Monterey Bay Forum

Just say NO! to Obama. Obama runs rough shod over separation of powers – which protect our freedoms.

Tell your congress person to stop abdicating the power of the purse to Team Obama. The latest Obama bureaucracy — a consumer protection agency – costs $646 million and it is set up to dodge Congressional oversight. Another minion, who only reports to Obama, will run it.

Obama invests huge authority in an unelected official — Elizabeth Warren. As she cannot withstand public vetting they put the new agency – Consumer Financial Protection Agency – inside an agency it does not report to with a budget not subject to Congressional control with a leader not subject to Senate confirmation.

Obama appoints Elizabeth Warren to the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Once again, the Democratic Congress under Reid and Pelosi abdicates power of the purse to Executive branch.

Consider joining the Tea Party. How to do it: go to teapartypatriots.org

For some info on separation of powers see below:

“The Constitution contains no provision expliciting declaring that the powers of the three branches of the federal government shall be separated. James Madison, in his original draft of what would become the Bill of Rights, included a proposed amendment that would make the separation of powers explicit, but his proposal was rejected, largely because his fellow members of Congress thought the separation of powers principle to be implicit in the structure of government under the Constitution. Madison’s proposed amendment, they concluded, would be a redundancy.

The first article of the Constitution says “ALL legislative powers…shall be vested in a Congress.” The second article vests “the executive power…in a President.” The third article places the “judicial power of the United States in one Supreme Court” and “in such inferior Courts as the Congress…may establish.”

Separation of powers serves several goals. Separation prevents concentration of power (seen as the root of tyranny) and provides each branch with weapons to fight off encroachment by the other two branches. As James Madison argued in the Federalist Papers (No. 51), “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Clearly, our system of separated powers is not designed to maximize efficiency; it is designed to maximize freedom.

EXECUTIVE ENCROACHMENTS

Two very different views of executive power have been articulated by past presidents. One view, the “strong president” view, favored by presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt essentially held that presidents may do anything not specifically prohibited by the Constitution. The other, “weak president” view, favored by presidents such as Howard Taft, held that presidents may only exercise powers specifically granted by the Constitution or delegated to the president by Congress under one of its enumerated powers.
Our readings include two cases dealing with the breadth of executive power. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v Sawyer (1952) arose when President Harry Truman, reponding to labor unrest at the nation’s steel mills during the Korean War, seized control of the mills. Although a six-member majority of the Court concluded that Truman’s action exceeded his authority under the Constitution, seven justices indicated that the power of the President is not limited to those powers expressly granted in Article II. Had the Congress not impliedly or expressly disapproved of Truman’s seizure of the mills, the action would have been upheld.