. In fact the state claimed a connection between terrorism and copyright infringement to get around a great deal of legal red tape between law enforcement and those suspected of infringing copyrights. Counterfeit goods have also been linked to terrorism. It’s not very difficult to use those cases to fabricate a scenario where a high risk of terrorist attack exists.

Pretend that you’re an employee of the Homeland Security and your boss says, “Hey, we need an excuse to use a drone to spy on some guy infringing Disney’s copyright.” Within a minute or so you would likely respond by saying, “We have evidence that the many you mentioned has been siphoning funds obtained through selling bootleg Disney cartoons to Al Qaeda. Evidence suggests that this money is being used to buy equipment for an immediate strike against the United States.” Your boss gets his excuse and you get a promotion.

Rand Paul’s bill is entirely meaningless. The exceptions are so large as to offer zero legal protection against warrantless drone surveillance. Just as Obama wrapped a bank bailout in a pleasantly titled bill, Rand Paul has just wrapped an entirely worthless bill in a title that will appeal to libertarians. Many people claim that Rand Paul is a libertarian that knows how to manipulate neocons but he’s actually a neocon that knows how to manipulate libertarians.

What Kings Do

I’ll be honest, I don’t care about illegal immigration. As far as I’m concerned illegal immigration in this country started when the Europeans floated over the Atlantic Ocean and took this land from the Native Americans by force. To concern ourselves over illegal immigration today is a bit hypocritical.

Judging from the reactions I’ve been reading elsewhere I’m in the minority, at least on sites I read normally. There’s nothing unusual about that but I do find it rather funny how many people are suddenly up in arms over the fact Obama just changed immigration police using an executive order:

Appearing in the Rose Garden at the White House, Obama announced Friday that, effective immediately, young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally before age 16 and spent at least five continuous years here would be allowed to stay and apply for work permits if they had no criminal history and met other criteria, such as graduating from high school or serving honorably in the military.

By acting unilaterally, through an executive order, Obama underscored one of the great strengths of presidential incumbency: the ability to change the campaign conversation in an instant. In the time it took for word to leak in Washington, Obama’s move shunted aside a not-terribly-well-reviewed speech on the economy he had delivered in Ohio a day earlier.

How anybody can be surprised or shocked by the king’s latest move is beyond me. Obama has been using executive orders to bypass Congress for a while and has actually been the first president to blatently brag about having such power:

Each time, Mr. Obama has emphasized the fact that he is bypassing lawmakers. When he announced a cut in refinancing fees for federally insured mortgages last month, for example, he said: “If Congress refuses to act, I’ve said that I’ll continue to do everything in my power to act without them.”

Earlier this year Obama went so far as to, basically, collectivize this country’s resources through an executive order and granted state officials the power to invoke sanctions against countries that use technological means to violate human rights (with no apparent acknowledgement of the irony involved in such an order).

Some people are pointed to this most recent executive order as proof that Obama believes himself to be a king and are calling on Congress to push back. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but Congress isn’t going to push back. In fact Mitt Romney isn’t even will to say he’ll repeal the order. Moving against Obama’s latest executive order would be political suicide this close to the election. Once again we see that the only difference between the monarchy in many European countries and the presidency in this country is that one claims their position by divine right while the other claims their position through the peoples’ vote.

Even though I don’t care much about the illegal immigration debate I will say this maneuver by Obama has apparently woken a few up about the powers a president actually enjoys in this country. That’s good, people need to pull their heads out of the sand and stop pretended there is any separation of power in the United States government. All three branches are in collusion to bring the statist agenda upon us.