About Relational Bases

Some smart Fox, who's a Pro at this stuff, told me that an Oracle at Delphi told him how to Access all the knowledge of the world directly, not indirectly using some  base data method (DataBase Too?) or some sequential (or was it SQL?) method, was possible by just asking the right question.

 

The only problem is that any query asked of it always comes back with the same answer: "42".

 

Presidential Power and By-Passing Congress - A long Tradition

When President Bush did not re-hire some Attorney Generals after asking all of them to tender their resignations the national press was up in arms about him misusing his stated and authorized powers. Yet when President Obama did the same thing the current press did not even cover this same quadrennial process. This double standard is actually quite normal in American politics - but it misses the point that a President has a LOT of powers that is often never reported by The Press - the appointments that are made and the directives issued (or not issued) to all employees within the Executive Branch of Government.

 

By-passing Congress to accomplish a political goal and sometimes even implement a truly functional improvement in the USA is nothing new. President Truman by-passed Congress when he ORDERED the desegregation of the Military in 1947. As the Commander in Chief of the military he ordered it and they HAD to implement it - it was a direct order. It achieved a political goal prior to the 1948 campaign and it actually made it easier for the supply and personnel system within the Military. It eliminated having duplicate paths and redundancies to service two identical units with two sets of people in order to adhere to segregation policies.

 

President Obama has issued published Executive Orders to the Executive Branch to implement "green policies" in all Agencies by-passing Congress. Never reported. And of course when he first was elected over 3,000 political appointees were made to agencies within the Federal Government which is also normal. However, once these people are in place THEY in turn publish rules and regulations, granted under existing law, which can completely change the purpose of the law and how it now will affect people. Example: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publishes a Notice for Proposed Rule Making, ask for comments from the public in out of the way places and never really advertises the notice, then it can publish the new rule in the Federal Register after the comment period, and 90 days later the "rule" is actually now a "law" and must be obeyed. This is where the true power of a President lies - getting agencies to publish new regulations or rescinding regulations and rules to change the whole nation effectively by-passing Congress completely – and legally.

 

Congress CAN override these regulations - by passing a bill and getting the President to sign it - but that can seldom be accomplished unless it REALLY affects a vast majority of people from all spectrums of life and people find out about it. Most rules published by Agencies affect very few people directly - loads of people indirectly - but when only a few people are affected they have no high numbers to get motivate to complain and get a larger following behind them to bombard Congress about it. You cannot complain to any agency since you have no standing with them. A law change affecting 500 people (or businesses) will not have the same impact as one affecting 5,000,000 people or a million businesses and thus will end up staying on the books.

 

The President can also order the US District Attorneys NOT to enforce laws - and/or direct them, as President Obama has done with one immigration issue, just put the enforcement as a "low" priority and thus effectively render the law he is sworn to enforce meaningless. The DA cannot refuse to follow his orders - he hired them and he can fire them - so they do. This is what President Obama has done with the problem of people crossing into the USA without getting the proper VISA or work permits. He has told the AGs of each area to just not prosecute those who crossed into the USA who have not been convicted of any violent crime, to just ignore them and leave them alone, even once discovered to be here illegally.

 

This is also done throughout the USA by those in charge of police departments - they take their cue from the President so they too implement policies to flout the laws they don't like by telling their city or state DAs to NOT bring charges against certain class of crimes. Often citing "cost savings" or it being a "victimless" or property crime that is not worth pursuing in order to prosecute for violent criminals. Whole cities now ignore Federal Immigration Laws using this method - which since a President can order it means that they can do it also. The President is certainly NOT going to order his DA to sue a city for ignoring a Federal law that he has ordered his own DAs to ignore!

 

The USA was founded upon the "rule of law" which is slowly being eroded from the top. Why would people want to obey ALL laws when they see that a President, State, City or Local government deliberately orders people to ignore laws that does not suite them - and get away with it.

 

Under our law system ONLY the Government can bring criminal charges against anyone - no individual can EVER bring a criminal case against anyone else. If the Government can pick and choose which laws to enforce and when, then eventually everyone will learn to ignore the laws they don't like. The only problem is that when an individual breaks a law the Government likes the individual WILL lose as compared to when a Government entity breaks a law that a higher government does not like nothing happens.

 

Any President can use these methods - it is all a matter of degree of how much they have abused this power and if once discovered what the press does to report it. President Obama seems to get a pass on doing all of these actions. People complained to Congress about SOPA and PIPA and they were stopped - yet the President signed an international "executive" agreement in October of 2011, really a treaty, implementing this same thing within the USA after secret negotiations - by-passing Congress again - and no complaints came from the Press Corps.

 

This is where the true power of a President lies.

 

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Secret-Government-Talks-Create-Treaty-Stricter-than-SOPA-or-PIPA-522416/1/