"Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for the law, it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
. . . Justice Louis D. Brandeis: Olmstead v. U.S.
In all the accounts of the President's unilateral decision to "loan" billions of dollars from the public treasury to Detroit's automakers there has not been a single citation of any legal authority for that action. It seems it hasn't even occurred to our curiously incurious press to question whether there is any such authority.
Mr. Bush clearly doesn't want to add the collapse of the industrial dinosaurs to the legacy of his failed presidency. So he is taking money that Congress appropriated to prop up failing financial institutions to delay the extinction of the uncompetitive manufacturing behemoths. It's a bait and switch scam and probably unlawful as only Congress is empowered by the Constitution to determine how funds are to be spent from the public treasury. And, in this instance, the President is diverting funds from an appropriation enacted by Congress for one thing to an altogether different purpose. Moreover, the other purpose and the terms on which the diversion is to take place were considered and rejected by Congress.
The President's action is being applauded by the benefitted United Auto Workers union. Its members will continue to receive their bloated wages and benefits from tax money collected largely from lower paid workers engaged throughout the country in enterprises that don't receive similar subsidies.
Whatever practical merits the bailout may have, if -- as appears to be the case -- it lacks a valid legal basis, it means the President is not bound by law and has become a law unto himself -- in other words, a tyrannical despot.
Yet nobody seems to notice or care.
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