We have been engulfed in a whirlwind of illegal Barack Obama Administration regulatory fiats. Time and again the President has forgone the legislative process required by the Constitution – and impudently started imposing Leftist wish list items as if they were law.
Meaning unilateral imposition of ObamaCare changes. The gutting of welfare reform. Cap and Trade. Card Check. And many, many others.
The Executive Branch Departments, Commissions, Agencies and Boards are actually creations and creatures of the Legislative Branch. These entities can not begin promulgating rules and regulations unless and until Congress first passes law that tells them to do so.
Only Congress can empower these entities and establish the parameters of the law – inside of which these entities must work. A regulatory agency operating without direct Congressional authority is unconstitutional – and dangerous. These regulators and their regulations then have no legitimacy – and no limits.
It is this foundation of shifting sand lawlessness on which our woeful economic “recovery” is built. When the government is constantly springing surprise regulations, the private sector dares not move – stifling freedom, investment and innovation.
A quintessential example of this Obama Administration overreach is its imposition of the absurd Network Neutrality. On December 21, 2010, his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – via a 3-2 Democrat bureaucrat vote – illegally imposed it.
But Congress never passed a law authorizing the FCC to impose Net Neutrality. For very good reason. Net Neutrality is terrible, innovation-and-free-speech-stifling policy. It is the government placing itself in all-encompassing regulatory authority over all the networks that make up the Net.
Net Neutrality guarantees everyone equal amounts of nothing. In the interest of “fairness,” it mandates that every person get the exact same broadband speed – no matter what. Meaning a hospital needing to rush-download an MRI for an endangered patient gets no more speed than the guy next door downloading the Panda Sneezes video on YouTube.
The Internet’s additional regulation – should any be needed – should be debated in and emanate from the People’s Congress. Not imposed unilaterally by the FCC.
Fortunately, there is an opportunity to undo this Net Neutrality power grab heinousness. Verizon Communications is suing to restore lawful order to the Internet. September 9, the D.C. Circuit Court will hear oral arguments from Verizon and the FCC usurpers. This is the same court that unanimously threw out the FCC’s last attempt to unilaterally impose Net Neutrality.
Here’s hoping that past is prologue. And that sanity trumps inanity, and the rule of law rules the day. We need more freedom and adherence to the Constitution. Not more unilateral regulatory fiats imposed at the whim of politicians and bureaucrats – upheld by the third check-and-balance branch.
Here’s hoping this is the first of many roll backs of these myriad power grabs.
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