Czar Obama

While the use of Czars have been in Washington for several decades now, but President Obama is taking it to new heights. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Vir., is concerned by the expansive use of Czars under President Obama. Sen. Byrd is seeing the use of Czars as for President Obama to skirt Congresses Constitutional power. Czars do not have to go through Senate confirmations since there is no Constitutional requirement.

Rep. Ernest Istook stated that, “If Barack Obama thinks that the executive branch is badly organized, and you could make a great case for that, then he ought to present a coherent system.” The trouble Rep. Istook is that President Obama is not calling the shots if you believe Rev. Wright. The latest Czar is Kenneth Feinberg who was appointed as “Special Master of Compensation” to keep track of compensation paid to executives.

Neil Braithwaite warns, in his article “Beware the Czar’s of Obama!”, that President Obama is laying the groundwork that mirrors the Office of Price Administration (OPA) that was instituted during FDR’s administration to ration goods and control wages all in the guise of the war effort. Mr. Braithwaite concludes his article by saying, “Once Obama realizes he needs a real war to fully implement his plans to “stabilize” the economy, he will reinstate the “war on terror”, and get busy resurrecting the full powers of the OPA. For the sake of all America is and stands for, let’s all hope Obama’s administration and historians continue to stay mired in the last eight “Bush” years.”

A report today in the Star Tribune, I believe the article was a transplant though, stated that Al Qaeda is heading to Yemen and Somali as efforts from drone attacks are taking their toll in Pakistan. But I digress. The Czar count is 20 and if a cyber Czar is established the list could grow. David Rothkopf writes in the Foreign Policy, Its official: Obama creates more czars than the Romanovs. In his article, Mr. Rothkopf mentions that, “all this czarism is a risky business that ends up producing bureaucratic bottlenecks, tensions and inefficiency when not managed extremely carefully.”

As the Health Care reform debate rages on in Congress, the potential of a Health Czar is likely especially if President Obama sees his vision of a single-payer government run system hits the wall. The establishment of a Czar of Health will be Presidents end run on Congress if they fail to pass his plan.