The 0bama Legacy (part 1)

Czars for everything.

I was going to do one big post for all the things I've seen in the government under the current administration. But it just got to be such a big thing that I'm going to have to split it up. So, here's the first part. I'm not going to say how many parts there are since the groups keep changing as I dig deeper.

There's over 20 positions that have been referred to as czars by the news, or the congresscritters or the executive branch. These are the ones I found, and I didn't have to search that hard. The parenthesis indicate which administration they were created under. Although not necessarily at the request of the then sitting president.

Drug Czar (Nixon) - Gil Kerlikowske
Energy Czar (Nixon) - Carol Browner

U.S. Border Czar (Clinton) - Alan Bersin
WMD Czar (Clinton) - Jean D. Reed

War Czar (Bush) - Lieutenant General Douglas Lute
Intel Czar (Bush) - Dennis Blair
Iran Czar (Bush)- Dennis Ross
Middle East Czar (Bush)- George Mitchell
Af-Pak Czar (for Afghanistan and Pakistan) (Bush)- Richard Holbrooke

Pay Czar (0bama) - Kenneth Feinberg
Car Czar (0bama)- Edward B. Montgomery
Culture Czar (0bama) - Kareem Dale
Bank Bailout Czar (0bama) - Herb Allison
Urban Czar (0bama)- Adolpho Carrion, Jr
Regulatory Czar (0bama) - Cass Sunstein
Stimulus Accountability Czar (0bama) - G. Edward DeSeve
Cyber-Security Czar (0bama) - Congressman Tom Davis
e-Government Czar (0bama) - Vivek Kundra

When did Czars become a good thing? The Russian Tsars or (Czars) were despotic enough that they were revolted against, violently deposed and the entire family was executed out in the woods.

The definition of Czar is a person having great power. That and NONE of them were elected. And as such, don't have any accountability to the people. Ours are appointed to the position by the president and only need to answer to him. Does anyone else see something wrong here?

Many of the articles I've read about the current crop of .gov czars talks about the need for them to help the 0 handle the, as one article put it, sprawling size of the government. Well, maybe that should be the clue that the government needs to shrink a bit, or a lot. The constitution sets out the responsibilities of the federal government in a very clear way. Go read it, I'll wait.

Can you point to the anywhere in Articles I, II or III or any of the amendments that say we should have a Pay Czar or a Car Czar or a Bank Bailout Czar? No.

And what about the law of unintended consequences? We've got all these Czars. What's going to stop them from elbowing each other, jockeying for greater positions, more power, etc. When the original supposed need for them goes away, will the position/cabinet/office go away as well. We should ask the TVA about that.

All these Czar really do is create another level of bureaucracy and paperwork and a bigger government. A bigger government not serving the people of this country as our founders intended, but serving one man as any autocracy has.

As a rule of thumb, if every time someone tells the 0 that we need another czar for some problem or issue, he asks which agency already covers it, maybe we could see this gollum that was once our representative government not turn. But who am I kidding, he hasn't seen a new government bureaucracy he didn't like.

Maybe he meant that the 600,000 jobs he would create would be in the government sector.

On a side note, the term was first coined by then Sen. Joe Biden (ol' footinmouth himself) back in 1982. Is there a certain amount of circularity emerging?