Czar Watch: A Great Lakes czar?
posted at 2:55 pm on June 4, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Yesterday, Jim Geraghty and I had a spirited debate over Barack Obama’s explosion of “czars” in American government — people with cross-functional authority and answerable only to the White House. Jim argued that in the limited sense of cyberwarfare and cybersecurity, a czar made sense, while I pointed out the vast potential for abuses of power, which we have already seen from the auto industry czar.
Today, the White House announced yet another czar, and this one’s a doozy:
President Barack Obama has appointed a Great Lakes czar to oversee the administration’s initiative to restore the Lakes’ environment. …
Davis will coordinate efforts of about a dozen federal agencies working on the Great Lakes project, which deals with issues such as invasive species, polluted harbors, sewage overflows and degraded wildlife habitat.
Obama promised during his campaign last year to create such a position. His proposed 2010 budget seeks $475 million in new spending on the lakes.
As with the cybersecurity issue, this duplicates an existing agency’s explicit mission while avoiding that agency’s Congressional oversight. On cybersecurity, that is the Department of Homeland Security, which already exists as an umbrella domestic defense agency. On the issue of the Great Lakes environment, it would be the Environmental Protection Agency.
Why not just go through established, authorized channels to address the Great Lakes recovery effort? In fact, why have an EPA at all if it isn’t capable of addressing this very issue? How many more unaccountable czars will the Obama administration impose by diktat?
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I really don’t understand the egotistical Senate giving him a pass on this…
ladyingray on June 4, 2009 at 6:30 PM
Obama has named a “pay Czar.
The administration is expected to name Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw the federal government’s compensation fund for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to act as a pay czar for the Treasury Department.
When government controls the rate of compensation of private business isn’t this socialism?
In any case, this is very disturbing and not a lot of coverage in our wonderful “free press.”
coldwarrior on June 5, 2009 at 2:02 AM
What the OPrompter-in-Chief needs, is a toilet Czar to keep track of the amount of bullshit that’s going down, and out, the white house sewer pipes!!!
byteshredder on June 5, 2009 at 2:25 AM
An interesting note about the use of the word Czar in America:
Czar was first bestowed on one of Andrew Jackson’s foes: Nicholas Biddle, president of the Bank of the United States. Jackson vehemently opposed the centralized power of the bank, which he called a “hydra of corruption,” and his clash with Biddle exploded into the “Bank War” of 1832-36.
One of Jackson’s staunchest allies in this fight, Washington Globe Publisher Frank Blair, dubbed Biddle “Czar Nicholas”—a potent image at a time when Russia’s Nicholas I was at the height of his repressive nationalist regime.
Ugly on June 5, 2009 at 3:46 AM
http://www.slate.com/id/2207055/
Ugly on June 5, 2009 at 3:49 AM
“efflorescence of czars”
Sounds so pretty.
Ugly on June 5, 2009 at 3:50 AM
Oh GEEE… what’s with this Czar talk?
Ugly on June 5, 2009 at 3:57 AM
^^^2007 recording… worth the listen. Considering.
Ugly on June 5, 2009 at 3:59 AM
Download link for 2007 NPR Czar link
Ugly on June 5, 2009 at 4:03 AM
*note – They say Bush did not like the term ‘Czar’ Gen Lute was the “Full Time Manager”… lol better than ‘Czar’.
Ugly on June 5, 2009 at 4:07 AM
This is what can happen with centralized control of anything, even a huge body of fresh water.
There’s already an international body that the federal government refuses to acknowledge and empower with jurisdictional control over the waters of the Great Lakes
BO does realize some of the Great Lakes are in Canada?
Prediction: $475 million will be wasted on the apparatchik bureaucracy itself, paying for nothing of substance. Then, taxpayers will be stuck with yet more useless government we cannot shed ourselves of.
MarkT on June 5, 2009 at 10:42 AM
New Lake Michigan “Czar” Has History of Blind Eye Toward Pollution
It doesn’t take long around these parts to drill through the BS:
MarkT on June 5, 2009 at 1:21 PM
I am sure smugglers swimming to Put In Bay will board the Ferry and bring in cigarettes or even worse carbon credits from borneo.
We can never be too careful with the North Coast.
See what happened at Baja Norte?
seven on June 5, 2009 at 2:16 PM
It just hit me. He is so smart. The czar can catch our volunteers that are sneeking out up north for healthcare. We may even have 19,000 Canadian doctors sneak back. Docs that refuse to join the UAW.
seven on June 5, 2009 at 2:19 PM
ALMIGHTY God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead; We give thee thanks for all those thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence, that the good work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.
E9RET on June 6, 2009 at 3:47 PM
oops, wrong page, meant for D-Day thread
E9RET on June 6, 2009 at 3:48 PM
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