Note: Last month I suspended publication of this blog on a daily basis because of time constraints generated by my other activities. Today, I begin the blog again, on a once-a-week basis. I'm glad to be back. CEC
The field of lobbyists is growing even as President Obama attempts to keep them at bay from the doors of the White House. But there are at least two important considerations aside from the prevention of lobbying Obama's staff.
First, the President's memo requires any written communications with the White House to be published online. This alone could cause the ranks of lobbyists, unregistered and unregulated, to begin all-out efforts to back the registered lobbyists; and because the ban on lobbying only applies to communications with government officials, lobbys could play the game of going directly to Senators and Congressmen and women, making their work that much more difficult.
According to Parade Magazine, Sheila Krunholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a watch-dog group, "says that it is virtually impossible to keep special interests out of the stimulus-funding equation."
There is no reason lobbying should stop at the stimulus package. There are many more trillions of dollars manufactured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve that must be spent. That brings us to our second consideration: the Obama administration has an agenda that encompasses social, infrastructure, and capital reorganization, and will stop at nothing nothing, short of outright illegalities, to get what it wants. It has no need to go to illegal activities because it has the history of American political progressivism behind it. So by banning lobbyists from direct contact with administration officials, it simply doesn't have to listen to them.
Lobbyists could not exist if the Federal government did not overstep its boundaries of operating within the parameters of the Constitution including abiding by the 10 Amendment. This means recognition that under the 10th Amendment it must leave to the States and the People those powers not specified in the Constitution as belonging to it, that it was intituted by the States for the benefit of the States, not the other way around. Federal mandates on States to follow Federal guidlines on issues from the environment to civil rights to spending money it forces the States to accept, are all contrary to the American form of Federalism and republican democracy.
As an example of the social and capital engineering this administration want to dictatorially impose on the nation, we need only to look in one place, though there are dozens more. The place to look is in the field of energy.
From The Motley Fool comes this: "Setting a new tone for the Environmental Protection Agency, administrator Lisa Jackson directed the agency to review 150 to 200 permits for new or expanded surface mines. In letters to the Corps, she voiced particular concern with three proposals -- involving miners like Massey Energy (NYSE: MEE) and Patriot Coal (NYSE: PCX)...
"With virtually all production from underground mines, conversely, CONSOL Energy (NYSE: CNX) appears poised to benefit from the higher prices for Appalachian coal which could result from ongoing permitting delays up on the surface."
The Treehugger only adds to the controversy, reporting that "you may not be aware of the behind the scenes lobbying activity and campaign contributions [by] the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity." On April 23 of this year, The Treehugger reported the contributions made by the ACCE in it's efforts to lobby against surface mining. The two largest reciepients of their funds? Sen. John McCain at $302,4742 and President Barack Obama at $241,870 (all from ACCCE employees).
Demand for electricity is expected to grow by 26% over the next 20 years, according to the Energy Information Administration, and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, overseeing electrical-grid operations is predicting shortages if the economy rebounds.
Yet, according to the administration itself, it intends to "Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future."
"Catalyzing" efforts that may not pan out, especially in giant wind farms that only work when the wind blows, is not the same as getting off the backs of those who are currently producing the energy we will need in the immediate future. What do we do when the economy rebounds, the coal industry is either partially shut down, costs the American public enormously larger amounts of money, or both?
These "new jobs" are worthless make-work if they don't pan out soon enough, and the "catalyzing" efforts of spending that much of the taxpayer money to force green policy where capitalists see no profit is criminal. If T. Boone Pickens is so all-fired up about wind-farms, why isn't he putting his own millions where his mouth is? According to Winningreen, Pickens is out to pick your pockets clean.
Again according to the administration website, Obama plans to "Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars -- cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.' Where will those cars get the necessary cheap electricity if the coal mines are shut down?
And again, the administration will "Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025." How does an administration "ensure" such a thing? It cannot. It can hope for it. It can unilatterally put the public's money where capitalists fear to tread, but only because the progressive nature of Obama's socialism goes so far beyond the bounds of the Constitution that it has become a runaway train going down the mountain side.
And we are only a little more than 100 days into his administration. Obama's intentions are to perform the same sort of progressive socialist magic on the health care industry. In order to get what he wants in the auto industry he refused to allow GM and Chrysler to go backrupt, forced them to beg for money, then fired the Chair of GM and allowed his "auto oversight board" to dictate how things were going to be run.
What happens when the administration does the same thing in health care?
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