So This is How Liberty Dies

There was a lot of BS spewed during last night's State of the Union address but I'll just focus on one or two things that really irked me.

The first is Obama's proclamation that he's going to sign an executive order mandating a wage increase for all new federal contracts. I haven't gone over the speech with a fine tooth comb, but I don't recall hearing President Obama mention the Constitution once in his over an hour long speech. Maybe I missed it. Maybe he paid lip service to it in some distorted way once or twice. But since our so-called Constitutional scholar of a president seems to have forgotten what's written in it, here's a reminder. From Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution:

"All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."

Article 1, Section 1. As in, that's the very first thing that our Founders wanted us to be aware of in our new republic. We do not have a king. Our president cannot unilaterally start governing and making laws from the bully pulpit. I don't care who they send out there to tell you otherwise (<cough> Eric Holder <cough>) or what Orwellian language they use to justify it, it's right there plain as day in front of our faces that all legislative powers are vested in the Congress of the U.S., not within the president. Notice how there is no exception in there about certain cases when there is gridlock in Congress that maybe then the President can start making his own laws. Nope, no exceptions. Our system was designed to work this way. Our Founders wanted a governing body to do less, not more. Gridlock was a function, not a flaw, of their design.

Nonetheless, today during a Senate committee hearing, Eric Holder tried his best (which was a lot more tepid than some of his other attempts at justifying clearly unconstitutional actions from the executive) to justify Obama's use of executive action to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers. After a few hesitant and uncertain responses, Holder finally obstinately answered Senator Mike Lee's line of questions by saying “I think there’s a constitutional basis for it, and given what the president’s responsibility is in running the executive branch, I think that there is an inherent power there for him to act in the way that he has." Of course he said that.

Eric Holder is also the one who has somehow found Constitutional authority for presidential kill lists and indefinite detention of the U.S. citizens. If he can defend that, what can't he find Constitutional authority for? More importantly, what authority won't our citizens grant our overlords if they'll accept the absurd notion that our government has the authority to keep secret kill lists and kill whoever they want based upon secret evidence unviewable by the public that they assure us proves the guilt, and therefore justifies the death, of their target? But I digress.

Constitutionality aside, even if the president did have the authority to mandate wage prices (he doesn't), a presidential decree still cannot override the laws of economics. Just because an overlord wills it so, it does not mean that raising wages can magically fix everything and make everyone rich and we can all live happily ever after. If that were the case, why don't all those poor countries just mandate that all the employers stop being assholes and start paying their employees a living wage? Duuuh!

 It's unclear at the moment how many people Obama's wage hike
will benefit since it only applies to new federal contracts, but apparently it will apply to contractors like janitors, food servers, and dish washers. How will these wage hikes be paid for? That's also unclear. If government contractors aren't directly employed by the government, then they aren't directly being paid by the taxpayers. However, if all these contractors do is hand the government a bill for their services, which the government can pass off on to someone else (the taxpayer, the printing press, or China), then it appears that these contractors don't have as much to worry about in meeting the demands of our president, unlike a true private employer who would have to find a way to either increase profits or cut costs to pay for the increase in labor wages they have to pay.

To add insult to injury, not only are Obama's executive orders unconstitutional, not only do they defy the laws of economics (at least in a competitive, private sector job they would), but during the SOTU speech, when Obama announced that he would "bypass Congress whenever and wherever he could" he received thunderous applause! Members of Congress actually applauded when the president said that he would go ahead and bypass them, the elected legislative body, the only ones under Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution who can create laws, and act without them. I propose that those members of Congress are the first to start receiving the new federal minimum $10.10 wage as they've clearly show that's all their worth. Check out all the feedback from the Twitterverse when he made that statement.

What will it take to wake America up? If our Attorney General can sit in front of our elected officials and justify secret kill lists, indefinite detention, and legislating through executive action, all to the applause of our body politic, what won't we let them get away with? Where does it end? When will our representatives start doing their job and holding the executive responsible instead of just holding hearing after hearing where they might talk in angered tones but after which there are no consequences for anyone over anything? So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause.