The Edict Makers

From Confederate Yankee:

The Edict-Makers


My inbox has been flooded with a stream of disturbing information overnight and this morning... and sadly, there seems to be a common theme.



The DNC Stimulus

James Pethokoukis warns of of a possible "August surprise" from President Obama. There are hints that the President may leverage the Bush-era HARP (Home Affordable Refinance Program) to forgive some mortgage debt for the millions of Americans that are upside down a total of $800 billion. The bailout would amount to a backdoor stimulus package, sidestepping bi-partisan opposition in the Senate to increasing the debt. The reason for the backdoor bailout? Utterly cynical.



The nascent recovery is already running out of steam. Wall Street economists just downgraded the government’s second-quarter GDP estimate of 2.4 percent to around 1.7 percent. And as even Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is warning, the unemployment rate may well begin to rise back toward the politically toxic 10 percent level given such sluggish growth. Many in the White House thought the unemployment rate would be dropping sharply by this point in the recovery.

But that is not happening. What is happening is that the president's approval ratings are continuing to erode, as are Democratic election polls. Democrats are in real danger of losing the House and almost losing the Senate. The mortgage Hail Mary would be a last-gasp effort to prevent this from happening and to save the Obama agenda. The political calculation is that the number of grateful Americans would be greater than those offended that they — and their children and their grandchildren — would be paying for someone else's mortgage woes.







The purpose of the possible debt-increasing backdoor stimulus is to pay-off millions of banking industry donations to the Democratic Party, while hoping to limit the damage to Democrats in November.



It does nothing to help revive the economy.



Backdoor Amnesty

Keeping up the theme of ruling class abuse originating in the Oval Office is a warning that the White House may attempt to use "administrative alternatives" to bypass Congressional opposition and create a stealth amnesty for criminal aliens:



Addressed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas and tellingly entitled "Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform," the 11-page memo proposes a nonlegislative amnesty that uses executive orders and other legally questionable methods as the basis to circumvent congressional intent.

"It is theoretically possible to grant deferred action (i.e. non enforcement) to an unrestricted number of unlawfully present individuals," the memo cheerfully points out. Its four authors include USCIS Chief Counsel Roxana Bacon and chief of policy and strategy Denise Vanison, two former immigration attorneys who in effect are urging a modern version of the antebellum Sen. John C. Calhoun's nullification theory.







You'll note that we're finding out about these attempts to subvert the rule of law and will of the people from the conservative media... not Congress, nor their allies in the MSM. Both of these schemes usurp Congressional power for a corrupt and abusive executive branch, but as they serve the will of the would-be ruling class as a whole, congressional leaders are silent.



They aren't going to stick their necks out and risk the wrath of the people if they can feign ignorance or blame the President for doing what they want.



A Widening Gulf

Fittingly, Mark Tapscott rounds out today's discoveries with an editorial pointing out the obvious and growing gulf between the political class of would-be rulers and the majority of Americans:



Big majorities of Mainstream America also think the Political Class couldn't care less about what regular folks think, and most mainstreamers are embarrassed by the behavior of the Political Class. Mainstream Americans think cutting government spending and reducing deficits are good for the economy, Political Class members think doing that will harm the economy.

That the gulf between these two Americas is growing wider is seen most disturbingly in Rasmussen's finding that less than a quarter of Mainstream America now believe the government has the consent of the governed. Washington has a profound credibility crisis.



That Rasmussen's results are far from unique or isolated is seen in the Gallup Poll's most recent finding that only 11 percent of those surveyed have confidence in Congress and only a third have confidence in the presidency.



So how do we explain these two Americas? Rasmussen says his data shows that "the American people don't want to be governed from the left, the right or the center. The American people want to govern themselves."







Americans are increasingly disenchanted with corrupt politicians, elitist media, and disconnected academics, precisely at a moment in history when these would-be rulers have chosen to become more overt in both their quest for power and their contempt of our culture, history, and laws.



A collision course seems imminent.



Posted by Confederate Yankee at August 5, 2010 09:54 AM