Written into the Declaration of Independence is a simple imperative, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Our nation was built on this concept, but the Obama administration is using its power to write regulation to circumvent the will of the people and advance its own agenda.

Three recent examples of this over reach are shocking and all Americans should demand an end to the practice and a reversal of what has already been done.  Citizens need to think, whether they agree with the reasons for the circumvention or not, about what is at stake.  Using regulation to specifically subjugate the will of the people to the agenda of any president is nothing less than tyranny.

The New York Times and Fox News, an unlikely combination, recently reported that the Obama Administration is taking advantage of a rule in the final version of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“Obamacare”) that authorizes Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations.  The new rule says Medicare will cover voluntary advance care planning to discuss end-of-life treatment as part of an annual visit.  The mandate for end-of-life planning, commonly referred to as death panels, was specifically legislated out of Obamacare because of the uproar by the majority of Americans.  Most recent polls show 60% or more of the electorate wants Obamacare repealed, but this particular mandate was rejected by the people before the law was passed.

Using this embedded rule, one of the hundreds of Obamacare surprises that will be revealed over time, the Obama administration is able to achieve its policy goal through the regulation-writing process.  In this case, doctors will be encouraged to provide information on how to prepare an advance directive, stating how aggressively patients wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make health care decisions for themselves.  Regardless of the merits, this is not what the people want.  If this seemingly harmless step is allowed to be taken, what else can be written into regulations that will further circumvent the will of the people?

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From Accounting Today:

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said it could not render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations.

“Even though significant progress has been made since the enactment of key financial management reforms in the 1990s, our report on the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statement illustrates that much work remains to be done to improve federal financial management,” Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said in a statement. “Shortcomings in three areas again prevented us from expressing an opinion on the accrual-based financial statements.”

The main obstacles to a GAO opinion were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.

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As we embark upon a new year of trying to save this country and restore its founding principles, I have spent much time contemplating questions of readers — most important of which is that given the massive problems we continue to face, and would face even with the most principled conservative Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, what can be done?

But in order to deal with our current struggles, we must recognize that they are symptoms.  The cure to these symptoms lies in dealing with their root causes.  However, even before dealing with our struggles and their root causes, we must ask, what is our vision for America, and what is the role of government in helping to ensure it rather than dooming us to never reach it?

My view of America is a country in which people are free to pursue their greatest good as they see it, or as the founders put it to create a land in which people can pursue their happiness.  This system presupposes that the people are protected.  Before people can partake in mutually beneficial trade and activity, they must be reasonably secure in their persons and their property.  As such, free markets and the free people that create these markets require strong national defense.

So the vision should be clear — government’s role is to lay the foundation for people to be free, furnishing and preserving prosperity by providing defense for it, both against external aggressors and internal ones by providing a set of stable laws protecting private property and contracts specifically and the individual generally.

Where we stand today is that the government, created to ensure these things is instead imperiling them.  Rather than securing private property it consumes and redistributes it.  Further, at every avenue government creates barriers to the free voluntary exchange of goods and services that heretofore have provided such unparalleled levels of comfort for us all.  Rather than defending us from foreign enemies it cuts deals with them, concedes to them and generally submits to them out of political correctness, moral relativism and an inane commitment to multiculturalism.

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Today, in 1945, the U.S. Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance.

Incoming House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tx) appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show today.  When asked about the Pigford Settlement the congressman said “There are still a lot of questions about that money that was spent and whether individuals were discriminated against or not and that would be a right subject for an oversight hearing.”

Steve Wynn has confirmed the public report in the December 24, 2010 Journal De Monaco that Prince Albert II of Monaco has conferred Monegasque citizenship upon him. Mr. Wynn recently agreed to serve as an outside director for a joint venture between the governments of Monaco and Qatar. His Monegasque citizen was pursued as a result of this appointment. Mr. Wynn has not renounced his American citizenship and remains both a U.S. citizen and taxpayer.

From the Associated Press:

For the third straight year, President Barack Obama ranks as the man most admired by people living in the U.S.

The annual USA Today-Gallup poll, released Monday, finds that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most admired woman for the ninth year in a row. Clinton edges out former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and TV host Oprah Winfrey, as she did last year.

The poll asks respondents to name the man, and the woman, living in any part of the world, they admire most.

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The November 2^nd election results caused in Democrats several strains of mental illness – bouts of depression, delusion, deep-seated rage and others were all exhibited in various Donkey quarters.

But going forward, the Obama Administration will exhibit a strategic psychosis – policy schizophrenia.

For public consumption – with the perpetual assistance of his servile media – there will be the “new” President Barack Obama.  The “shellacked,” humbled man who claims to get that his Party’s policies were historically rejected by the American people.  Whose now moderated, bipartisan, Triangulated work with the Republicans will make former President and 1994 “shellackee” Bill Clinton look recalcitrant and amateur.

We saw much evidence of this new PR push with the deal to keep the tax rates for the next two years exactly what they’ve been for the last eight.  This we were told was Obama’s new Third Way – a deal which upset both Conservatives and Progressives and therefore must be fantastic Moderate Obama policy.

But President Obama is a diehard Leftist ideologue – who loathed the agreement as much as or more than any fellow Democrat.

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Today Coffee and Markets is proud to be joined by Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky.

The new year will bring with it a new House and Senate, one populated with several members whose approach to the job stands to be a unique departure from politics as usual. Foremost among these is Paul, the Kentucky eye doctor who won a contentious primary over a handpicked Republican candidate, and whose first elected political office will be that of United States Senator. How will being in the Senate effect Paul’s anti-establishment approach? What does he think of former rival Mitch McConnell’s leadership during a contentious the lame duck session? And what are his priorities for the next two years? We’ll hear the answers to those questions from Senator elect Paul today.

We’re brought to you as always by Stephen Clouse and Associates. You can find our iTunes feed at CoffeeandMarkets.com. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
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Over at Slate, the always interesting Jack Schafer imagines a world where government always regulated the Internet:

In January 1993, idle regulators at the FCC belatedly discover the burgeoning world of online services. Led by CompuServe, MCI Mail, AOL, GEnie, Delphi, and Prodigy, these services have been embraced by the computer-owning public. Users “log on” to communicate via “e-mail” and “chat rooms,” make online purchases and reservations, and tap information databases. Their services are “walled gardens” that don’t allow the users of one service to visit or use another. The FCC declares that because these private networks use the publically regulated telephone system, they fall under the purview of the Communications Act of 1934. The commission announces forthcoming plans to regulate the services in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.”

The FCC ignores the standalone Internet because nobody but academics, scientists, and some government bodies go there. So do the online services, which don’t offer Internet access.

Regulating the Internet would make as much sense as regulating inter-office mail at Michigan State University,” says the FCC chairman. “The online services are the future of cyberspace.”

The online companies protest and vow to sue the FCC, but the heavily Democratic Congress moots the suits by passing new legislation giving the commission oversight of the online world.

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From the New York Times:

Like many of the cables made public in recent weeks, those describing the drug war do not offer large disclosures. Rather, it is the details that add up to a clearer picture of the corrupting influence of big traffickers, the tricky game of figuring out which foreign officials are actually controlled by drug lords, and the story of how an entrepreneurial agency operating in the shadows of the F.B.I. has become something more than a drug agency. The D.E.A. now has 87 offices in 63 countries and close partnerships with governments that keep the Central Intelligence Agency at arm’s length.

Because of the ubiquity of the drug scourge, today’s D.E.A. has access to foreign governments, including those, like Nicaragua’s and Venezuela’s, that have strained diplomatic relations with the United States. Many are eager to take advantage of the agency’s drug detection and wiretapping technologies.

In some countries, the collaboration appears to work well, with the drug agency providing intelligence that has helped bring down traffickers, and even entire cartels. But the victories can come at a high price, according to the cables, which describe scores of D.E.A. informants and a handful of agents who have been killed in Mexico and Afghanistan.

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Buried beneath the avalanche of press coverage about the lame-duck Congress, I found a story about President Obama’s mid-December meeting with twenty corporate CEOs. The purpose of this Blair House get-together was to discuss how to jump-start our still-ailing economy. Among other aims, Mr. Obama reiterated his goals to increase employment, end the recession, and double U.S. exports over the next five years.

These are lofty and laudable ambitions. But it seems that Mr. Obama’s regulatory bureaucrats haven’t gotten the memo. For example, consider the counter-productive impact of their efforts on agriculture.

As any shopper knows, food prices this past year have been rising faster than the overall rate of inflation. “Fears of a global food crisis swept the world’s commodity markets as prices for staples such as corn, rice and wheat spiraled after the U.S. government warned of ‘dramatically’ lower supplies,” the Financial Times reported in early October. “There is growing concern among countries about continuing volatility and uncertainty in food markets,” said World Bank president Robert Zoellick later that month. “These concerns have been compounded by recent increases in grain prices.”

Confronting this looming food-supply crisis is the American farmer. His productivity is such that the United States is the world’s largest agricultural exporter, with $108.7 billion in farm products shipped abroad in 2010. Helping him increase the supply of agricultural products is the key to addressing both rising food prices and global shortages. His productivity is also critical to our country’s broader economic recovery.

So, you would think that the administration’s apparatchiks would be doing whatever they can to remove the regulatory impediments that farmers face. But you would be wrong. Consider several ways in which federal regulators are threatening agricultural productivity, both directly and indirectly.

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Today, in 1945, the World Bank was created. We won’t argue that it hasn’t ever done anything good, but will note that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Michael Barone in today’s Washington Examiner:

On Boxing Day, it’s worth noting that Barack Obama is down but not out.

You could tell as much from the contrast between his petulant postelection press conference and his peppy pre-Christmas press conference. In the former he was crabby about accepting Republicans’ demands that income tax rates on all taxpayers not be raised. In the latter he was celebrating the lame-duck Congress’ acceptance of his stands on the New START treaty, repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and even the previously reviled tax deal.

Obama has obviously figured out that Americans prefer to see their president describe the glass as half full rather than half empty. That’s a good lesson for him, and for Republicans as well, especially those who believe that the Obama Democrats’ shellacking in the midterms means that Obama himself will definitely lose in 2012.

History should provide some caution for these folks.

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From the Associated Press:

A new health regulation issued this month offers Medicare recipients voluntary end-of-life planning, which Democrats dropped from the monumental health care overhaul last year.

The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death.

But the practice was heavily criticized by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and some other Republicans who have likened the counseling to “death panels.”

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This post could be entitled, “So many dumb bureaucrats, so little time,” but let’s have some fun and turn it into a contest. Which bone-headed decision by a local government best exemplifies mindless bureaucracy, politically correct nonsense, and government waste?

Contestant Number One is Sgt Brian Albert of the Baltimore County Natural Resources Police, who fined two men $90 each for the vicious, horrible, nasty crime of …(please don’t faint)… rescuing a deer. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. Two hardened criminals used an inflatable raft to free a helpless animal, but they flouted the law by not wearing life jackets. Since I already did a blog post about a man being fined for rescuing a wounded deer, I guess the moral of the story is that bureaucrats don’t like Bambi.

Contestant Number Two is the Metro Police in Washington, DC, which has decided to harass random travelers by searching their bags before they board the subway. This is akin to the TSA’s mindless bureaucracy – but even worse. There surely are nut-jobs who would like to blow up Americans, but they could do that on a bus, on a crowded street during rush hour, or any other place where a large number of people are gathered. Heck, they can drive a car into a crowd. Good intelligence by the CIA and FBI is the way to stop these crackpots, not empty security theater that makes life more difficult for law-abiding people.

Contestant Number Three is the St. Paul School District in Minnesota, which has turned all schools into “sweet-free zones.” This ban also applies to salty foods, however that is defined, and deals “a blow to booster clubs and parent organizations, too, which won’t be able to sell hot chocolate, doughnuts, candy bars and cookies at school events.” I actually agree with Michelle Obama that American kids are overweight, but I also know that government intervention isn’t going to solve the problem unless we want a police state that bans video games, TVs, computers, and the other technological developments that are responsible for sedentary kids.

Contestant Number Four is Battlefield High School, in Haymarket, VA, which disciplined 10 unrepentant gang members. What did these thugs do to warrant detention? Brace yourself and make sure no children are looking over your shoulders, because these hoodlums belong to a particularly nasty group called the Christmas Sweater Club and they got in trouble for handing out miniature candy canes. One school administrator (Mrs. Grinch?)  explained that “not everyone wants Christmas cheer,” thus turning Jay Leno’s parody into reality.

So who wins the prize? I’m not technologically advanced enough to include a poll with this question, so the only thing we can really conclude is that governments do dumb things. That’s true at the national level, the state level, and the local level.

I just wish I could write like Dave Barry.

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Today, in 1991, the Supreme Soviet met and formally dissolved the USSR. The Cold War was over.