Senator Feinstein's Abuse of the Public Trust

Senator Diane Feinstein of California recently gave up her chairmanship of the Senate Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee after many years of steering contracts for military construction, advanced weapons procurement, environmental clean-up projects, facility leasing, and quality of life issues for veterans to companies owned by her husband.

Richard C. Blum, her husband, owned majority shares of Perini Corporation and URS Corporation until late 2005.  Senator Feinstein had been voting approval of contracts to these corporations and to CB Richard Ellis, a commercial property leasing and building purchasing firm in which her husband had a major interest, since becoming the Chair of the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee in 2001.  That year, URS Corp. military construction income grew from $24 million to $185 million.  Its architectural and engineering military construction income rose from $108,000 in 200 to $142 million in 2001.  She had also voted money for Boston Scientific Corp. and Kinetic Concepts, Inc. for medical supplies when these companies stocks were heavily owned by her husband's financial companies.

At least $1.6 billion of income was steered to her husband's companies while Senator Feinstein served on the Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee.  This makes all other Senatorial conflict of interest and theft of public monies cases small potatoes in comparison!  How abuse of U.S. citizens can go on for many years at this scale without the media raising a huge ruckus about it, is a very clear statement that the media, as well as the Senate, has no regard for the General Welfare of the People.

You can read more about this here: http://www.wnd.com/2007/03/40845/

Obama Usurps Congress' Appropriations Power

Obama, already the worst president in my lifetime, has refused to abide by the constitutional appropriations power of Congress.  The bill that passed Congress last week, which Obama has signed into law, reduced the funding to pay the salaries of four of Obama's Czars, the healthcare, climate change, auto and manufacturing, and the urban affairs czars.  Hilariously, Obama claims that the cuts are a violation of his executive power, the exercise of which apparently allows a President to spend any amount of money he wishes to claim is needed for advice at the White House.  He claims that the separation of powers are violated.  This makes sense for an entitlement President.  After all, he is entitled to anything he claims he needs and it is the taxpayers responsibility to feed him according to his needs.

It would clearly be too much to demand that he pick up the phone and get advice from the executive branch Health and Human Services Department on healthcare, the otherworldly combination of the EPA, NASA, and NOAA on climate change, the Commerce Department on autos and manufacturing, or the Housing and Urban Development Department on urban affairs.  Each of these massive bureaucracies can give him advice almost as bad as that which he gets from his czars!

Of course, he could go instead to the CATO Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Professor Walter E. Williams, Dr. Thomas Sowell, Glenn Reynolds, or me for better advice at a much lower cost.  But Obama is too wrongheaded and too much a spendthrift to do anything so sane.

The Constitution, as a carefully considered part of its separation of powers, gave the appropriations power solely to Congress!  The President can veto an appropriations bill, but he cannot on his own choose to spend money not appropriated by Congress.  If he is allowed to do that, then the Presidency can readily become a Dictatorship.  That is the ideal power every Socialist leader wants.  The fact that no President has the power of appropriations is another reason why Obama does not like our Constitution.

A Congressman just claimed once again in the last few days that Obama is a constitutional scholar.  This ridiculous claim keeps reappearing.  What hogwash!  This violation of his presidential power should be contested before the Supreme Court before the balance of power is still further skewed in favor of the Executive Branch.