Many citizens of a small town have become concerned about the eating habits of their fellow citizens. There's only one restaurant in town, and it's a McDonald's. Several people don't want anything to do with Big Mac Extra Value Meals, and others say that they can't afford to buy even a hamburger. In response to this crisis, a few members of the city council ram through a new local ordinance saying that all McDonald's orders sold in the town must be a meal deal that includes a vegetable, fruit, cookie, and iced tea or coffee. Since this will obviously raise the price of the happy meal, and not help people who couldn't afford earlier menu options, the ordinance also includes a provision that McDonald's will pay for portions of these new meals for certain people, if they apply at city hall and meet some arbitrary criteria. To cover that provision, another is added that EVERY person in town MUST eat at the McDonald's at least once a week. This will ensure that McDonald's has enough business to overcome the subsidized diners. The town Mayor is the main proponent of these new laws, although he lets others actually write them.
To alleviate concern about the new law, the Mayor (and other council members) repeatedly go on TV, radio, and the papers and reassure folks that this brilliant plan will not affect what people currently buy and enjoy at McDonald's. It's purely a solution to help out the disaffected members of the community who are currently unable to enjoy eating out. They know that it's logically impossible for a law to simultaneously force meals to conform to a new standard while maintaining the older model, but they want the law to pass and be liked, so.....
Predictably, when the law goes into effect, numerous folks are stunned when they go to McDonald's and find that their favorite meal deal no longer exists. Instead, they must order a much-more-expensive item with foods they didn't even want. This is a much larger number of people than those who were supposed to benefit from the new law. Heck, most of those folks STILL don't want anything to do with McDonald's, and are only begrudgingly going there once a week because that's what the law demands. Many others just ignore going at all, since the penalty for not going is less than the cost of the new meals.
In light of the furor surrounding the change, the Mayor decides that action must be taken. But rather than try to repeal the law, or admit that he was both mistaken and lied about the nature of the law, the mayor informs the public that he has directed the police force to simply look the other way if McDonald's sells someone a menu item that doesn't meet the new criteria anytime over the next year. And if McDonald's won't continue to offer those items, that's on them, not the law.
But of course McDonald's has already completely shifted it's distribution channels, pricing, menus, and the very model of its business in that town to comply with the new law. It can't possibly go back to selling the old stuff now, certainly not without a long transition time. By the time they changed back to their old model, the year-long "grace period" announced by the mayor would expire and they'd be right back where they started.
This is insane, and by what right does the mayor have to screw around with the situation by unilaterally declaring exactly which provisions of the law he will or won't enforce?
This is troubling on so many levels, I almost don't know where to start. But as with our McDonald's scenario, there are two primary issues. First, it's too late. Millions of people have already lost their existing insurance plans, and it is unreasonable if not impossible to expect that insurance companies can revive those plans... for one year. Second, by what authority can the President do this? He's just given himself a line-item veto, a power repeatedly rejected by hundreds of years of court, analytic, and reasonable precedent. At least when the President decided to unilaterally ignore the Defense of Marriage Act (basically abdicating his constitutional duties, but I digress...), he went for the whole law. With this ridiculous announcement, he's claiming that he has the power to cherry-pick individual parts of laws he likes and will enforce.
What's next? Where does such power end? If congress were to pass "comprehensive immigration reform", what would prevent this President or any other from choosing which individual parts to enforce? Maybe a President would unilaterally choose to accept immigrants from Germany but deport those from Japan. Oh... but only for one year, of course.
And why one year? Did the president, while imagining for himself a new constitutional power, simultaneously imagine a restriction on that same power? "I have the unilateral authority to choose which individual pieces of law I will or won't enforce.... but only for a year at a time." I guess if you're going to conjure a power out of thin air, you might as well conjure the limits of that power from the same Aether.
But this is comically bad. Has the federal government really sunk so low into deceit, corruption, and incompetence that officials arbitrarily change laws without consulting the representatives of the people (read: Congress)? We've already seen how the Department of Health and Human Services granted numerous "waivers" for various organizations regarding Obamacare. We've already seen how an administration can decide to simply ignore some laws. But with this farce today, how can anyone argue that laws mean anything? "Who cares what the law says... we'll just take action X in any case.... oh, but only for one year." The laws are no longer worth the paper they're written/printed on.
I leave with some sobering words, lifted from the US Declaration of Independence, adopted on the 4th of July, 1776:
- He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
- He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
- For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
- He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
- For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
SAH
Excellent! From Sandra Neel Hutchins
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