The Rise of the Fourth Branch

[4est_4est_Gump]

...

The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.

This rulemaking comes with little accountability. It’s often impossible to know, absent a major scandal, whom to blame for rules that are abusive or nonsensical. Of course, agencies owe their creation and underlying legal authority to Congress, and Congress holds the purse strings. But Capitol Hill’s relatively small staff is incapable of exerting oversight on more than a small percentage of agency actions. And the threat of cutting funds is a blunt instrument to control a massive administrative state — like running a locomotive with an on/off switch.

The autonomy was magnified when the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that agencies are entitled to heavy deference in their interpretations of laws. The court went even further this past week, ruling that agencies should get the same heavy deference in determining their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned: “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

The judiciary, too, has seen its authority diminished by the rise of the fourth branch. Under Article III of the Constitution, citizens facing charges and fines are entitled to due process in our court system. As the number of federal regulations increased, however, Congress decided to relieve the judiciary of most regulatory cases and create administrative courts tied to individual agencies. The result is that a citizen is 10 times more likely to be tried by an agency than by an actual court. In a given year, federal judges conduct roughly 95,000 adjudicatory proceedings, including trials, while federal agencies complete more than 939,000.

These agency proceedings are often mockeries of due process, with one-sided presumptions and procedural rules favoring the agency. And agencies increasingly seem to chafe at being denied their judicial authority. Just ask John E. Brennan. Brennan, a 50-year-old technology consultant, was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure when he stripped at Portland International Airport last year in protest of invasive security measures by the Transportation Security Administration. He was cleared by a federal judge, who ruled that his stripping was a form of free speech. The TSA was undeterred. After the ruling, it pulled Brennan into its own agency courts under administrative charges.

...

Of course, federal agencies officially report to the White House under the umbrella of the executive branch. But in practice, the agencies have evolved into largely independent entities over which the president has very limited control. Only 1 percent of federal positions are filled by political appointees, as opposed to career officials, and on average appointees serve only two years. At an individual level, career officials are insulated from political pressure by civil service rules. There are also entire agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — that are protected from White House interference.

Some agencies have gone so far as to refuse to comply with presidential orders. For example, in 1992 President George H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. Postal Service to withdraw a lawsuit against the Postal Rate Commission, and he threatened to sack members of the Postal Service’s Board of Governors who denied him. The courts ruled in favor of the independence of the agency.

...

The marginalization Congress feels is magnified for citizens, who are routinely pulled into the vortex of an administrative state that allows little challenge or appeal. The IRS scandal is the rare case in which internal agency priorities are forced into the public eye. Most of the time, such internal policies are hidden from public view and congressional oversight. While public participation in the promulgation of new regulations is allowed, and often required, the process is generally perfunctory and dismissive.

In the new regulatory age, presidents and Congress can still change the government’s priorities, but the agencies effectively run the show based on their interpretations and discretion. The rise of this fourth branch represents perhaps the single greatest change in our system of government since the founding.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...faaad0-c2ed-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html

 

[Ishmael]

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...faaad0-c2ed-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html

It's called "Delegated Legislation" and has the potential of being the undoing of the nation. Especially when such "Delegated Legislation" authorizes sub-delegation (as many of our current laws do).

Ishmael

 

[Pairaclities]

Sounds like the "administrators" are right place for the "well regulated militia" to start.

 

[unregistered]

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Pols have no time to pass laws, theyre busy campaigning 24/7.

Reminds me of a stoopid guy I usta know. He bought a company, delegated all the decisions to others, and they fired his ass. Really.

 

[mercury14]

It's called "Delegated Legislation" and has the potential of being the undoing of the nation. Especially when such "Delegated Legislation" authorizes sub-delegation (as many of our current laws do).

Ishmael

The problem is that the alternative is worse. Or do you want Maxine Waters and Michelle Bachmann writing FDA regulations for the minutia of cardiologic pharmacology?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It's called "Delegated Legislation" and has the potential of being the undoing of the nation. Especially when such "Delegated Legislation" authorizes sub-delegation (as many of our current laws do).

Ishmael

"We know that the number of government jobs has been increasing steadily, and that the number of applicants is increasing still more rapidly than the number of jobs. … Is this scourge about to come to an end? How can we believe it, when we see that public opinion itself wants to have everything done by that fictitious being, the state, which signifies a collection of salaried bureaucrats? … Very soon there will be two or three of these bureaucrats around every Frenchman, one to prevent him from working too much, another to give him an education, a third to furnish him credit, a fourth to interfere with his business transactions, etc., etc. Where will we be led by the illusion that impels us to believe that the state is a person who has an inexhaustible fortune independent of ours?
Frédéric Bastiat

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Pols have no time to pass laws, theyre busy campaigning 24/7.

Reminds me of a stoopid guy I usta know. He bought a company, delegated all the decisions to others, and they fired his ass. Really.

Isn't that the theme of a new TV show?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Isn't that the theme of a new TV show?

I expect for DOJ or IRS to fire the GOP House, citing obscure paragraphs in ObamaCare that authorize it. No one had time to read the bill before they passed it.

 

[mercury14]

I expect for DOJ or IRS to fire the GOP House, citing obscure paragraphs in ObamaCare that authorize it. No one had time to read the bill before they passed it.

You think it would have made passage more difficult? Because America fired the GOP when Obama was elected all by itself.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I expect for DOJ or IRS to fire the GOP House, citing obscure paragraphs in ObamaCare that authorize it. No one had time to read the bill before they passed it.

*chuckle*



There's a thought.

 

[Ishmael]

The seminal work criticizing and exposing the dangers of 'delegated legislation' was written by the Lord High Justice of England, Lord Hewart. "The New Despotism" (1929) Lord Hewart.

Ishmael

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I'm going to get an eCopy of that now.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Bully Pulpit
From the Apple tax hearings to the IRS scandal, government has stepped over the line.
Thomas Sowell, NRO
MAY 28, 2013

We have truly entered the world of “Alice in Wonderland” when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a congressional subcommittee and denounced on nationwide television for not paying more.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to “a worrisome federal deficit,” according to Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) – one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has.

Because of “gimmicks” used by businesses to reduce their taxes, Senator Levin said, “children across the country won’t get early education from Head Start. Needy seniors will go without meals. Fighter jets sit idle on tarmacs because our military lacks the funding to keep pilots trained.”

The federal government already has ample powers to punish people who have broken the tax laws. It does not need additional powers to bully people who haven’t.

What is a tax “loophole”? It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less in taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise. Since Congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of Congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes.

If such provisions are bad, then members of Congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions. Words like “gimmicks” and “loopholes” suggest that people are doing something wrong when they don’t pay any more in taxes than the law requires.

Are people who buy homes and deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages when filing their tax returns using a “gimmick” or a “loophole”? Or are only other people’s deductions to be depicted as somehow wrong, while our own are OK?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out long ago that “the very meaning of a line in the law is that you intentionally may go as close to it as you can if you do not pass it.”

If the line in tax laws was drawn in the wrong place, Congress can always draw it somewhere else. But, if you buy the argument used by people like Senator Levin, then a state trooper can pull you over on a highway for driving 64 miles-per-hour in a 65-mile-per-hour zone, because you are driving too close to the line.

The real danger to us all is when government not only exercises the powers that we have voted to give it, but also exercises additional powers that we never voted to give it. That is when “public servants” become public masters. That is when government itself has stepped over the line.

The government’s power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us. When Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department started keeping track of phone calls going to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen (and his parents), that was firing a shot across the bow of Fox News — and of any other reporters or networks that dared to criticize the Obama administration.

When the Internal Revenue Service started demanding to know who was donating to conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, what purpose could that have other than intimidating people who might otherwise donate to organizations that oppose this administration’s political agenda?

The government’s power to bully has been used to extract billions of dollars from banks, based on threats to file lawsuits that would automatically cause regulatory agencies to suspend banks’ rights to make various ordinary business decisions, until such time as those lawsuits end. Shakedown artists inside and outside of government have played this lucrative game.

Someone once said, “Any government that is powerful enough to protect citizens against predators is also powerful enough to be a predator itself.” And dictatorial in the process.

No American government can take away all our freedoms at one time. But a slow and steady erosion of freedom can accomplish the same thing on the installment plan. We have already gone too far down that road. F. A. Hayek called it “the road to serfdom.” How far we continue down that road depends on whether we keep our eye on the ball — freedom — or allow ourselves to be distracted by predatory demagogues like Senator Carl Levin.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

And, by its own internal study, Head Start doesn't even work, but if you talk about eliminating it, the the unassailable victim fallacy rears its ugly head and screams in big block crayon letters,

WHY DO YOU HATE MINORITY CHILDREN?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Where are the Inspector Generals?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/obamas_most_dangerous_enemies_are_being_targeted.html

They are being eliminated by attrition and silence by intimidation.

It is the Chicago Way.


Gangsta!

 

[mercury14]

And, by its own internal study, Head Start doesn't even work, but if you talk about eliminating it, the the unassailable victim fallacy rears its ugly head and screams in big block crayon letters,

WHY DO YOU HATE MINORITY CHILDREN?

Oh god dam you're stupid. I quoted you the conclusion from that summary and it most definitely says it works, meanwhile you insist on deception by quote mining. You didn't read the study and you don't know what you're talking about at all. You were duped by a RW blog and even though I linked and quoted the very study you're referring to, you chose to ignore it in favor of your lies.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

More of the New Civility from Jenn14?

 

[mercury14]

More of the New Civility from Jenn14?

You falsely cited a piece of research in order to lie about it, then when I quoted the findings from the research and exposed you as a liar from your very own source, your belief still persisted. That is the very essence of stupidity and RW reality denial. It's why you're an utterly lost cause and a fraud.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Accusing everyone of being gay again?


Then trying to make it sound like it is not a bad thing by all manner of twisting and parsing...

 

[mercury14]

At the end of 3rd grade for the 3-year-old cohort, the most striking sustained subgroup findings were found in the cognitive domain for children from high risk households as well as for children of parents who reported no depressive symptoms. Among the 4-year-olds, sustained benefits were experienced by children of parents who reported mild depressive symptoms, severe depressive symptoms, and Black children.

Ah, there's the rub! Head Start's research that AJ quoted shows that it's effective for black kids. And because it helps Black kids (and kids of mentally ill parents), AJ immediately concludes that it's a huge fucking waste of time.

 

[mercury14]

Accusing everyone of being gay again?


Then trying to make it sound like it is not a bad thing by all manner of twisting and parsing...

No I'm accusing you of insisting that your bullshit fiction is reality and then persisting in that belief even when it's disproven by your very own source. You're either lying or you're mentally ill, which is it?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

While you're at it, could you come up with a plan to cancel out America's nigger amnesty policy? And who gave Pocahontas and her drunk-ass tribe citizenship?

Go away you hateful piece of shit.

 

[ChinaBandit]

Merc, phrodeau's the homo. Actually, I don't know but the words phrodeau and homo go well together.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

*chuckle*