Top
Constitutional Violations Of The Obama Administration-
Citizenship
Deferred Action For
Parents Of Americans Or ‘Bring Your Parents To Citizenship Day’
It has become a sad mark
of the Obama administration that so many states have leveled lawsuits against
the federal government for so many things. The issuance of DAPA has more states
suing the government: After President Obama decided in November 2014 that he
had apparently been mistaken at least 22 times by saying he couldn’t give
temporary legal status to illegal immigrants, a majority of the states took him
to court.
In December 2014, Texas
and 25 other states filed suit in the District Court for the Southern District
of Texas asking the court to enjoin implementation of both the DAPA and the
DACA expansion. On February 16, 2015, Judge Andrew S. Hanen issued a
preliminary injunction blocking the programs from going into effect while Texas
v. United States proceeds.
Why the hue and cry from
these states? Simply put, the Obama administration engineered DAPA after
Congress rejected the very policies the program seeks to put in place. And it
would accomplish this in clear and blatant violation of the Administrative
Procedure Act, immigration law, and the Constitution’s ‘take-care’ clause. A
district court temporarily enjoined DAPA last year in February 2015, which
action the Fifth Circuit twice affirmed.
Then, the shenanigans
started. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton attempted to prolong consideration
of the case until the next October term but the Supreme Court only granted him
an eight day extension to file his opposition brief and the Obama Justice
Department, looking to hurry things up even more in their favor, waved its
right to file a reply brief.
On January 19, 2016 the
Supreme Court agreed to review the case. The Court took the unusual step of
asking for briefings on the new constitutional question of as to if DAPA
violates the Take Care Clause.
Significantly, the Court
ordered the Obama administration to answer the pivotal question of whether DAPA
“violates the Take Care Clause of the Constitution.” This is profound in that,
in 225 years, the Supreme Court has never had occasion to ask a sitting
president whether he has violated his oath to take care that the laws are faithfully
executed.
Top
Constitutional Violations Of The Obama Administration-
The EPA’s Clean Power Plan
Because We Said So,
That’s Why!
Back in June 2014, the
heavy-handed federal entity known as the Environmental Protection Agency, or
EPA, proposed another new rule, this time for regulating power-plant emissions.
Despite significant criticism and repeated opposition from both the states and
private enterprise, the EPA announced a final rule on August 3, 2015.
The ruling gives
states until 2018 to develop final plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,
with mandatory compliance beginning in 2022.
To justify this
typically draconian rule, the EPA cites Section 111 of the Clean Air Act as
justification for the Clean Power Plan. However, the problem is that section
doesn’t give the agency such authority. Section 111(d) doesn’t permit the
government to require states to regulate pollutants from existing sources, such
as those deriving from coal-fired plants, when those pollutants are already
being regulated under Section 112.
Once again, the Supreme
Court had to intervene and on February 9th, 2016 the Court granted a stay,
halting implementation of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan pending the resolution of
legal challenges to the program in court.
The Obama administration
views the CPP as its signature environmental initiative, and it represents the
EPA’s most ambitious effort to control so-called ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions
under the Clean Air Act. However, many states are not as enamored by this
egregiously illegal move. In fact, five separate stay applications were filed
by more than two dozen states and numerous industry groups.
The Supreme Court’s
decision was a surprise to many legal observers, as it is unusual for the high
court to block federal regulations, especially since the D.C. Circuit had
denied a similar request. One possible explanation was offered by Michael S.
Greve, a professor at George Mason University School of Law, to the effect that
the court was concerned about a replay of Michigan v. EPA, in which the
court invalidated another EPA rule to little practical effect.
The decision also
suggests to many that a majority of the court has concerns about the EPA’s
authority to impose the CPP under the Clean Air Act.
There are serious legal
arguments against specific elements of the CPP such as the consideration of
potential emission reductions to be achieved “outside the fence” of regulated
facilities. Also, there is the position of whether Section 111 of the CAA
allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants in the first
place?
As with other actions by
the EPA, the question at issue is not merely whether the EPA observed the
relevant procedural requirements or properly exercised its authority on the
margin. Rather, the question is whether the EPA has the authority to do this at
all.
Top
Constitutional Violations Of The Obama Administration
Clean Water Rule
EPA’s Clean Water
Rule: The Government Wants To Get Into Your Ponds
Last year in May 2015,
the environmental Stormtroopers at the EPA announced their new Clean Water
Rule, which is ostensibly designed to protect streams and wetlands from
pollution. While the agency insists that the rule doesn’t affect bodies of
water not previously regulated, several groups have sued the federal government
on the basis that the rule’s definitions of regulated waters greatly exceed the
EPA’s authority under the Clean Water Act to regulate “waters of the United
States.”
Three times already the
meaning of that phrase has been addressed by the Supreme Court, making it clear
that, for the EPA to have regulatory authority, a sufficient nexus must exist
between the location regulated and “navigable waters.” The new Clean Water
Rule, however, essentially gives the EPA power over waters that are far beyond
“navigable” by any stretch of the definition of that word.
The House voted in
January 2016 to overturn a contentious rule from the Environmental Protection
Agency that asserts federal authority over small waterways. The resolution,
from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), which the Senate passed in November, aimed to
block enforcement of the EPA’s Clean Water Rule or “waters of the United
States” and prevent any similar rules from being issued in the future.
However, on January 19th
President Obama issued the ninth veto of his presidency, rejecting the
congressional resolution to overturn the EPA’s recently enacted regulations
defining the “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. The
attempted congressional intervention highlights the contentious nature of the
new rule, which defines the scope of federal permitting jurisdiction over
development and other activities in wetlands.
The GOP says the
administration is seeking to assert federal control over puddles, ditches,
areas that are occasionally wet and other large sections of private or state
land in violation of the intent of the Clean Water Act. They say the rule would
be disastrous to farmers, developers, landowners and other businesses that
would need a federal permit for routine tasks such as digging ditches.
“The federal government
shouldn’t be regulating every drop of water,” said House Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), whose panel has
authority over water policy. “Just about every wet area in the country is open
to federal regulation under this rule,” he added. “The rights of landowners and
local governments will be trampled.”
In a recent op-ed
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called the rule a “power grab” and noted that, “The
EPA claims it is only clarifying the law, but Congress never intended the
federal government to oversee tiny streams and ponds on private property,” he
wrote in the Omaha World-Herald in agriculture-heavy Nebraska.
5
Top Constitutional Violations Of The Obama Administration
Whatever It Takes
Obamacare’s Bay State Bailout And Commonwealth Kickback – Doing
Whatever It Takes!
Before he left office,
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick teamed up with President Obama to bail out
Massachusetts’s malfunctioning health-care exchange. The failure of the program
probably had something to with the fact that Governor Deval Patrick arranged
for more than 300,000 Bay State residents to receive temporary Medicaid
coverage without any verification of eligibility, and for the state to get the
most generous taxpayer-funded premium subsidies in the entire country.
After the worst state
transition to Obamacare in the country, Massachusetts still had no functional
exchange website and only 769 people had enrolled in Obamacare-subsidized
plans.
Consequently, Gov.
Patrick pulled off two special deals with the federal government: the
“Commonwealth Kickback” which grants Massachusetts the most generous
taxpayer-funded premium subsidies in the entire country, and the “Bay State
Bailout” which gave over 300,000 state residents “temporary” Medicaid coverage
in 2014, all without any verification of their eligibility.
The Obama Administration
continued a depressingly common tactic of favoring one state, in this case
Massachusetts, at the expense of others. On top of this, the administration
blatantly violated Obamacare’s own provisions in order to make the
Commonwealth Kickback and Bay State Bailout a reality.
Deals like these and
others like the controversial ACA-related “Cornhusker Kickback” and “Louisiana
Purchase,” are all part of a growing list of special deals cut for some
states transitioning to Obamacare. During the troubled transition the Bay
State was unilaterally granted “grace-periods” and delays. However, there
was then the revelation of extra payments for hospitals in the state contained
in the law courtesy of former Senator John Kerry. One bipartisan group referred
to it as the “Bay State Boondoggle.”
Unfortunately, according
to observers, the deals cobbled together by the Governor and the Obama
Administration now pit federal and state taxpayers against one another. The
lack of transparency and failure to accept public comment has made it
impossible for taxpayers in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan,
New Hampshire, North Carolina and every other state from weighing in on whether
they want the federal government to use their hard-earned tax dollars to bail
out Massachusetts officials.
Unlike Colorado,
Maryland, Minnesota, and Oregon, that have ongoing investigations for website
failures, some of which are criminal investigations, no such investigation has
targeted the state of Massachusetts.
5 Top
Constitutional Violations Of The Obama Administration
Taxes
Obamacare’s Hidden
Taxes On The States
The Affordable Care Act,
otherwise known as Obamacare, imposed a health-insurance providers’ fee on
insurance companies, to allow the government to tax the windfall the insurance
companies were supposed to get from increased enrollment. But then, in March 2015,
states were also notified that they would be assessed this fee, as well,
because they use managed-care organizations to provide Medicaid services.
However, there is
nothing in the ACA that allows the federal government to force states to pay
the fee. So the administration did an end run by having the “private” Actuarial
Standards Board determine what makes a state’s payments to managed-care
organizations “actuarially sound,” as required by law. The board then
interpreted that “actuarially sound” standard to require states to pay the
taxes assessed on their managed-care organizations.
Consequently, the
federal government then determined that states must pay a portion of the fee to
their Medicaid managed care organizations to then pay to the federal government!
While states get some reimbursement from the federal government for that money,
they still end up losing 54 cents for every dollar of the insurance tax. A tax
is a tax is a tax, no matter what convoluted means it takes to assess it.
For states like Texas,
for example, that means an unexpected budget hit of $120 million annually. In
addition, the fraudulent assessment raises serious issues over federal
coercion, since the states have no choice but to either pay the tax or lose
their federal Medicaid funds. As a result, Texas, and later Kansas and
Louisiana, sued the federal government.
Eventually six states
filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act.
At issue is the complaint that Texas, Wisconsin, Kansas, Louisiana, Indiana and
Nebraska filed in the Northern District of Texas regarding the Health Insurance
Providers Fee assessed to health insurers to cover federal subsidies.
The lawsuit points out
that nothing in the Affordable Care Act’s language provides clear notice that
states would also have to pay the fee.
“This notice was not
even provided by rule but was ultimately provided by a private entity wielding
legislative authority,” the suit says.
The suit seeks an
injunction against the federal rules that say states are responsible for the
fee. It also asks that states be refunded for what they’ve already paid.
http://conservativeamerica-online.com/5-top-constitutional-violations-of-the-obama-administration-citizenship/
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