Stephen Michael Kellat

Coming Towards The Last Two Months Of Trump's (First? Only?) Term

Stephen Michael Kellat at

A refreshing change in the current presidency compared to the prior one is the lessening of the amount of unconstitutional orders to have to carry out. The validity of orders do not depend upon the character of the person issuing the order. I know "Trump Law" says otherwise but the US Supreme Court has been nuking that thoroughly every time a case gets that far.


Quite a bit of President Obama's second term was full of unconstitutional executive orders. How do I know this? The Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act of 2010 was a poorly written piece of legislation that was hastily passed. President Obama issued several illegal orders to delay implementation of parts of the law when he had no authority to do so. President Obama paid money out of the Treasury without benefit of a lawful appropriation and engaged in "friendly litigation" at one point to try to cover that up so as to use the Judgment Fund so as to handle some cost shortfalls by insurers participating in exchanges. The IRS was given instructions without basis in statute to do things to promote the purposes of the act such as data-matching three times that otherwise would have required a massive notice and comment period coordinated by the OMB under the Privacy Act of 1974.


Even though President Trump seems to issue several orders per day, it ensures he is very transparent as to what his administration is doing. He literally gives instructions to subordinates in writing with appropriate citations to law to back up his orders. Obama-era orders were deficient in citations during the second term and left some of us feeling weird about legality at least in my employing bureau. He may be crude, he may be crass, he may be that man from the Bronx who ruled real estate...but he does do the job. I have more substantial ground on which to defend his orders than I ever did President Obama's.


And now that I finished up my parts order with Adafruit Industries, I'm going to shuffle off to bed now...

clacke@libranet.de ❌, clacke@libranet.de ❌, clacke@libranet.de ❌ shared this.

I don't know, shitty orders well given seem like shitty orders to me...

JanKusanagi at 2017-10-31T12:56:40Z