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Monday, November 19, 2012

Enid News & Eagle

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OPINION
Publisher

News & Eagle Editorial Board

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Jeff Funk publisherenidnews.com

Executive Editor

Jeff Funk, Rob Collins, Kevin Hassler, (ItiJeff Mullin, David Christy
The Opinion page strives to present a variety of opinions and viewpoints. Editorial opinions expressed in the gray box below are those of the News & Eagle Editorial Board and its guest members. Viewpoints expressed by columnists, letters to the editor and editorial cartoonists are those of the writer and artist and not necessarily the newspaper.

Rob Collins rcollinsenidnews.com

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By Steve Fair

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Thumbs down to worries
sparked on Facebook about the county courthouse lawn
Thumbs down to online rumors that spread half-truths and uncorroborated assertions. We prefer to deal in documented sources to confirm our stories. A recent Facebook post claimed Garfield County commissioners already had approved a plan to replace the courthouse lawn with a parking lot. In fact, the proposal would redo the parking lot behind the courthouse, pushing it farther back. The proposal shows the parking lot arcing north of the courthouse clock tower, away from the edge of the building where the current parking lot is located. The plan would not do away with the courthouse lawn and gazebo, which are popular venues for events downtown.
WASHINGTON There can be unseemly exposure of the mind as well as of the body, as the progressive mind is exposed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a creature of the labyrinthine Dodd-Frank legislation. Judicial dismantling of the CFPB would affirm the rule of law and Congress' constitutional role. The CFPB's director, Richard Cordray, was installed by one of Barack Obama's spurious recess appointments made when the Senate was not in recess. Vitiating the Senate's power to advise and consent to presidential appointments is congruent with the CFPB's general lawlessness. The CFPB nullifies Congress' power to use the power of the purse to control bureaucracies, because its funding "determined by the director" comes not from congressional appropriations, but from the Federal Reserve. Untethered from all three branches of government, unlike anything created since 1789, the CFPB is uniquely sovereign: The president appoints the director for a five-year term he can stay indefinitely, if no successor is confirmed and the director can be removed, but not for policy reasons. One CFPB request for $94 million in Federal Reserve funds was made on a single sheet of paper. Its 2012 budget estimated $130 million for this is the full explanation "other services." So it has been hiring promiscuously and paying its hires lavishly: As of three months ago, approximately 60 percent of its then 958 employees were making more than $100,000 a year. Five percent were making $200,000 or more. (A

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or prescribed, and developed law does so concerning "unfair" and "deceptive" practices. Not so, "abusive." The term, Cordray concedes, is "a little bit of a puzzle." An "abusive" practice may not be unfair or deceptive, yet nonetheless may be illegal. It is illegal, the law says, if it "interferes with" a consumer's ability to "understand" a financial product, or takes "unreasonable" advantage of a consumer's lack of understanding, or exploits "the inability of the consumer to protect" his or her interests regarding a financial product. This fog of indeterminate liabilities is causing some banks to exit the consumer mortgage business. C. Boyden Gray and Adam J. White, lawyers representing a community bank challenging the constitutionality of the CFPB's "formation and operation," note in The Weekly Standard: "By writing new law through case-by-case enforcement, and by asserting `exception authority' to effectively rewrite statutes, the CFPB is substantially increasing bankers' compliance costs. The absence of clear, simple, up-front rules will force banks to hire ever more lawyers and regulatory compliance officers to keep up with changing laws an outcome that inherently favors big banks over smaller ones." This exacerbates the favoritism inherent in the substantial implicit subsidy Dodd-Frank confers on some banks by designating "systemically important financial institutions" that are "too big to fail." Even worse, say Gray and White (in their complaint for

Caucus. Jackson's election by the caucus was part of a slate of Republican leaders selected two days after the GOP gained two seats in the House, increasing its margin over Democrats to a commanding 72-29 edge. He will replace outgoing Speaker Pro Tempore Jeff Hickman, R-Fairview, after the new Republican leadership formally is installed in January. Jackson said legislative steps are possible with the decision to close Northern Oklahoma Resource Center of Enid. We hope the new speaker pro tempore can help turn things around. Thumbs up to Youth and Family Services of North Central Oklahoma for receiving a $10,000 grant from AT&T to provide vocational rehabilitation services to at-risk teens in the community. Youth and Family Services provides assistance to more than 1,500 children and families each year through a variety of programs, including an emergency youth shelter, food pantries, school-based and outpatient counseling services, and adolescent drug and alcohol recovery programs. We appreciate AT&T's interest in helping our area youth. More thumbs up to Enid gastroenterologist Sanku Rao giving CPR for 15 minutes to a man who had flown into Tampa, Fla., on the same flight as Rao and his wife. Emergency medical technicians eventually took over. Rao said the man was taken to an emergency room, then a cardiac catheterization laboratory. Cardiologists placed a stent in a blood vessel to save his life. The man, who made a full recovery, phoned him a few days later. Thanks to Rao for lending a helping hand.

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Thumbs up to state Rep. Mike Jackson, R-Enid, for being elected to serve as speaker pro tempore by the Oklahoma House Republican

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The CFPB's mission is to prevent practices it is empowered to "declare" are "unfair, deceptive, or abusive." Law is supposed to give people due notice of what is proscribed

the community bank), DoddFrank "delegates effectively unbounded power to the CFPB, and couples that power with provisions insulating CFPB against meaningful checks" by the other branches of government. This nullifies the checks and balances of the system of separation of powers. Courts are too reluctant to restrict Congress' power to delegate quasi-legislative powers, but the CFPB is an especially gross violation of the Constitution's Article I, Section 1: "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested" in Congress. By creating a CFPB that floats above the Constitution's tripartite design of government, Congress did not merely degrade itself, it injured all Americans. Like the Independent Payment Advisory Board, Obamacare's health care rationing panel, the CFPB embodies progressivism's authoritarianism removing much policymaking from elected representatives and entrusting it to unaccountable "experts" exercising an unfettered discretion incompatible with the rule of law. Similarly, when Obama allows states to waive work requirements that the 1996 welfare reform law explicitly made non-waivable, he evades the Constitution's provision conferring a conditional presidential veto power ignoring the law becomes preferable to a veto Congress can override. And the waivers make a mockery of the Constitution enjoining the president to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Philander Knox should be the Obama administration's patron saint. When Theodore Roosevelt asked Attorney General Knox to concoct a defense for American behavior in acquiring the Panama Canal Zone, Knox replied: "Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality."
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By Argus Hamilton BEVERLY HILLS God bless America, and how's everybody? Madonna performed a strip tease at her New York concert Monday to raise cash for local Hurricane Sandy victims. She's one of a kind. In a backstage interview, Madonna disclosed she was once abducted by aliens, and it was a mistake the aliens made just once. and he's a great sport. Last year at training camp, Tim Tebow ate an entire cake before everyone told him there was a stripper inside it.

Do you want to speak out?

Letters to the editor are welcomed, but must be 300 words or less and include the author's signature, printed name, address and daytime phone. Letters from an author will be published only once every 30 days. Send to: Letters to the Editor, Enid News & Eagle, P.O. Box 1192, Enid, OK 73702, or editor@ enidnews.com

BP paid $4 billion to the U.S. to settle charges from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill two years ago. A poll shows 80 percent of Gulf residents think BP did a good job of cleaning up the spill. Of course, the same poll found that 80 percent of Gulf residents hate pelicans.

David Petraeus's biography by Paula Broadwell soared on the bestseller lists Friday. Their affair cast suspicions on all biographers and their subjects. Doris Kearns Goodwin went on five talk shows Friday to deny that she's been sleeping with Abe Lincoln.

The New York Jets locker room imploded Thursday over all the attention Tim Tebow gets in the media. It's wrong to resent him,

Congress grilled the CIA and Pentagon over their cover story on the U.S. Consulate attack in Libya and its link to two generals in adulterous affairs. The hearings uncovered one valuable bit of military intelligence: If you want to keep something secret, don't use Gmail.
Hamilton is host comedian at The Comedy Store in Hollywood.

Since the recent election, many are offering their take on why Romney lost the election. Here's my analysis: First, nationally, Republicans concede too many demographics. Political consultants advise candidates to ignore the minority voter, because according to Karl Rove, "97 percent will vote Democrat." Ignoring minority voters just makes Rove's observation a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is true that minorities vote overwhelming Democrat, but wasn't always the case. During reconstruction, most blacks were Republicans, and as recent as 2004, Hispanics were voting R. Republicans must reach out to those demographics if we are to ever win the White House again. Second, Romney didn't fire up the base. In order for a candidate to get elected, he must energize the base. Party regulars must be excited about the candidate. Romney failed to do that. He was consistently boring during the primary, but his campaign organization was solid, unlike his competitors. He won the primary through organization, not through inspiration and momentum. Third, America has changed. The American Dream is not that you can come to this country, work hard, take personal responsibility and be successful. The new American Dream is now one where a large percentage of the population is on government assistance or working for the government. The time has come where those who are dependent on government are able to vote into office whomever they want for president. That is a sad fact, but one that hardworking private-sector citizens will have to face. Government produces nothing it is dependent completely on the private sector. Government consumes; citizens produce. That is a basic truth, but in the new America, such talk is heresy. Government has become the ultimate reality for a large segment of the population. In that altered reality, government provides employment, food, shelter, education, health care and security. Personal responsibility is de-emphasized and, in fact, discouraged. Fourth, Hurricane Sandy helped President Obama. During a major crisis, Arnericans want to see their government responding. Obama effectively used the natural disaster to his advantage. Even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie bear-hugged the president and was extremely complimentary when the president visited his state after the storm. Fifth, the president did a good job of defining Romney and avoiding his record. Whenever Romney would point out something about his record, the president would cry, "negative." Pointing out facts about an elected official's record is not negative campaigning, but in our apathetic, sound bitedriven world, critical thinking skills are not the norm. Sixth, social conservatives didn't vote in high numbers. Christian conservatives can win just about any election if they just turn out. For a variety of reasons, many choose to stay home and not vote. Many didn't trust Romney and his position on abortion. He just didn't talk about it, and if he did he danced around the issue. Some are saying the Republican Party has to change our message and positions on the issues if we are ever to recapture the White House. It is not our platform that is the problem, it is the candidates we have been running. We keep running safe candidates. We need to take a bold step and run someone who will energize the base and get our voters to the polls.
Fair is national committeeman for the

Oklahoma Republican Party.