Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=331340805541601
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 01, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Government: It's been suggested that the White House has more czars than the Russian Romanov dynasty. Has the administration forgotten that we have a government of elected officials, not of imperial appointments?
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Czars, or functionaries with the task of ensuring White House commands are followed, have been part of the U.S. government for decades. It's unclear, though, how many are in this administration, as it is not an official title. PolitiFact.com from the St. Petersburg Times believes the count has swelled to as many as 28 under President Obama.
Many of these czars, most of whom are useless or counterproductive, are sitting in newly created positions. They range from Kenneth Feinberg, the pay czar who is the special master on executive compensation, to Earl Devaney, who, as the stimulus accountability czar, will chair the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board. Others among the 28 include:
• Green jobs czar. This post is held by Van Jones. Officially he is Obama's special adviser for enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Jones was a founder and leader of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. The group, now disbanded, had Marxist, Leninist and Maoist influences.
Jones admitted that he became a communist and radical after the officers accused of using excessive force on Rodney King were acquitted. He's supposedly a reformed anti-capitalist, but not everyone is convinced.
• TARP czar. Herb Allison is assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial stability. There's nothing alarming in his background, but there should be concerns about the position he's filling.
• Great Lakes czar. Cameron Davis is a special adviser overseeing the EPA's Great Lakes restoration plan. He's president of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes conservation group.
• Science czar. John Holdren is an ideologue who frets over global warming (junk science) and is a pessimist (in 1980 he thought the world was running out of natural resources) and misanthrope (he's favored population control).
• Climate czar. Before Todd Stern was appointed, he was a senior fellow at the left-wing Center for American Progress. His empty rhetoric on global warming can hardly be distinguished from that of Al Gore.
• Car czar. Ed Montgomery, a University of Maryland dean, economist and a Labor Department deputy secretary in the Clinton administration, is director of recovery for auto communities and workers. He's no raving leftist, but he is discharging a duty the government should never have.
• Guantanamo closure czar. Danny Fried has the duty of overseeing the closure of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The longtime diplomat has to navigate the fulfillment of Obama's promise to shut down Gitmo, a promise that helped get Obama elected but was always foolish.
• Faith-based czar. Dare we say that Joshua DuBois, director of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is a community organizer? The 26-year-old pastor worked for Democratic Congressmen Rush Holt of New Jersey and Charles Rangel of New York.
• Urban affairs Czar. The White House has a director of urban affairs — Adolfo Carrion Jr. — but no czar for rural affairs. What does that say about how this administration values country folks?
• Regulatory czar. Obama wants to fill this post with Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor who has suggested "that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives," against people in our civil court system. Sunstein would likely do a fine job of regulating the country into paralysis.
The growth of a czarist regime is not healthy in a representative republic. When the executive branch isn't checked by the Supreme Court, which shouldn't let the president make fiat law, and Congress, which constitutionally confirms or denies a president's nominees for "public ministers," a risky imbalance of power arises.
Someone who considers himself a defender of the Constitution — say Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who believes presidents intentionally try to bypass Congress by naming czars — should challenge the administration in court.
The White House shouldn't be center of a dynasty.
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