Leading from behind | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer

    A lot of folks keep accusing our chief community organizer of not being much of a manager; after all, he really never had much (if any) exposure to management prior to getting himself elected president. Depending on how one counts, not many of his top aides have much significant private sector managerial experience either. Civitas Review on line at www.civitasreview.com presents a bar chart showing that not even ten percent of his cabinet appointments have significant private sector experience. They do acknowledge and provide a link to Politifacts which takes exception to the Civitas position, claiming that legal experience substitutes for business experience.

    Whichever of those opposing positions one accepts, there is one thing that seems to jump out at us. That would be the degree to which many of the cabinet secretaries seem to care not for the Constitution, separation of powers, or the people - especially the taxpayers. In these things they seem to be in total and complete sync with the Anointed One. They seem to believe that they know better than the public what is good for America.

    The disregard for the Constitution seems to be universal among his appointees; disregard for the Judicial and Legislative branches of government is not uncommon within this group; and, of course, there exists a seemingly total and utter disregard for the public, regardless of all their rhetoric to the contrary. Adding insult to injury, the Congress seems to be willing to let them get away with their disregard of the Constitution. The administration seems to believe that they can do administratively anything that they like - even though Congress may have voted against it.

    Let us start with Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior. His Agency was responsible for oversight and safety of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. In hearings before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee following the oil spill he suggested that a few "bad apples" in his Minerals Mining Service may have been (may have been??) a little lax in their oversight of the industry and asked for understanding. It is fairly easy to "be understanding" when someone owns up and seems to be working toward rapid and lasting improvements. He claimed that a few folks didn't do their job very well and offered a reorganization plan. That seems to be the way that bureaucrats almost always solve problems; reorganize. There are a lot of people in the world who see these bureaucratic reorganizations as little more than moving people who weren't doing their job to other jobs which they likely will continue not to do. Hardly anyone ever gets fired - as they should. But it does create the impression of progress. In any case, it would seem that he got a "pass" on this one.

    But then, guess what. He unilaterally places a "six month" moratorium on all drilling in the gulf, in effect shutting it down. He is promptly taken to court where the judge tells him that he had no right to do what he did and directed him to rescind his policy. In the best tradition of progressives, he ignores the court and does nothing - where upon he is later found in contempt of court. Generally the best way to get a judge's attention is to ignore what he directs. Ignoring a judge quite frequently gets one more grief than most folks are willing to endure. But not this time. We can only wonder why. In the meantime the big deep water drilling rigs are moved to other places like Brazil for deep water exploration and drilling by a company in which the Prez' pal George Soros is reportedly heavily invested. Adding insult to injury, the U.S. provides loan guarantees for the Brazilian operation. Not bad work if you can get it. It is not likely that any of the drill rigs that have departed will be back any time soon to resume drilling even if Mr. Salazar decided to comply with the judge's rulings. The courts not withstanding; Salazar wins - taxpayers lose.

    And talk about adding more insult to injury, it isn't very much later that the Prez in one of his speeches tells us that last year there was more oil pumped out of the gulf than ever.. The implication being that the increase was the result of things his administration had done. It is almost insulting that he would make a claim like that and expect any thinking person to believe that he or his administration had anything to do with it. What is truly sad is that a lot of Americans believe him. That is scary.

    Then, here comes the oil company earnings reports. As expected, Exxon made a bundle. At the same time they paid a bundle in taxes. The Prez takes great umbrage at the Exxon profits (but fails to mention the taxes they paid) and proposes to "punish" them for doing their jobs by taking away tax provisions and using the money thus realized to provide additional funding for solar and wind energy activities. Not a word about Petrobras (the Brazilian company doing the offshore drilling) and their $6.72B in first quarter profits. The only thing we hear from the Prez about them is that we look forward to buying their oil after they bring in their George Soros invested and US backed offshore well(s). In this entire discussion, we did not hear a single word about the humongous profits also realized by General Electric which is managed by his pal Jeffery Immelt. Not only did GE also make a huge profit but as the result of the tax code, they were able to reduce the taxes they had to pay to zero. Yes, ZERO. And not only that, but they carried forward to next year some tax credits they were unable to use this year. All quite in accordance with the tax code, but nary a word of disapproval for his pal at GE. What do you make of that?? Do you suppose Exxon, even with all their oil, didn't "provide enough lubrication" for the Anointed One's machine.??

    And then there is Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services. In the early days of the oil spill there she was standing next to Ken Salazar telling us that the U.S Government was in charge and BP was being told what to do. Come to find out, the only folks who had even a bit of knowledge turned out to be BP, so regardless of all the assurance we got from Ms. Sebelius, BP was in reality running the show. Between Ms. Sebelius and Mr. Salazar, they made "F Troop" look good. (If you don't remember "F Troop", you missed some of the really good stuff from the early days of TV.) And now, here she comes with her administrative implementation of a number of things the Congress refused to implement (even when it was totally controlled by the Dems.). How about working toward imposing an EPA version of "Cap & Trade" administratively since they got nowhere doing it through Congress?? And now her agency has "suggested" that processed foods should be reformatted to help reduce obesity in our children. She insists that the suggested changes are "voluntary". Voluntary on whose part, Ms Sebelius??

    And now, Ms. Sebelius and her minions are dictating that new "art work" be included on cigarette packages.

    It is her department that will be implementing the lion's share of Obamacare. The difference is that there isn't much more she can do to screw it up - no matter how good she is at things like that. That's a small consolation.

    You watch those two in action and say to yourself, "Well, at least it can't get much worse." And then here comes Craig Becker, the recess appointed NLRB member. He makes Salazar and Sebelius look like a couple of pikers. In his effort to get the entire working population paying union dues, he wants to decide where companies can build plants and where they can't. Truth be known, about the only thing he will achieve is getting companies like Boeing to take their manufacturing activities out of the US. where they can be rid of the NLRB and the likes of Craig Becker. He also wants to change the rules for union representation elections to give the unions a leg up when there is a representation election. Actually, the "leg up" would seem to be more like the dog and the fire plug, with company management being the fire plug. Thanks, Craig.

    There are others:

    Think Eric Holder and the Marc Rich pardon; think overlooking the behavior of the Black Panthers; think holding terrorist trials in civilian courts; think handing over weapons to Mexican drug dealers as part of a part of a "sting operation"; another operation that would have made F Troop look good.

    Think Janet Napolitano, former Governor of Arizona and the great job she has done in sealing our southern borders, and developing a realistic and functional immigration policy. Yeah, right. As governor of Arizona, Napolitano was outspoken about the Federal Government's failure to fulfill its responsibilities relative to the southern border. There are those who believe that the only thing that has changed under her aegis is the rhetoric. Suddenly the southern border is protected. Of course it is - except for all the folks who seem to be able to get in undetected. And now she is striving mightily to implement the DREAM Act administratively even after the Congress turned it down out of hand.

    The sad thing about all this is that there seems to be more of them than there are of us.

    D'ya think??