Tag Archives: Issues and Insights

Is The U.S. Constitution Relevant In America?

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On February 27th, Issues and Insights posted an article about a recent statement by President Biden.

The article reports:

The Supreme Court told President Joe Biden that he didn’t have the authority to forgive student loan debt. But he did anyway, bragging that the Court “didn’t stop me.” So why do we even have a legislative branch and a high court if the president is going to make law as if he were a king?

Does Congress have the intestinal fortitude to insist that the President abide by the Constitution? Frankly, I doubt it.

The article continues:

It’s Biden’s party, and its activist media, that has been carping for years about losing “our democracy.” Yet when a Democratic president bypasses the checks and balances that are the backbone of our republic, the three co-equal branches framework of government that is intended to guard against descending into a dictatorship, they celebrate rather than condemn.

Maybe it’s because they care about the integrity of our system of government only when it’s making policies they want.

In June 2023, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, struck down the Biden administration’s plan to cancel up to $400 billion in student loans, which it had announced in August 2022. In her concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that “when it comes to” national policy, “the Constitution gives Congress the reins — a point of context that no reasonable interpreter could ignore.”

But high court rulings apparently don’t apply when a Democratic president decides they don’t. Last week, the White House played the role of unreasonable interpreter and announced “$1.2 billion in student debt cancellation for almost 153,000 borrowers.”

“The Biden-Harris administration has now approved nearly $138 billion in student debt cancellation for almost 3.9 million borrowers through more than two dozen executive actions,” according to a White House fact sheet.

Biden acknowledged last week that “my MAGA Republican friends in the Congress, elected officials, and special interests stepped in and sued us,” and that “the Supreme Court blocked it.”

The government does not have the power to step between a lender and a borrower. That is a private contract and should not be interfered with by the government. How would you feel if the government stepped in and forgave your neighbor’s mortgage while requiring you to pay off your mortgage? That is what the Biden administration is trying to do.

The Part Of The Story Rarely Told

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Issues & Insights posted an article today detailing the environmental problems with green energy. Yes, you read that right.

The article reports:

Left out of the often mistaken, never in doubt assertions of renewables’ unalloyed goodness is the fact that the hardware used is hardly renewable. It wears out and needs to be replaced. Then what?

“The problem of solar panel disposal ‘will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment’ because it ‘is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle,’” writes energy analyst Michael Shellenberger, quoting a Chinese recycling official.

In his 2018 Forbes column headlined “If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste?” Shellenberger also quotes a four-decade veteran of America’s solar industry, who said “the reality is that there is a problem now, and it’s only going to get larger, expanding as rapidly as the PV industry expanded 10 years ago”; and researchers from the Institute for Photovoltaics in Stuttgart, Germany, who found that “contrary to previous assumptions, pollutants such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium can be almost completely washed out of the fragments of solar modules over a period of several months, for example by rainwater.”

More recently, Hazardous Waste Experts reported worn-out solar panels are “a potent source of hazardous waste,” producing a “dilemma” that “is especially virulent in California, Oregon, and Washington, as those states started adopting solar energy earliest in the game – suggesting that eco-virtue mightn’t necessarily be its own reward.”

And just as solar and wind chew up immense tracts of real estate, so, too, will the retirement of solar energy’s constituent parts.

I was not the world’s greatest student of physics (that is an understatement), but I do remember learning that it is impossible to make a perpetual motion machine because of friction. The quest for clean energy reminds me of the search for a perpetual motion machine. America has cut its carbon emissions in recent years by using more natural gas, which is a relatively clean source of energy. That change makes much more sense and is much less disruptive than some of the radical ideas being proposed by the political left in America.

It Really Should Be About The Constitution

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Issues & Insights posted an article today titled, “It Was Obama, Not Trump, Who Failed The Constitution.” The article contrasts the ways both men governed while in the office of President.

The article notes:

One of the key aspects of the Trump presidency has been his success at maintaining the vibrant and dynamic role of the office of the president.  In John Yoo’s latest book “Defender in Chief,” he counters the narrative that President Trump challenges our constitutional order.  On the contrary, Yoo explains, President Trump has been quite remarkable in promoting and protecting the presidency as an integral part of our federal system.

From its inception, our Constitution contemplated that the head of the federal government have the agility and flexibility to accomplish his agenda – one that had been presented to the public in the national election.  President Trump’s effective use of his office to focus like a laser on his policy goals has been truly amazing to watch.

The article continues:

In “Defender in Chief,” Yoo carefully explains the seriousness of the Trump administration in pursuing its objectives lawfully and also simultaneously reveals how so many of his critics colored outside Constitutional lines.

In nine chapters, he reminds us of the myriad methods of this dichotomy that psychologists might otherwise call projection. Remember the left’s attacks on the Electoral College? Yoo also reminds us of the odious court-packing schemes of FDR, repackaged by progressives Pete Buttigieg and VP candidate Kamala Harris.

…Even when the policy issue doesn’t necessitate a visit to federal courts, Trump’s critics twist themselves into pretzels figuring out how to oppose him. Take the Paris Agreement or the Iran nuclear deal. In both cases, President Obama failed to follow the Constitution’s predicates to submit the agreements to the Senate as treaties. Yet when Trump withdrew from both he was criticized for “undermining America’s standing in the world.”

The article concludes:

John Yoo’s latest book reveals that Trump is a bold and vigorous force in Washington, and even more an agent of support for his office just as our founders planned.  While the left continually challenges his position as president and his person as a threat to our Constitutional order, the reality Yoo reveals is quite different.

In “Defender in Chief,” Yoo gives the reader a robust defense of Trump’s commitment to the American experiment.  That our president has an unalloyed love of our country is clear.  Now we see with numerous examples that Trump has been able to accomplish his policy goals while staying within the lines of Article II because he’s the defender in chief.

Quite often the things the Democrats accuse others of doing are the things the Democrats themselves are doing. President Trump has never claimed that because he has a phone and a pen he can enact laws.

When Following The Law Is Controversial

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Issues and Insights posted an article today about President Trump’s plan to deport about one million illegal aliens. These are aliens that have already had their court hearings and been ordered deported by judges. The article notes that Acting United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli is simply the first federal official, besides President Trump, brave enough to follow and implement the law.

The article notes:

That is what President Trump pledged to do when he took the oath of office. Take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That is why the President is called the Chief Executive. Democrats, and their party-controlled media, find that shocking because they have been in an insurrection since Trump took that oath of office.

Cuccinelli said in a CBS interview on Sunday,

“[ICE agents are] ready to just perform their mission which is to go and find and detain and then deport the approximately one million people who have final removal orders. They’ve been all the way through the due process and have final removal orders.”

If we are not going to deport illegal aliens who have had their cases adjudicated with final deportation orders fully in accord with due process, then Democrats would have effectively opened the borders to Central America, and the entire third world, to just walk in, and sign up for welfare paid for by U.S. citizens. That would amount to a coup against American democracy, as that policy has never been adopted into law by representatives democratically elected by those same U.S. citizens.

Breitbart News reported on July 7, “The latest Harvard/Harris Poll finds that a majority of Americans support Trump’s plan to mass deport illegal aliens following inaction from Congress. This includes support from more than 8-in-10 Republican voters and more than 5-in-10 swing voters. Breitbart News further reports that there are about 1.7 million illegal aliens from Central America and Mexico, alone, living in the U.S. despite already being ordered deported or having pending deportation orders. The latest federal data concludes that there are more than 925,000 illegal aliens, in total, with final deportation orders who have continued living freely in the U.S. About 20% of these illegal aliens have at least one criminal conviction…. Roughly 60% of these illegal aliens come from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

The article makes a very good point:

Ken Cuccinelli and Bill Barr just need to enforce the Rule of Law, whatever it takes, to stop this modern Resistance and Insurrection, and restore Due Process and the Rule of Law.

The Democrats (and the media) have been acting like spoiled children since the 2016 presidential election. It’s time they grew up and realized that America is supposed to be a country of laws that apply equally to all. I guess they just can’t get used to the idea of having a President who actually enforces the law as it is written.

We Need To Get Healthcare Right

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Yesterday Issues and Insights posted an article about ObamaCare 10 years out.

The article reports:

Based on polling data, Obamacare has been a miserable failure, and Obama will be far from the last president to grapple with this issue.

The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that health care is at the top of the nation’s priority list, with 24 percent of respondents listing it as their top priority for the federal government. Next on the list is immigration, at 18 percent, and after that, economic growth at 14 percent. 

The poll also found that 42 percent list health care as either their first or second choice on the priority list.

Back in June 2008, when Obama was running for president, only 8 percent rated health care as a top priority, just 20 percent as their first or second priority. Of course, the economy was in a recession and the country at war with Iraq, both of which weighed heavily on the public’s mind at the time.

But even in earlier years when the economy was doing well, health care ranked far lower on the list of priorities than it does today. In June 2006, only 14 percent ranked it as No. 1 on their list. A year later, 15 percent said it was their top priority.

The public has not been impressed with ObamaCare:

An ongoing Gallup survey finds that the public was actually more satisfied with their own coverage and quality of health care in 2007 than they were in 2018. Other surveys find cost remains a major complaint.

The article lists a few problems with ObamaCare:

It has done nothing to slow, much less reverse, the rising cost of health care. In fact, Obamacare itself caused premiums in the individual market to more than double in its first four years.

…National health spending, which was 16.3 percent of GDP in 2008, is now 17.9 percent and is slated to hit 19.4 percent by 2027. Per-capita spending on healthcare jumped from $7,898 to $10,739 over those years.

Far from driving the deficit down, Obamacare is pushing federal red ink up. The Congressional Budget Office has calculated that repealing Obamacare would cut the deficit by some $473 billion in the first 10 years. 

Rather than admit failure, the Democrats simply want to throw more money at it.

The article concludes:

Naturally, because of these failures, the Democrats’ answer is to dump even more taxpayer money into government-run health care programs, with most now favoring a $32 trillion plan developed by socialist Bernie Sanders to have the government nationalize the entire health insurance industry.

Only in government, and only among fans of big government, are massive failures like Obamacare rewarded with still more government.