Donate HERE to help with my webhosting expenses

Mountain Time

Bitterroot Bugle post categories

Bitterroot Bugle archives

executive dis-orders

Wave of the hand;

Law of the land

I am paraphrasing a Bill Clinton aid. During that presidency the legislative branch had their job stolen by the executive branch in wholesale quantities and The Whim Of The President was thoroughly shoved in our faces… or at least in mine.

The current emperor waved his magical pen the other day, now allowing religious organizations to spend their tax-exempt money on political activity. That is just one of many executive orders The Imperial Donald has signed already. The anti-Christians are hyperventilating over this one. I am disgusted by ALL OF THEM.

The Constitution created a legislative branch with representatives of the states (Senate) and representatives of the people (House) to hash out rules by which the federal government would run, an executive branch to administer the rules created by the lawmakers and a judicial branch to arbitrate between the two branches of the federal government.

Nowhere in the design was an emperor installed to make crap up.

Theoretically, Congress could eliminate funds from presidential ruling by fiat – shutting down the dictator in chief, make laws against his arbitrary orders, and/or remove him from office. Also in theory the Supreme Court should invalidate dictates of the trumped-up imperial court. But heck no. They all report to the same rulers.

Starting my research for this post, I thought Slick Willy was the king of the executive order. His were big and notable, but as you can see from the table below, I was way off. That doesn’t matter much.

Executive orders are properly a tool for the administrative boss to direct his subordinates. NONE of them apply to we the people who, by the way, are his superiors, not his subordinates. ALL of the executive orders claiming to apply to us and our resources are invalid.

The pre-Trump list in this chart totals 15,385. Any that pretended to be law were at time of signing, and continue to be, invalid and unlawful. Enough of them are likely treasonous to justify hanging any of the signers who are not yet dead. Heck, I’d support exhuming the remains of the old, dead white guys and hanging those too.

But I am in the minority. The vast majority accept their lot in life as the butt of every political joke anointed “Fearless Leader”, and slaves to the psychopaths residing in the yet-to-be-drained Potomac Swamp.

—————

The following article from Pew Research explains a bit more about executive orders.

Barack Obama averaged fewer executive orders per year in office than any U.S. president in 120 years. The executive orders he did issue, however, face an uncertain future under President Donald Trump, who has characterized some of Obama’s orders as “illegal and overreaching.”

Obama issued 277 executive orders during his eight years in office, or 35 per year. That’s slightly fewer than the 36 per year that George W. Bush issued and the lowest average since Grover Cleveland, who issued 32 per year during his eight nonconsecutive years in office, according to data from the American Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Overall, Obama ranks 16th among presidents in total number of executive orders issued and 21st in the average number issued per year.

Historically, the use of executive orders peaked under Franklin D. Roosevelt, who issued 3,721, or 307 for every year of his tenure. Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt also issued more than 1,000.

It’s important to note that executive orders are just one type of unilateral action presidents can take. Other types include presidential memoranda or proclamations, which also can result in significant policy changes. Obama, for example, recently used proclamations to create new national monuments in Nevada and Utah. This analysis focuses on executive orders alone because of data limitations for other types of executive action. (Presidents are required to count and publish executive orders but are not obligated to release memoranda or proclamations.)

In terms of subject matter, Obama’s executive orders generally were comparable to those of his recent predecessors, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of National Archives data. Obama, Bush and Bill Clinton, for instance, all used executive orders most frequently to make changes related to government commissions, boards or committees. The next most frequent category for all three presidents relates to government agencies and employees.

If Trump does reverse some of Obama’s executive orders, he wouldn’t be the first president to undo or modify a predecessor’s orders. Indeed, Obama issued 30 executive orders that amended or revoked existing ones, according to the National Archives.

In one especially noteworthy example, two executive orders by George W. Bush amended an order by Clinton, which had modified an executive order that Ronald Reagan used to revoke a previous order by Jimmy Carter, who first amended a regulatory order created by Gerald Ford. Obama, in turn, eliminated the pair of George W. Bush amendments with another executive order.