I am writing about S.679, introduced by Charles Schumer on March 30, 2011 and co-sponsored by 15 other senators, including the Republican leader and six other Republican senators.  This is another case of the Chavezization of the United States of America.  Our founding fathers wrote the Constitution the way they did for a reason.  They didn’t want this nation to become a third world banana dictatorship.  These great men of thought and courage wrote the Constitution to give us a system of checks and balances to prevent one person or a small group of people from taking absolute control of our nation.

With the passage of this piece of dictatorial legislation, Congress will essentially vote themselves, and We the People into a state of irrelevancy.  We already have too many czars who owe their allegiance to Obama rather than to the Constitution as designed.  But it isn’t only Obama I am concerned about.  I don’t want any president to have this much unchecked authority to do as he wishes without any congressional approval.

It may be easy for you to just pass this off as a “streamlining of the system”, but to me and many other American citizens it is not streamlining, it is abrogating the duties you swore to perform when you were elected to Congress.  The background checks and investigations are supposed to prevent tax cheats and radicals from gaining important posts in our government.  Look what we have in charge of our government now.  A Treasury Secretary who evaded hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes because he misunderstood the tax codes (?), a member of the House of Representatives who evaded hundreds of thousands of dollars because he misunderstood the tax codes (?), radicals in Cabinet positions who seek to destroy this nation by preventing us from gaining energy independence, other radicals who are printing money like it will actually be worth something.  While Ben Bernanke is screwing the Chinese with his monetary policies he is also screwing the American citizens, but that is the point isn’t it?

Now we also have another agency telling a company it can’t move from a closed shop state to a right to work state?  Since when does the federal government have the right to tell any company where they can and can’t do business?  Isn’t dictating where they can or can’t operate a dictatorship?  Isn’t this what Adolf Hitler did? How about Hugo Chavez?  Is this what you call a free market system?  Or is this what we are becoming, a socialist state run by government fiat?

Charles Schumer certainly isn’t doing this for any improvement in our government, or in the growth of American exceptionalism, strength, and freedom.  He is one of the most radical communistic people in Washington and believes in the subjugation of the American people.   If you look at Schumer’s record you find nothing but dictatorial policies.  He wants absolute gun control, open borders, murder on demand against unborn children, and total government control of every aspect of the lives of the citizens of America, just to name a few.  Schumer is one who would give us a Hugo Chavez type of America.  This is not what the founding fathers designed and it is not what the American people desire.

Anyone who supports this legislation is not doing so for the betterment of a free society.  If you are willing to ride in the back of the Obama bus and take what crumbs he doles out that is fine but resign from office first and allow We the People to elect people with the courage it takes to govern a nation as great as America.

The co-sponsors:

Lamar Alexander

Scott Brown, what a surprise!!

Susan Collins, what a surprise!!

Jeff Bingaman

Richard Blumenthal

Thomas Carper

Dick Durbin, of course

Mike Johans

John Kyle, can you spell RINO?

Joe Lieberman

Richard Lugar

Mitch McConnell, Republican senate leader would sell our freedom? Of course!!

Jack Reed

Harry Reid, no surprise here

Sheldon Whitehouse

These are 15 senators who would sell the freedom of American citizens, and for what?  What do they have to gain by destroying the Constitution?  How many more are going to join in this travesty to destroy America?  As my senators I certainly hope you will not be a part of this.  We have already seen the freedom of American citizens, We the People, taken by Marxists who desire no more than to subjugate the American people for their own power, prestige, and wealth.

This cannot be allowed to stand.  The American people are standing up in record numbers to say NO MORE OF THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  What is it going to take for Congress to listen to the people?  I am certain that you hear our voices.  Is it that Congress doesn’t care or is it that Congress thinks we don’t matter?  It must be one or the other because the voices of the people are being ignored.

This legislation gives any president unlimited power and finishes the destruction of our republic.  This will not be allowed to stand.  I understand the Democrat Party doing this.  It has been their goal for quite some time to destroy America and turn it into their fiefdom, but for Republicans to dance right along to the tune of radical Marxist dictators is disturbing and frightening.  It is time for the rank and file of the Republican Party in the senate to revolt and put a stop to this abrogation of duty by Mitch McConnell.   He has consistently lied to the American people and has shown he does not have the courage or ability to stand for the rights of We the People and the provisions of the Constitution of the United States of America.  He would rather ride in the back of Obama’s bus than stand for freedom.  He either does not have the courage of his convictions, or has no convictions at all.  I tend to believe the latter is the case.

It is time for the freedom loving members of the Senate to act.  If you cannot remove Mitch McConnell from leadership and replace him with someone of character, courage, and integrity then resign your positions and we will find American citizens who will actually uphold the oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.  We the People have had enough of this.

I submit this in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, in faith, with the responsibility given to me by Almighty God to honor His work and not let it die from neglect.

In God We Trust,

Bob Russell
Claremore, Ok.

Not only did all Senate Democrats vote this resolution down, but the progressive puppets of the Republican party also joined in to allow the EPA to ignore our Congress and pass cap and trade laws by executive fiat. The vote failed by a tally of 56-41, with Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire; Scott Brown of Massachusetts; Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine; Mark Kirk of Illinois; and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee all voted against Paul’s resolution. If your Senator is on this list, give them a call and ask them just why they chose to allow the EPA to bypass Congress and once again illegally pass cap and trade laws by executive fiat?

Whether you agree with the new regulations or not, the U.S. Constitution declares that it is Congress, and only Congress, who is authorized to pass laws onto the people. Check out How a bill become law. In it we see the following facts:

Under the chairmanship of George Washington, the Constitutional Convention established a strong federal government in 1871. Lawmaking powers were vested in a national congress.

Article I of the Constitution gave “all legislative powers” to Congress, and specified that laws could originate either in the House or the Senate. The only exception was revenue bills, which had to originate in the House. ( emphasis mine)

The conservative grassroots movement that elected the likes of Scott Brown and Kelly Ayotte to the U.S. Senate in the 2010 elections apparently did not help to get conservatives into office, but instead elected Progressive Republicans – a great example of how politicians will say anything to get elected today, and when they get a whiff of power, they turn their backs on the very people whom elected them. Brown and Ayotte campaigned on a platform of government that obeys the U.S. Constitution, yet they vote to allow the EPA to trample that very same constitutional law that says only Congress will pass laws in this country.

The new Cross-State Air Pollution law that will be forced onto Americans in 2012, resulting in Barack Obama’s promised “skyrocketing electricity prices” surely must apply to every state in the country right? It is based on air pollution blowing across state lines, so it must apply to all states. Not quite, as the following map shows us. Is your state on that map?

When looking at the above map of states whom will see skyrocketing electricity prices next year, we must use common sense in asking two very simple questions:

First, why isn’t the smog capital of the United States being put under these new illegal cap and trade laws? That’s right,the Liberal Obama-supporting state of California isn’t getting slapped with these new pollution regulations. Are we so ignorant as to not see the problem with that fact here today? The new laws are based on pollution blowing from one state to another. Does the EPA expect us to believe that California’s world famous smog will stay in California and somehow not blow into, say Arizona?

Secondly, what about Mexico’s pollution blowing into Texas? Are the wizards of the EPA telling us that they can control that too?

Lastly, let’s move on to the blatant false propaganda that the EPA website contains about the massive costs to the American people that this law will create. Senator Paul’s above-linked informative site says this:

These new regulations will cost over $2 billion and over a course of a decade or more may well exceed $100 billion. We add these new regulations to over $2 trillion worth of regulations already on the books.

To which the EPA tries to deny with false and very impossible-to-prove statistics about supposed savings in healthcare that will result form the CSAPR in the following chart:

The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule provides cleaner air and healthier lives for millions of Americans

“Estimated Annual Number of Adverse Health Effects Avoided Due to Implementing the Proposed Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR)

Health Effect Number of Cases Avoided Premature mortality 13,000 to 34,000 ( between 13k and 34k? Talk about guesswork there)    Non-fatal heart attacks15,000     Hospital and emergency department visits19,000    Acute bronchitis19,000    Upper and lower respiratory symptoms420,000    Aggravated asthma400,000    Days when people miss work or school1.8 million (yes, I took the liberty to correct the spelling mistakes the geniuses of the EPA have on their info-site)

So, we are being led to believe that this new EPA law will save between 13,000 and 34,00 lives by 2014, simply by supposedly regulating state to state air pollution.  What happens if a hurricane blows into the U.S from South America and brings all that pollution with it from countries who basically have no pollution laws? What happens to those false numbers then? What happens if the Gulf of Mexico winds blow all of their pollution into Texas for say, 10 straight months? How many lives will this farce of a stealth cap and trade law save then? Yes , as we see right here, the CSAPR is all built upon one massive cap and trade lie, period. There are no concrete, proven savings that can be counted from this scam. The one thing that all Americans that live in the EPA cherry-picked states that this new law applies to next year can count on is fewer jobs and skyrocketing electricity prices. Look at the bright side, there’s one promise Obama has kept.  

Get ready folks, the man who says he will not tax the middle class and poor just did just that, and it is coming in two short months in the form of skyrocketing electricity costs, thanks to the U.S. Senate Progressives of both parties allowing the EPA to pass this cap and trade law illegally.

2012 just can’t get here fast enough !

On April 29, I sent the following letter of concern and disapproval to my U.S. Senator, Lamar Alexander (Read here…) over his co-sponsoring of Senate bill S.679, or “The Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011.”

If you haven’t heard of this insidious side-stepping of procedure, one which would grant the president even greater unchecked power by removing Senate approval from more than 200 appointed posts, you can find it here ->> S.679 at www.OpenCongress.org.

I was stunned to find an alleged Tennessee Republican senator would co-sponsor this bill, but even more so by his response to my letter, posted below.

***

Reply from Sen. Lamar Alexander, on S.679 (Bold emphasis mine…) :

May 2, 2011

Thanks very much for getting in touch with me and letting me know what’s on your mind regarding the Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011.

This bipartisan legislation which I have cosponsored would eliminate the need for the Senate to vote on roughly 210 full and part-time junior-level executive nominations. These positions are part-time advisory board or commission positions, or full-time positions that are not involved in policy making or already report to multiple senior-level Senate-confirmed officials.

This legislation would free up the Senate so that it can focus on our country’s most urgent needs of reducing spending and debt, rather than on confirming hundreds of junior positions in a president’s administration, like the public-relations officer of a minor department. The Senate will still continue to confirm about a thousand presidential nominees – nearly four times as many appointees as President Kennedy had – and I will continue to support legislative efforts to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans.

I’m grateful you took the time to let me know where you stand. I’ll be sure to keep your concerns and comments in mind when the issues surrounding presidential appointees are discussed and debated in Washington and in Tennessee.

Sincerely,

Lamar

***

Apparently, I didn’t communicate the danger well enough in my letter to the senator. He either doesn’t see it (in which case, we need a senator in D.C. who does), or he’s too involved in the Beltway Game to defend our best interests (in which case, we need a senator in D.C. who will.)

To reiterate what I expressed in the April 29 letter:

“The ‘assistant’ moniker in many of these titles should not be excuse to disregard them as trivial. As a reminder, those in secondary tiers are often the next to fill the top position. As such, their backgrounds and intentions should be no less scrutinized than those who fill the top posts, just as the candidate for Vice-President of the U.S. must be qualified to assume higher office if necessary.”

As for “bipartisan legislation”, maybe someone can explain to me:  how does foolishness from  senators of two parties improve on foolishness from one party alone?

Throwing a “bipartisan” label on faulty, unconstitutional and dangerous legislation doesn’t mean your course of action is right. It only means you’ve got idiots on both sides of the aisle.

And given the ability of public relations officers to direct a message, to paint a foul situation in a positive light, that ‘public relations officer of a minor department‘ can be as influential, if given the room to do so, as any administration official.

By the way, exactly which department does Alexander deem ‘minor’? Perhaps there’s room to cull the deadwood from the overgrown governmental tree?

Admittedly, I’m no great fan of the current regime. But the threat to our liberty from S.679 goes deeper than republican, libertarian and democrat. It reaches deeper than conservative or liberal ideologies.

Would Senator Schumer, the lovely liberal fellow who introduced S.679, be as quick to support this course of action if Bush were still in office? Or if a staunch conservative wins election in 2012? I rather doubt it.

On that score, I’m asking everyone reading this to take action:

• Check the list of cosponsors, see if your senator’s one of the idiots;
• Tell them to pull sponsorship of this legislation that would ‘streamline’ the American people out of the process of our governance;
• AND tell them to vote NO if the bill comes to vote. (Sad that you have to specify that, but that’s the part that’s really crucial and this way there’s no room for side-stepping);
• Pass this information to as many concerned citizens as possible!

Also, a little guerrilla campaigning idea…Don’t forget the liberal contingency!

Those of us on the ‘right’ and on the ‘left’ tend to snipe at one another. But we all need to remember: We’re all Americans.

We’re like a big, multi-viewpointed, oft-dysfunctional family. We may not agree, we may not like what the other ‘side’ is doing/saying. S.679 won’t benefit any of us in the long run.

Liberals stand to lose as much as conservatives, moderates and independents.

• Remind them that next election, or the one following, could bring an ultra-conservative into the Oval Office;
• Ask if they’d be comfortable if this power was granted to an ultra-conservative president;
• Suggest they research the bill themselves and read the implications with an open mind (i.e., not looking for something to refute just because it came from the ‘right’);
• Request that they contact their senators to protest this legislation.

Senate Bill S.679 cannot be allowed to pass. If a supposedly Republican senator from a crimson-red state like Tennessee not only supports but co-sponsors this rubbish, it’s going to take all of us to make sure S.679 fails.

For details of the appointments the Senate would no longer bother to approve, click here.

For the list of Senators sponsoring S.679, click here. If either of your senators is a co-sponsor, please contact them, and urge them to remove their support for S.679.

*   *   *

29 April 2011

Dear Senator Alexander:

I’m compelled to express my severe disappointment and outrage regarding your decision to co-sponsor Senate Bill S.679.

The “Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011” is an affront to the principles of freedom, regardless of which political party sits in the Oval Office.

Senator, I’m simply baffled by your actions. By removing senate approval from the process of placing these unelected officials, this legislation effectively and efficiently streamlines the American people right out of the very processes that govern our lives.

“…By and with the advice and consent of the Senate”…these are more than just words, sir. They are the line of defense between those who consent to be governed and those who wield regulatory power over our lives.

“The advice and consent of the Senate” is deeper than asking a handful of men and women to review resumes.

Must I remind you of the reason to require senate approval of presidential appointees? Those of you in the Senate act as a safeguard, a check to balance the absolute power of one man. The people appointed to the posts named in this bill have a very real and direct influence over the regulations and procedures that we must live by.

These are not insignificant appointments that are unworthy of your attention.

These appointed positions, and the people who fill them, are just as important to Americans as those who sit on the Supreme Court. In fact, given the more active, less-watched roles they play in political and regulatory matters that affect us, I feel justified in saying they’re quite significant, and just as worthy of your scrutiny before they assume power.

The ‘assistant’ moniker in many of these titles should not be considered an excuse to disregard them as trivial. Those in secondary tiers are often the next to fill the top positions. As such, their backgrounds and intentions deserve no less attention than those who fill the top posts, just as the candidate for Vice-President of the U.S. must be qualified to assume higher office if necessary.

Our president and his posse of czars, directors and legislators charge forward with costly and unconstitutional agendas. They do this despite the will of the governed, despite the outcry of the people, because they feel they ‘know what’s best for us.’

Simply look at the self-proclaimed credos and affiliations of those appointed by President Obama over the course of the past two years. Those with admitted admiration, and known association, of not only progressive or socialist icons, but individuals who actively push for greater restrictions on our unalienable rights. Rights which you swore to protect and defend when you took the oath of office as our senator.

I’m sure the president firmly believes he’s putting the right people in place to achieve a better America. Sadly, he has proven himself  tone-deaf to the beliefs and ideals of most Americans. His big-government-control vision for our country is a fast-track toward the kinds of governance suffered by eastern Europe during the Soviet Regime, the very same failed models that afflict that region today.

Without you standing in the gap for us, to intercede on our behalf, to relay and uphold the will of the people who elected you, our voices will continue to fall on tone-deaf ears.

Senator Alexander, your support and co-sponsorship of S.679 is no less than a slap in the face of the Tennesseans who sent you to Washington in our stead. We’ve trusted you to stand up for us. We expect you to do so.

Your actions now will be praised or cursed by our future generations. I’m asking you to please remove yourself as co-sponsor of S.679 today.

Further, I ask you to pull your support for this bill, and to follow through by voting ‘no’ on S.679.

If the task of reviewing presidential appointments is too bothersome for the senators sponsoring this dangerous legislation, be assured, there are plenty of worthy candidates who’d be glad to take over the job during the next election cycle.

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