It’s Monday, July 9th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

Leading off the week, Kimberly Strassel offers her insight into….

Obama’s Imperial Presidency

When Congress won’t do what he wants, he ignores it and acts anyway.

The ObamaCare litigation is history, with the president’s takeover of the health sector deemed constitutional. Now we can focus on the rest of the Obama imperial presidency.

Where, you are wondering, have you recently heard that term? Ah, yes. The “imperial presidency” of George W. Bush was a favorite judgment of the left about our 43rd president’s conduct in war, wiretapping and detentions. Yet say this about Mr. Bush: His aggressive reading of executive authority was limited to the area where presidents are at their core power—the commander-in-chief function.

By contrast, presidents are at their weakest in the realm of domestic policy—subject to checks and balances, co-equal to the other branches. Yet this is where Mr. Obama has granted himself unprecedented power. The health law and the 2009 stimulus package were unique examples of Mr. Obama working with Congress. The more “persistent pattern,” Matthew Spalding recently wrote on the Heritage Foundation blog, is “disregard for the powers of the legislative branch in favor of administrative decision making without—and often in spite of—congressional action.”

Put another way: Mr. Obama proposes, Congress refuses, he does it anyway.

For example, Congress refused to pass Mr. Obama’s Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for some not here legally. So Mr. Obama passed it himself with an executive order that directs officers to no longer deport certain illegal immigrants. This may be good or humane policy, yet there is no reading of “prosecutorial discretion” that allows for blanket immunity for entire classes of offenders.

Mr. Obama disagrees with federal law, which criminalizes the use of medical marijuana. Congress has not repealed the law. No matter. The president instructs his Justice Department not to prosecute transgressors. He disapproves of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, yet rather than get Congress to repeal it, he stops defending it in court. He dislikes provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, so he asked Congress for fixes. That effort failed, so now his Education Department issues waivers that are patently inconsistent with the statute.

Similarly, when Mr. Obama wants a new program and Congress won’t give it to him, he creates it regardless. Congress, including Democrats, wouldn’t pass his cap-and-trade legislation. His Environmental Protection Agency is now instituting it via a broad reading of the Clean Air Act. Congress, again including members of his own party, wouldn’t pass his “card-check” legislation eliminating secret ballots in union elections. So he stacked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with appointees who pushed through a “quickie” election law to accomplish much the same. Congress wouldn’t pass “net neutrality” Internet regulations, so Mr. Obama’s Federal Communications Commission did it unilaterally.

In January, when the Senate refused to confirm Mr. Obama’s new picks for the NLRB, he proclaimed the Senate to be in “recess” and appointed the members anyway, making a mockery of that chamber’s advice-and-consent role. In June, he expanded the definition of “executive privilege” to deny House Republicans documents for their probe into the botched Fast and Furious drug-war operation, making a mockery of Congress’s oversight responsibilities.

This president’s imperial pretensions extend into the brute force the executive branch has exercised over the private sector. The auto bailouts turned contract law on its head, as the White House subordinated bondholders’ rights to those of its union allies. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Justice Department leaked that it had opened a criminal probe at exactly the time the Obama White House was demanding BP suspend its dividend and cough up billions for an extralegal claims fund. BP paid. Who wouldn’t?

And it has been much the same in his dealings with the states. Don’t like Arizona’s plans to check immigration status? Sue. Don’t like state efforts to clean up their voter rolls? Invoke the Voting Rights Act. Don’t like state authority over fracking? Elbow in with new and imagined federal authority, via federal water or land laws.

In so many situations, Mr. Obama’s stated rationale for action has been the same: We tried working with Congress but it didn’t pan out—so we did what we had to do. This is not only admission that the president has subverted the legislative branch, but a revealing insight into Mr. Obama’s view of his own importance and authority.

There is a rich vein to mine here for GOP nominee Mitt Romney. (Assuming he’s quick enough and willing to do so….both of which we doubt!) Americans have a sober respect for a balance of power, so much so that they elected a Republican House in 2010 to stop the Obama agenda. The president’s response? Go around Congress and disregard the constitutional rule of law. What makes this executive overreach doubly unsavory is that it’s often pure political payoff to special interests or voter groups.

Mr. Obama came to office promising to deliver a new kind of politics. He did—his own, unilateral governance.

A turn of events which surprises no one familiar with the Left’s willingness to pursue their ends through any means, be they constitutional or not; a disregard for the basic tenets of the Founding Fathers which has produced an America Jonah Goldberg describes in:

Politics and the symptoms of a sick culture

Something is wrong when lifeguards are fired for saving lives.

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously remarked, “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

I’ve always liked that quote, but I think it misleads. That two plus two equals four is not a conservative truth or a liberal truth. It’s simply the truth. (Moynihan himself recognized this when he even more famously said that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts.)

Regardless, it’s true that culture is more important than politics. You could impose Sweden’s laws on the Middle East tomorrow, but you’d be well-advised not to hold your breath waiting for the Saudis to turn into the Swedes of the Arabian Peninsula.

But it’s also true that politics — specifically, government — can change cultures. It can be loud and bloody work, as with the abolition of slavery. Or the change can be more subtle. Twenty years ago, it was simply uncool to put on your seat belt. Now, everyone seems to do it reflexively. The law changed the culture, for the better.

Still, my biggest problem with Moynihan’s insight is that he didn’t think it all the way through. The “liberal truth” that politics can change a culture and save it from itself is double-edged. For just as politics can save the culture, politics can also destroy it.

Which brings me to Thomas Lopez, a 21-year-old lifeguard in South Florida. Two days before the Fourth of July, Lopez was fired for helping rescue a man drowning 1,500 feet outside of his designated zone. “It was a long run, but someone needed my help. I wasn’t going to say no,” Lopez told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and other media outlets.

When Lopez filed his incident report, he was canned on the spot. “They didn’t tell me in a bad way. It was more like they were ‘sorry, but rules are rules,’” Lopez said. “I couldn’t believe what was happening.” The contractor that manages the lifeguard service has explained that the matter is out of its hands, too. Liability issues — i.e., fear of lawsuits, insurance requirements, etc. — demand a zero-tolerance policy for unauthorized lifesaving.

It’s a small anecdote, to be sure. But does anyone doubt that there’s something about the legal regime in this country that’s creating a headwind against basic human decency? And I’m not just talking about trial lawyers and the politicians who love them.

Last year, in Alameda, Calif., a man walked into the chilly — but not exactly freezing — waters of San Francisco Bay to commit suicide. It was a slow affair. The police and firefighters got there in plenty of time. But, due to union-backed rules, they simply declined to save the man’s life. They just stood on the beach and watched.

Fire Chief Ricci Zombeck was asked what he would have done if it had been a child, rather than a suicidal adult, slowly drowning out there. He responded that if he was on duty he’d have let the kid drown, but if he was off duty he would have saved him. These are the symptoms of a sick culture.

These days, liberals are celebrating the moral triumph of their health-care reform. We’re helping the uninsured! We’re making government more humane and compassionate! And from one perspective, that’s all true, I suppose.

But we’re also changing the culture. In some areas it’s obvious. For instance, religious institutions are being bullied into compliance with Obamacare. In other ways the changes are far more subtle, even invisible (though if you follow the British media coverage of their state-run health system, you get a hint of what’s coming; prepare for ever more debates about rationing, denying treatment to the “unworthy,” euthanasia, and the rest).

Then–House majority leader Nancy Pelosi sold Obamacare on the grounds that it would be culturally liberating. People no longer would be “job locked” because of health care, she explained. So “if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work” and pursue your dreams.

And if your dream is to be a fireman, a lifeguard, or, perhaps very soon, a doctor who isn’t allowed to save lives, you may not have to leave your job at all. But if that’s not your dream, get ready for a headwind.

In a related item, courtesy of Bill Meisen, CNSNews.com details the extent of the damage Dims have visited upon the nation:

New Disability Regs Limit Slope of Mini Golf Holes, Require Businesses to Admit Mini Horses as Guide Animals

Mona Ramouni, who is blind, rides a bus to work with her guide horse in Lincoln Park, Mich. Growing up in Detroit, Ramouni could never get a dog because her devout Muslim family considered dogs unclean.  (We’re left wondering if the Torah or the Bible deemed dogs unclean whether Jews and Christians would have been shown the same deference?)

Although the Justice Department has extended the deadline for America’s hotels to comply with regulations regarding handicap access to swimming pools, new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines are already being applied at miniature golf courses, driving ranges, amusement parks, shooting ranges and saunas.

Among the provisions in the “Revised ADA Standards for Accessible Design,” which went into effect on March 15, is one requiring businesses to allow miniature horses on their premises as guide animals for the disabled. Another limits the height of slopes on miniature golf holes.

“The new standards, for the first time, include requirements for judicial facilities, detention and correctional facilities, and recreational facilities,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said during a conference in Baltimore on June 7. “We expect the implementation of these accessibility standards to open up doors for full participation in both the responsibilities, such as jury duty, and the benefits, such as playing at city parks, of civic life for people with disabilities,” he said.

The 2010 ADA standards for Accessible Design require that at least 50 percent of golf holes on miniature golf courses be “accessible” – with a ground space that is “48 inches minimum by 60 inches minimum with slopes not steeper than 1:48 at the start of play.”

Other regulations include:

Saunas – provision of accessible turning space and an accessible bench.

Shooting facilities – provision of accessible turning space “for each different type of firing position.”

Golf courses – “an accessible route to connect all accessible elements within the boundary.” An accessible route must also “connect golf car rental areas, bag drop areas, teeing grounds, putting greens, and weather shelters.”

Gyms – at least one of each type of exercise machine must be positioned for use by a person in a wheelchair.

Amusement parks – any new or altered ride must provide at least one seat for a person in a wheelchair.

A section of the guidelines regulating commercial facilities states that, “a public accommodation shall make reasonable modifications in policies, practices, or procedures to permit the use of a miniature horse by an individual with a disability if the miniature horse has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of the individual with a disability.”

A public accommodation is defined as “a private entity that owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation.”

“Miniature horses were suggested by some commenters as viable alternatives to dogs for individuals with allergies, or for those whose religious beliefs preclude the use of dogs,” the rules state.  Also mentioned as a reason to include the animals is the longer life span of miniature horses – providing approximately 25 years of service as opposed to seven years for dogs.

“Some individuals with disabilities have traveled by train and have flown commercially with their miniature horses,” the Justice Department notes. “Similar to dogs, miniature horses can be trained through behavioral reinforcement to be ‘housebroken,’” it adds. However, “Ponies and full-size horses are not covered.” A business owner can deny admission to a miniature horse that is not housebroken, whose handler does not have sufficient control of the animal, or if the horse’s presence compromises “legitimate safety requirements.”

The miniature horse addition has come under the scrutiny of at least one member of Congress, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who offered an amendment that passed the House, banning funding to implement the provision. Chaffetz penned an editorial last month in opposition to the rule entitled, “Horses in the Dining Room?”

Last month the Justice Department extended the deadline for the rule requiring permanent wheelchair access to recreational pools. Citing “significant concerns and misunderstandings among a substantial number of pool owners and operators,” the department issued a notice in the Federal Register extending compliance from March 15 to May 21 this year. The date has now been pushed back further, to January 31, 2013.

The regulation requires large pools – those with over 300 linear feet of pool wall – to have two accessible means of entry, and smaller pools to have one.

For existing pools, owners making structural alterations are obliged to remove architectural barriers “to the extent such compliance is readily achievable.”

“As I consider the department’s accomplishments to date, and our plans for the future, I continue to take my inspiration from people with disabilities and their families,” Perez said in Baltimore. “These individuals express the harm of segregation and the value of integration more eloquently than any lawyer’s brief ever could.  They are the heroes of this civil rights movement.”

And you, Mr. Perez, are full of the same stuff you’re peddlin’; seriously….you couldn’t make this sh*t up!

Meanwhile, in the real world, economic data that would doom the reelection prospects of any white candidate continues to leave The Anointed One seemingly unscathed:

June jobs swoon: America’s labor market depression continues

This was not the employment report either the American worker or the Obama campaign wanted to see right now. The Labor Department said the U.S. economy created just 80,000 jobs in June, less than the 90,000 economists had been forecasting. And private-sector job growth was just 84,000, down sharply from 105,000 in May. Not doing fine.

The unemployment rate stayed at a lofty 8.2%.

As a research note from RDQ economics put it: “The good news is that employment growth is not slowing further but there is no sign of it picking up either.  At this pace, job creation is not fast enough to lower the unemployment rate with the labor force growing at close to 150,000 per month on average.”  Shorter: Stagnation Nation

This continues to be the longest streak — 41 months — of unemployment of 8% or higher since the Great Depression. And recall that back in 2009, Team Obama predicted that if Congress passed its $800 billion stimulus plan, the unemployment rate would be around 5.6% today.

Just 75,000 jobs were created, on average, per month in the second quarter vs. 226,000 in the first quarter. And for the year, monthly job creation has averaged just 150,000 vs. 153,000 last year. Both numbers are extremely weak.

But those top-line numbers actually overstate the health of the labor market.

– If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7% then vs. 63.8% today—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 10.9%. Even if you take into account that the LFP should be declining as America ages, the unemployment rate would be 10.5%.

– The broader U-6 unemployment rate, which includes “all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons,”  is 14.9%, up a bit from May.

– The average duration of unemployment ticked up to 39.9 weeks.

– It will take 219,000 net new jobs a month for unemployment rate to be below 8% on Election Day if current participation rate holds steady.

– Job growth during the three-year Obama recovery has averaged just 75,000 a month for a total of 2.7 million. During the first three years of the Reagan Recovery, job growth averaged 273,000 a month for a total of 9.8 million. If you adjust for the larger U.S. population today, the Reagan Recovery averaged 360,000 jobs a month for a three-year total of 13 million jobs.

– The U.S. work force remains shrunken with just 58.6% employed:

None of this should be surprising. The economy grew a bit less than 2% last year, and we averaged about 150,000 new jobs a month. We are growing a bit less than 2% this year, and job growth is averaging about 150,000 jobs a month. And there are few signs the rest of the year will be any better. (Unless, of course, like Martin O’Malley’s education and crime statistics while mayor of Baltimore, they just start making the sh*t up!) And given a) how the eurocrisis is AGAIN flaring up, and b) China continues to slow, it sure seems like 2% growth and 8% unemployment is a best-case scenario with plenty of downside risk — for the economy and the Obama campaign.

As the WSJ notes….

The Latest Jobs Drought

In April-June, an average monthly gain of only 75,000.

The June jobs report was poor again with 80,000 net new workers added to payrolls. The mediocre job growth has now stretched to three months, with gains in April, May and June averaging an anemic 75,000. That’s down from the more than 200,000 jobs created monthly in the first quarter. The trajectory most Americans see is downward.

The unemployment rate remained steady at 8.2%, mainly because the labor force participation rate of 63.8% continues to be near a 40-year low.

An alternative measure of unemployment that takes into account workers who have given up looking for jobs or who can’t find full-time work increased a tic to 14.9%. Other than white-collar business services and hiring for part-time workers, nearly every other industry was flat or negative in June.

In a statement on the June report, President Obama’s chief economist Alan Krueger said “it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.” Normally, we’d agree, but this economy is far from normal. With 41 months of 8% unemployment or higher, Congress’s Joint Economic Committee confirms that this is the weakest growth and employment at this stage of a recovery since World War II.

Mr. Obama asserted again Friday that the problem is that Congress won’t pass his jobs plan. The first stimulus was supposed to produce growth that would by now have the jobless rate under 6%. So now we are supposed to believe that Stimulus II will do the trick.

If there is a silver lining in the jobs report, it is that we might see more Democrats in Congress break with the White House and acknowledge that falling off the January 2013 tax cliff could have damaging consequences. Calling off all the planned tax hikes on employers and investors would be the best way to get employment back on a faster upward trajectory.

Speaking of the devil….or in this case, devils….the Journal suggests all may not be well in Obamaland:

Democrats and the Tax Cliff

Several Senators suggest they may not want to take the November leap.

President Obama has staked his re-election on the promise to raise taxes on anyone making more than $200,000 a year, but it’s going to be fascinating to see if he can hold other Democrats through Election Day. June marked the third month in a row of lousy job creation, and the economy is growing slowly even as the January 2013 tax cliff grows closer by the day.

Already, as many as six Democratic Senators are hedging their bets as the economy looks worse. That list includes Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jim Webb of Virginia. The first four are running for re-election this year, while the last two are leaving the Senate. They haven’t all declared outright support for postponing the tax hikes, but they have expressed a willingness to negotiate a deal with Republicans that would avoid raising taxes on anyone next year.

Mr. Webb, for example, says he doesn’t want to raise income tax brackets on “ordinary income” but he favors raising capital-gains taxes. Senator Nelson from Nebraska told the Hill newspaper that “my druthers is to extend the tax cuts for everyone,” but he wouldn’t mind raising the tax on millionaires “if it has to come to that.” It doesn’t have to come to that if Democrats don’t want it to.

A spokesman for Senator McCaskill confirmed that she’s also willing “to compromise” on a temporary extension of the current tax rates. Florida’s Senator Nelson didn’t return our calls but has been reported in the press as open to an extension.

Messrs. Tester and Manchin both say that, rather than raising taxes in 2013, they favor an overhaul of the tax system along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles plan, which would lower tax rates while closing loopholes. That sounds close to the position of many Republicans—and akin to the offer that Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey made as part of last year’s Super Committee budget negotiations. Mr. Obama turned it down.

No doubt other Congressional Democrats from battleground states also feel jittery over the White House “Taxmageddon” strategy for 2013 but aren’t ready to publicly cross the White House. Last month Bill Clinton suggested a delay in raising the tax rates, before recanting amid a media uproar.

If Congress doesn’t act to change the law, tax rates on income, capital gains, dividends and estates are all scheduled to rise in January. (See the nearby table.) The best policy would make the Bush-era tax rates permanent pending a major tax reform. But at least a one- or two-year extension of the Bush rates would avoid a nasty hit in the near term to a still-vulnerable economy.

Business investment is slowing again, and the indices for manufacturing and services have been declining perilously close to contraction territory. The prospect of a nearly 60% increase in the capital gains tax and a tripling of the dividend tax only heightens investor worry and accelerates the flight into Treasurys or the financial sidelines.

That’s good for financing the government’s record deficits but bad for a private economy that needs a revival of animal spirits. Two weeks ago Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation reported that 53% of the income tax increases that Mr. Obama would extract starting next year comes from business. Those are the businesses that aren’t hiring people as they wait out the tax and other policy uncertainties.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama keeps attacking Republicans for refusing to pass his latest stimulus-spending splurge. He seems to have forgotten that less than two years ago the GOP won a landslide midterm election by promising voters they would end the avalanche of spending and debt.

The only jobs plan that has any chance of passing the House and Senate before the election is a bill to cancel all tax increases in 2013. With White House support, this would fly through the House and Senate and eliminate one major antigrowth headwind, as even some Keynesian economists and the Congressional Budget Office are telling the President.

The dilemma for the White House is that calling off next year’s tax increase would undercut Mr. Obama’s re-election theme of redistributing income. His liberal base has become so obsessed with the politics of envy that it is demanding higher taxes no matter the economic or political costs.

The question for Senate Democrats is whether they want to jeopardize their personal futures, and their majority, by jumping off the same tax cliff. With the House poised to pass an extension of the tax rates for at least one year, Senate Democrats have to decide if they want to vote before Election Day to wallop an already weak economy with a giant tax increase.

While we’re loathe to engage in premature prognostication, yet alone predict the behavior of Progressive pols, survival is the most basic human instinct!

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this from Hank Murphy featuring the latest in fashion for Mahmud’s best friend:

And finally, in News for the Gullible, FOX News reports:

Wales ‘psychic’ guilty of tricking young women into sex acts

Reports both women were seen wearing “Obama-Biden 2012” t-shirts in court remain unconfirmed.

Magoo