Obama’s Tyranny: Petty or Something More Sinister?

American Thinker

Last  week, headlines informed us that, because of the Sequester, the FAA will be reducing  the number of Air Traffic Controllers and closing 149 control towers completely.  Earlier, the Department of Homeland  Security released  hundreds of illegal aliens awaiting deportation because they could not afford to  hold them because of cuts mandated by the Sequester, they  said.

Head  Start is to face cuts  due to Sequestration. Native American children are being sacrificed  to Sequestration according to Slate Magazine. The Marine Corps faces massive  reductions in manpower reports the Wall Street Journal. The U.S.S. Harry  Truman and its escorts are sitting  idle in Norfolk, VA because of the Sequester when they should be on their  way to the other side of the world.

The  TSA is threatening cuts that will push airport security lines out onto the street, while the government had been threatening to  cut meat inspections until Congress pushed back.

In  other words the Administration is holding a gun to the head of almost every  single American in its quest to inflict the maximum pain possible on each of us  to achieve its political objectives.

When  has this occurred in our country’s history? When has a president orchestrated  such a symphony of hardship for party politics? When has a president gone to  such lengths for such a small amount of money?

The  Sequester represents $85 Billion out of a budget of $3.5 Trillion, or just a 2.42% reduction in  federal spending.  On year on year basis, spending is still increasing by  over 2% over last year. The math used by the Administration to generate this  pain is simply crazy.

But  this is the same Administration that decided at the outset to assault  conventional energy in order to raise prices so that green energy could compete.  I was in some of the meetings where the Green Lobby advocated this, and was  stunned at their audacity. So now gasoline is at all time high levels; natural  gas is being stymied; coal is in the Most Wanted list and nuclear has been  sidelined.

We  have a Department of Homeland Security that has become one of the largest  bureaucracies in the history of our government in the space of 11 years.   There is very little accountability and DHS has extraordinary powers to infringe  the constitutional rights of our citizenry. Drones, computer monitoring, and  wiretaps are all allowed under the Obama Administration’s overwhelming control  of the mechanisms of state.  Just the other day, DHS announced  plans to scan even more private e mail traffic.

There  is a simple word for all of this; tyranny.

 

Tyranny  is defined as the arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power or a despotic  abuse of authority.

The  Obama Administration, through its concentration of power in the White House and  its staff; through its extensive use of czars, executive orders, bureaucratic  fiat and now simple oppression seems to have stepped over the line with the  American People.

Congress  has proven to be largely impotent in checking this steamroller strategy by the  executive branch. The other day another 800 pages of gobbledygook regarding  health care regulations was released by the Department of Health and Health & Human Services and Henry Chao, the bureaucrat charged with tying the  system together electronically stated  about Obamacare, “Let’s just make sure that this is not a 3^rd World  experience.”

If  you recall, the Affordable Care Act was  never seen before it was voted upon. It was passed in the dead of night on  Christmas Eve and passed only because of the greatest political bribery and  blackmail campaign ever seen in a city that has seen it all. Tyranny,  anyone?

In  Robert Woodward’s book, “The Price of Politics” the president is described as  arrogant and aloof. On the president’s decision not to deploy the Truman,  Woodward, the ultimate Washington insider, said it exhibited “a kind of madness  I haven’t seen in a long time.” Presidents do not hold military and foreign  policy to ransom.  Tyrants do.

But  in Washington for the ruling elite nothing changes. Vice President Biden, on his  way back from the installation of Pope Francis, whose hallmark to date has been  his empathy for the poor, stopped in Paris for a night and then in London and  racked up hotel bills of $585,000 and $485,000 respectively. As an ostensible  Catholic, Mr. Biden might have perhaps followed the Pope’s example of  austerity.

After  being widely criticized for the cost of his golf outing in Florida recently the  President has been lying low, but he was able to shut down tours of the White  House as a part of, you guessed it, the Sequester. One might almost think this  suited the President just fine. None of those damned plebes running around the  place.

This  crosses traditional political boundaries. It involves the separation of powers;  executive privilege, and the rights of the People under the Constitution. It is  poor management and is thuggish. It is wrong on every level.

This  President has done his best to oppress the American People with his sometimes  petty, sometimes quite substantive and always arbitrary application of the  Sequester. The media has proven their credentials once again by refusing to  challenge the Administration. Of course, even if they did they would be mocked  by Jay Carney, and one simply cannot afford that if one is to be invited to the  right parties.

Think  about how the Sequester has been applied. Think about how the Department of  Homeland Security has become a largely unaccountable national police force and  has regularly violated the law of the land. And think about a President whose  preferred policy is to use intimidation and the intentional infliction of pain  and suffering to achieve his goals. When does petty tyranny become real and  oppressive? And how do we as citizens respond?

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