The Appointed Bureaucracy

Today I will be looking over a few of Obama’s appointees and their positions. This is a last minute look that was motivated by a caller on The Morning Majority. This fellow apparently had received a letter from the EPA to update things in a building that he owned for his construction business. The letter informed him that he had 30 days to complete the updates, which I think he said were about $5,000, or face fines of up to $32,000 per day. From my perspective, here is a small business, a contracting company run by two gents, and is facing quite a financial hit. I understand the safety issues and such; however, anyone who has completed any home remodeling or other similar task knows the morass of paper work and filing fees as well as the not-so-benevolent bureaucracy that must be dealt with.

Bottom Line Up Front

There are a large number of governmental agencies which are run by presidential appointees. These appointees must be approved of by congress. What happens when the Congress and the President are all on the same party line is that the vast bureaucratic ship of state turns towards a direction that looks a lot like a centralization of power and a primary dominion. These are things which the founders of America sought to avoid.

Background

Those particular offices which come to mind at this early hour are the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Office of Faith Based Neighborhood Partnerships. An odd pair, I know, but it is early and I am only on my first pot of coffee and first something hour energy shot. I would include the FCC and the FTC, but those would make this a full book and I cannot devote that much time to writing in one day.

The directors or leading heads of these offices are presidential appointees and can wield, apparently, some broad powers.

The EPA was founded by Richard M. Nixon in 1970. This office is responsible for enforcing the nation’s environmental statutes. What has been done in that regard under this administration? The Gibson Guitar raid is the most recent and widely known action taken by the EPA, but there is more.

In Chino, CA the EPA is requiring that some 13 dairies prevent animal waste run-off. There is a fear that the cow manure and chemicals on the farms could wash into the rivers and streams in the winter rains. Concerns about cow crap in the water cloud California. Cow manure actually composts nicely into great fertile soil, but is a threat to the environment? I do not want to drink it, but it has been a LONG time since I have had to drink from a stream. Wait! What is going to happen when the EPA learns that fish poop in the water, too? How are they going to handle the herds of buffalo and wild horses that roam the plains and hills of the Midwest and daringly defecate without concern to the waterways?

Obama had to step in and pull back the current administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson. Just a few weeks ago, Jackson “tried” to implement standards that even Obama considered too stringent. Like that was the first time he saw the standards which Jackson was trying to implement! Come on, the Director of the EPA is virtually a Cabinet level position now. He sees Director Jackson quite regularly, I am sure. At any rate, Obama said that the standards were too strict and Jackson came back with lower standards, but which are still much stricter than those under which the US currently operates. These standards are strangling the US economy. Manufacturing plants are losing capital, getting fined, shutting down and laying off employees, while other businesses are moving operations overseas. These manufacturing plants are going to places with cheaper labor and looser environmental controls. Places like China. Earlier this year there were several press releases about thousands of children, not to mention the thousands and thousands of adults, who were diagnosed with lead poisoning in areas around battery plants in China. Some of those plants have been closed, but the environmental and human damage is done. These people are not going to be cured of a lifetime of lead exposure. If Director Jackson were to go to China and look at the environmental wrongs there she would either die of shock or, like the old cartoon characters, her eyes would jump out of her head with dollar signs for pupils.

So, the EPA standards are putting some businesses directly under, fining others out, and preventing many from starting. I suppose that those who had been or would have been working in those factories can now go to Washington and apply for positions with the EPA. They could jump squarely into someone’s …. Crap or go in and fiddle around with their wood. As a matter of fact, the new standards would require some 230,000 new employees in the EPA to track, investigate, and enforce those standards. Don’t ask or worry about how these jobs will be paid for, we can always tax the rich.

I see that EPA Director Jackson worked as the Environmental Protector of New Jersey. According to the NJ Star Ledger the State now has to come up with $8 billion dollars to fix the state’s sewer systems. Wow, she REALLY likes to get in peoples … business.

Since I, like the founders of America, like to thank God for my fortune of a great family and enough to pay the bills while putting a very little something aside I find the White House Office of Faith Based Neighborhood Partnerships an odd creation. Seriously, if there is such a call from some minor groups and loud mouths to remove the Ten Commandments from courthouses and to remove the name of God from our money and the Pledge of Allegiance, why no outcry over this office? What is this office supposed to do? According to the announcement from the White House, this organ (and I struggled to find a word to put here) is charged with thrusting the following upon us, the People

• The Office’s top priority will be making community groups an integral part of our economic recovery and poverty a burden fewer have to bear when recovery is complete.
• It will be one voice among several in the administration that will look at how we support women and children, address teenage pregnancy, and reduce the need for abortion.
• The Office will strive to support fathers who stand by their families, which involves working to get young men off the streets and into well-paying jobs, and encouraging responsible fatherhood.
• Finally, beyond American shores this Office will work with the National Security Council to foster interfaith dialogue with leaders and scholars around the world. 

The second point I cannot argue with, the man must be the father. Although, I can see how this concept will stick in the craw of gay groups, did he just lose the Pink Vote? Reaching out to foster dialogue … what a load of stuff the EPA wants to keep out of streams and rivers! Come on, that is what we have the State Department for! Let the existing agencies do their jobs! What are we paying diplomats for if not to reach out to scholars and leaders around the world?

The first two points above are what the Christian Church has done and is still doing today, in spite of multiple attempts to squash it and remove any vestiges of Christian religion from all books and institutions in America. Obama has created a religious affairs organ. There is a strange and odd collection of names attached to searches in the news and on the net for religious advisors to the Obama administration. Shaun Casey is one. Mr. Casey referred to Jesus as an illegal immigrant. Jim Wallis, anti-Gay, had an apparently short tenure on the Hill.

The one name which I found as a current and regularly appearing name in relation to both the White Hosue and religion is Dalia Mogahed. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton have a strongly positive opinion about her. This must be the case as muslim outreach has increased to a robust level, according to rollcall.com. Dalia Mogahed cannot be all that bad, can she? I mean, really, she believes in sharia law! Aside from the fact that sharia law requires infidels to die, pay jizya, and be slaves to pure muslims. That is, according to ibm Rashid.

Why wage war? The Muslim jurists agree that the purpose of fighting the People of the Book, excluding the (Qurayshite) People of the Book and the Christian Arabs, is one of two things: it is either for the conversion to Islam or the payment of the jizya. The payment of the jizya is because of the words of the Exalted, “Fight against such as those

who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah or the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah and His Messenger hath forbidden, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily being brought low.

What is jizya? According to Islamic law, this is a tax imposed upon non-Arab people of the Book (non-Arab Christians) who are male, of puberty, and free. What might that look like? Well, I hardly think that, if the word jizya, were used that the US would not erupt in a firestorm of rebellion. But, if one does a search on “fined for bible study” one will find nearly 100 articles just for September 2011, posts, and blog entries about the family in Orange County California that was fined $300 for holding a Bible study as it violated zoning laws. One articles states that the weekly gatherings violated the area zoning laws. What about large family meals (like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Birthdays), graduation parties, and the like? Are those also going to be zoned and taxed out or is this an insidious way of instituting a jizya? I did not find anything under “fined for quran study”

Even though “separation of church and state” is not written in the Constitution, it is written that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

Well, I ramble, but, we see that there is a steady term for Dalia Mogahed, daughter of a Muslim Brotherhood member, working closely with Obama; however, the “Christian” choices of the administration have been found to be extremist, racist, and otherwise just loony. It sounds to me like someone is being restricted by the government!

http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_18982288

http://www.hawaiireporter.com/epa%E2%80%99s-tighter-ozone-standards-will-strangle-economic-recovery/123

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ObamaAnnouncesWhiteHouseOfficeofFaith-basedandNeighborhoodPartnerships/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/10/liberal-christians-attack-obama-spiritual-adviser-jim-wallis-over-gay-ad.html