What’s Wrong with the World

If you think this situation is somehow discontiguous from the situation five years ago, well, you weren't paying attention five years ago. This is merely a continuation. One party lays the groundwork, the other pushes the envelope forward. Both parties are full of lawyers. Expansion of the term marriage, for instance, shall occur regardless of the intention of homosexuals. Lawyers want the extra money that will undoubtedly come from any wealthy homosexual fool enough to fall for this stuff.

The EEOC has ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applies to "transgender persons."

Great. Now maybe I can get some traction on getting the Federal government to force my employers to recognize me as Napoleon and say "Oui mon general." when they talk to me. I've got the funny hat and everything.

August, no, the "pax on both your houses" thing simply will not work here. It never ceases to amaze me what denial some people are in. Here comes the Obama administration and directly, by its own acts of fiat and power, makes particular things happen, _attacks_ America without even bothering to cover up its tracks, and one can nonetheless always find someone whether on the left or the paleo-right to say, "This has nothing to do with the leftist ideology of this particular administration. It's all the same no matter who is in power." It's almost enough to make one admire the mind's power of denying reality. "Admire" in a perverse way.

Tyranny isn't just around the corner anymore. We've gone around the corner. Tyranny is here now, in our beloved country, which once was the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I could be mistaken, but when the federal government decided it can declare you an enemy combatant, deny you all constitutional rights with neither a declaration of war nor insurrection (the only times habeus corpus can be denied constitutionally) and lock you up outside of US sovereign territory, we formally crossed the line into tyranny. This is true tyranny in its own right, but we've been around the corner for several years now. The tyrant is merely taking the velvet glove of his fist.

Before I forget, one of my coworkers was watching the director of the FBI testify during the debate about assassinating Al-Awlaki. When the director was asked if he could do that on US soil, he said "I'll have to get back to you on that one."

This is how far we've fallen. "Can you murder US citizens without a trial on US soil" is now something they have to think about before responding to.

As long as it was a matter of capturing you off of U.S. soil while engaged as a combatant, Mike, then say what you will: Let's be practical--it was going to affect a lot fewer ordinary, good Americans' daily lives than telling farm kids they can't help their parents with chores.

I suppose it's just a function of the quirkiness of our readership here at W4, but there's this constant attempt to take attention off of the distinctively leftist and distinctively Obama-related nature of these attacks. Say what you will about mainstream conservatives in America: They get that part. That isn't one of their blind spots. The hard-core libertarians and the paleos are always obscuring the ideological nature of the war *even when the enemy is blatantly on the offensive*. It's something I never can sympathize with, I have to admit.

...The proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents...

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/whd/WHD20111250.htm

"...The proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents..."

Typical Obama double-speak. The regs would apply to corporations. Most farm families these days incorporate their farms. I don't know anyone around here who doesn't. Mere homesteaders and hobby farmers would get a pass .... for now.

The proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents...

The cited press release (probably not binding as an official interpretation of the regulations) says "The FLSA also provides a complete exemption for youths employed on farms owned by their parents." Got that, Americans? You're not at liberty to have your kids help out on your own farm; you're "exempt" from not having them help out. According to the Department of Labor's press release, at least. Until some farm kid stubs his toe and a fed finds out about it.

Lydia,

Your argument seems to be that these few things mark the moment that tyranny came in force. What I am doing is not challenging you in any way about the tyrannical nature of those things, but pointing out that you're late to the game if you think tyranny is just now beginning. The earliest signs that the New Left was willing to use serious force against its opponents were Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Lydia,
Of course Obama engages in blatant acts without even bothering to cover his tracks- he is a lunatic! He actually thinks this stuff is not only legitimate, but moral. We do not appear, however, to have an anti-lunatic party. Federal power could have been severely limited by Republicans at many points in my 22 years of paying attention to politics. They choke every time, and eventually it dawned on me they aren't going to take away the power because they are willing to sacrifice us to it so that they can have it four to eight years later. So, they bank on you to think like you do, and those of us who think like me are quite frustrated because we know any true resistance requires a little more than voting and thus requires a bit more cooperation with potential allies.
Have you seen the stuff from the U.K. Wasn't it the conservatives who legalized the fiction of gay marriage? The New York stuff too, as I remember, had the fingerprints of Republicans upon it. Do you really need a Romney or a McCain to sign the bill for you to finally realize these guys are not on our side?

August, in case you haven't noticed, not all Republicans are conservatives. In fact, I would say by definition any Republican who supports the homosexual agenda, including this new rule by the Obama administration, is not a conservative. Be that as it may, it _is_ the Obama administration that is promulgating these new rules.

Thanks much, Jeff C., for helping us to interpret the doublespeak. Very useful. Also shows us another example of a case where the left uses uninformed public assumptions about "corporations" to advance its agenda against pretty much everybody.

"The regs would apply to corporations."

I didn't see anything like that in the summaries. I haven't been able to get a hand of anything other than summary reports of this draft, but if you've got hands on something more explicit I'd love to read it. Couldn't this simple be circumvented by not making your kids employees in your corporation?

Here are some "clarifications" from the U.S. Department of Labor:

http://www.dol.gov/whd/CL/truthNPRM.htm

"A child of any age may perform any job, even hazardous work, at any age at any time on a farm owned by his or her parent. A child of any age whose parent operates a farm may also perform any task, even hazardous jobs, on that farm but only outside of school hours. So for children working on farms that are registered as LLCs, but operated solely by their parents, the parental exemption would still apply."

This raises more questions: Why only mention LLCs? What about S-corps and C-corps? What does it mean "operated soley by their parents"? No grandparents, aunts or uncles? No non-family partners?

I meant, if the corporation was owned by the parents of the kid, wouldn't it still be legal for the kid to help out on the farm? I don't see anything in the summary that says that the bit I quoted would be overwritten if the farm was a subset of their parents corporation.

Ah I see that it would be, thanks Jeff.

What is the difference between an farm registered as LLC, S-corp or C-corp?

What about the business about "not being able to witness anything painful done to an animal"? Are there ways around that one?

However, I welcome the obscurity of the administration's "clarifications" for this reason: It provides an excuse for parents trying to live their lives to ignore the attempted tyranny of the government. If they can stay below the radar (perhaps a vain hope) this might work.

Oh, btw, cutting out the 4-H from providing training is another issue, isn't it?

Mike T.

Your argument seems to be that these few things mark the moment that tyranny came in force.

No, I'm saying we shd. certainly recognize it now if we didn't before. I'm not making any dogmatic statement about some exact moment at which tyranny came to America.

Look, I deal pretty frequently with friends who don't recognize the Lord Acton principle that power tends to corrupt. And yes, these exist on the traditionalist right as well--the idea that if only we had a just Christian king or something wielding a high level of autocratic power, it would be no problem in principle.

And I think I acknowledge that in the main post. When was the last time a Republican Congressman suggested abolishing the federal bureau that is promulgating these regulations? When was the last time we got a general critique of the constitutionally dubious Congressional practice of shluffing off its responsibility for making laws onto unelecte officials who are given vague and frighteningly wide mandates and powers to regulate the minutiae of people's lives and businesses? It hasn't happened. I fully realize that, and several sentences in my main post acknowledge it.

The fact remains, as I said: Nobody knows how to wield this sort of power for its own ideological purposes like a leftist. Obama and his cronies are past masters, and they aren't going to stop.

Perhaps not, Leonhard.

All we know for certain is that parental owned sole proprietorships are exempt, along with LLCs that are solely parental "operated" (whatever that means).

Even an LLC in which there is a non-family partner would fall under the regs.

A farm owned by two or three brothers - a common arrangement - would fall under the regs. The children of these brothers would fall under the new regs.

It's not clear whether parental-owned S-corps and C-corps fall under the regs. If exempt, it's not clear whether family or non-family partners are allowed.

Etc.

This looks extremely sweeping and more than just a "foot in the door".

Lydia,

Your ability to insult and to ignore the point is quite astonishing. Obviously everything you mentioned in your last reply is true and completely irrelevant to my point, so I can only assume you want to imply I am stupid. Gay marriage will become the law of the land because lawyers want more grist for the divorce lawyer mill. Not all Republicans are lawyers, but you can be sure that they (and the Democrat lawyers) are in charge. We know who the presumptive nominees are; we've got no viable option again.

"Even an LLC in which there is a non-family partner would fall under the regs...A farm owned by two or three brothers - a common arrangement - would fall under the regs. The children of these brothers would fall under the new regs."

But I haven't seen anything in these summaries that describe anything like this. It only mentions that farms owned by parents will be exempt. There's nothing that I can read about the exemption becoming null and void, under reasonable extensions of this. I guess you could argue by the absence of a mention that this will be the case. Unless of course there's something I'm missing.

Working off the press release, if you're a non-family member working on a family farm, then you're fully regulated by the anti-4H federal government. And to the extent that Farmer Johnson would need non-family-member help on his family farm to pick the apples or harvest the corn, Farmer Johnson is subject to Hilda's rules.

Suppose there is a family that runs an apple orchard, and next to them is a family that raises cattle; not an unlikely possibility back home. Orchard boy Bill couldn't go next door to help his best friend cattle-farmer Jack unless Bill were certified by Hilda Solis. Nor could Jack help Bill pick apples without federal government intervention.

Or suppose there are two wheat farmers each running a couple thousand acres outside Fargo. Each farmer has just enough children to harvest half his crop. Traditionally, Farmer Ole and Farmer Nils combine their efforts, pool their children, and get the job done without any need to hire migrant labor or otherwise deplete their earnings by hiring outside their family. But Hilda Solis wants to protect Ole's kids from dangerous exploitation by Nils, and vice versa. She's from the government, and she's here to help, and pretty soon Nils and Ole have both sold out to takeunder offers from an industrial-scale farming megacorp. Bang, two family farms killed off with one stone! For the children!

So as exceptions to pig-headedly well-intentioned overregulation go, I'd give this one a vote for the fig leaf hall of fame.

No, I'm saying we shd. certainly recognize it now if we didn't before. I'm not making any dogmatic statement about some exact moment at which tyranny came to America.

I guess a more accurate way of phrasing what I was getting at is that this seemed to be one of the straws that broke the camel's back.

Your ability to insult and to ignore the point is quite astonishing. Obviously everything you mentioned in your last reply is true and completely irrelevant to my point, so I can only assume you want to imply I am stupid. Gay marriage will become the law of the land because lawyers want more grist for the divorce lawyer mill. Not all Republicans are lawyers, but you can be sure that they (and the Democrat lawyers) are in charge. We know who the presumptive nominees are; we've got no viable option again.

This is actually closer to the truth than most social conservatives want to hear. The PTB in the RNC are absolutely not even remotely conservative unless you count light-weight Fascism as a form of conservatism. The RNC has no interest in actually doing anything about cultural issues that matter to social conservatives because those are the only things keeping the social conservatives in their base. When the social conservatives no longer have to worry about abortion and gay marriage at the federal level, there won't be much left to command their loyalty since they have so little in common with the values of much of the Republican establishment. When social conservatives rebelled in Kentucky by backing Rand Paul, the RNC was spittling in rage and that should tell us something about who they are.

"But I haven't seen anything in these summaries that describe anything like this. It only mentions that farms owned by parents will be exempt."

Leonhard, you've got to work a little harder at reading between the lines when it comes to anything said by Obamacrats. Let me help.

There are farms owned by people - sole proprietorships - and there are farms owned by corporations. The distinction is important. When the corporation is treated as a person, it is a different person entirely from the officers of the corporation. Parents may "own" all or part of a corporation, but the corporation owns the farm.

The fact that the release only mentions LLCs is also concerning. As I said, lots of family farms use other incorporation models.

Another weasel word in the press release is the word "soley", as in "operated solely by their parents". Family farms are often extended family operations, and extended family doesn't seem to count in the new regs. Family farms often form partnerships with non-family members as well.

August, I haven't even begun to insult you, but I could try if you wanted me to. You, after all, were the one who used the term "conservative" in your 3:13 comment as it applies to UK politics as if it means, "Whoever the media decides to refer to as 'the conservatives'." And then used this interchangeably with "Republicans" in U.S. politics.

Please spare me your attempts to take attention off the deliberate, wilful, evil behavior of the leftists, especially those in the present administration. Other conservatives _might_, I don't know, be distracted when you yell, "Squirrel!" I don't happen to be one of them.

"Leonhard, you've got to work a little harder at reading between the lines when it comes to anything said by Obamacrats. Let me help."

When I hear people tell me this it usually means that the message they're seeing isn't there. I'm not from the US (and no I'm not from the southern continent either). The only thing I knew was that Lydia was telling an agitated story about Obama outlawing in the country children picking up the trade of their parents. This seems to be rather overblown, or at least the story needed further clarifications. Now I'm trying to understand the proposal and I'm being told, despite no draft being available for reading, that it says such and such. The summary and the clarifications are the only things I've seen yet, and you haven't put anything else on the table so it seems likely that at the moments that's all we have.

"There are farms owned by people - sole proprietorships - and there are farms owned by corporations. The distinction is important. When the corporation is treated as a person, it is a different person entirely from the officers of the corporation. Parents may "own" all or part of a corporation, but the corporation owns the farm."

If you own the corporation, and the corporation owns the farm, you own the farm, right? I guess what you're asking is, what if the parents are merely big co-owners of the corporation that owns the farm that I assume they run as well? Am I getting that right? I'm sorry, but I haven't seen anything that says that they wouldn't be allowed to do so. Arguments about what can be 'read in there' or is 'between the lines' says something about your personal expectations. Its not that obvious from my point of view.

Of course if more meat gets on the table about this bill, I'd love to get it.

Lydia, August, can't we all get along?

From the AP article: "... the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said a refusal to hire or otherwise discriminate on the basis of gender identity is by definition sex discrimination under federal law."

Please don't get me started on the linguistic abomination the word gender has become since the armies of freaky people came pouring out of the woodwork!

If you own the corporation, and the corporation owns the farm, you own the farm, right?

NO. A corporation is formed specifically so that individuals can avoid "owning" the farm. It shields them from liability among other things.

From the clarification is appears that LLCs are exempt if "operated soley" by parents. I don't know what "operated by" is supposed to mean: Must both parents be partners, for example? Or do they just need to physically operate the farm? In what proportions? I don't know what "solely" is supposed to mean either, but I do know that the word is there for a reason. "Operated by their parents" and "operated soley by their parents" are entirely different things.

I hate to say this, because it's a rotten way to live, but with Obamacrats you have to assume dishonesty and deception from the outset. They only tell you what they have to tell you. They want the most power with the least public attention paid to their grabbing it. They choose their language carefully - to create impressions, and to keep people from noticing what is really happening.

So, you have no course of action, for obviously you can't vote for the 'conservative' party. Or are you going to pretend that it is just the Republican party and that Romney is a conservative? No, surely not?

If you just sit there and point at Obama, well that won't make it go away.
We need traction somewhere, a state to nullify a bad law, a Republican scared of losing his political career because he's seen enough of his own kind incapable of getting votes- something, SOMETHING that has not been done yet. No, your pointing at Obama is the equivalent to just pointing at the squirrel. We know. What we need is something to do about it.

You will note a pattern here. With the HHS mandate, "church" and "religion" are defined so narrowly as to be virtually restricted to places of worship. With this latest encroachment, "family farm" is defined so narrowly as to be virtually restricted to small homesteads and hobby farms, and possibly LLCs operated solely by parents. We saw the same pattern when the administration sued to restrict the rights of churches to hire and fire on the basis of religious doctrine. It's all about the expansion of public space subject to federal control, and the restriction of non-governmental authority (religion and family) to the four walls of home and church.

"We need traction somewhere, a state to nullify a bad law, a Republican scared of losing his political career because he's seen enough of his own kind incapable of getting votes- something, SOMETHING that has not been done yet."

I agree entirely. The next election may slow it down, but isn't going to solve the problem. Nor will the election after that.

What is that SOMETHING, August? I have a few ideas, but nothing jumps out at me as "this we must do".

August, may I point out mildly that some people possibly _didn't_ know about these latest outrages? That's why I blogged them.

I'm a blogger. I'm not a politician. I'm not anybody important. If people have concrete, positive, doable suggestions I'll be happy to consider them. In the present case, it seems like an obvious idea to lobby Congress to rein in the bureaus in question. Is anybody doing that? I'd be happy to direct people to the relevant lobbyists' web sites, if so. Meanwhile, I have no intention of weighting down my posts telling my readers that everybody in Washington is just as bad as everybody else. Talk about a dissipation of energy! Plus I don't, as it happens, actually think it's true.

Leonhard, please consider this: I did not make up this story. Nor is this story being made up by some other conservative blogger. Perhaps you should go and argue with the American Farm Bureau:

But U.S. farmers’ largest trade group is unimpressed.

“American Farm Bureau does not view that as a victory,” said Kristi Boswell, a labor specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation. “It’s a misconception that they have backed off on the parental exemption.”

Why don't you argue with the other people quoted in the article, including the young man who pointed out that he couldn't have started his work as a cattle farmer when he did under these regs? Or doesn't his opinion matter? What about this place where the DC caller reporter agrees exactly with Jeff Culbreath's take:

The Farm Bureau and one other national agricultural group told TheDC that it would only apply to parents who “wholly own” their own farms.

That would rule out kids working on an uncle’s farm, or a grandfather’s, and it would ban teens from working on farms where ownership is split — even among several generations of the same family. It would also mean teens couldn’t be around when their friends are doing farm work.

Estimates vary on the number of children who live on farms their parents ”wholly own.” One state-level Farm Bureau cited an internal estimate of less than 30 percent.

The fact that you ignore all of this, Leonhard, take the Obama administration's own talking points as gospel and as evidence of their entire good will, assume even that reasonable _extensions_ (!!) of what they say, beyond what they actually say, are to be assumed to fall under their intention, and then portray me as some sort of hysterical conservative for blogging the article from the Daily Caller, tells us your own bias on this and the impossibility of persuading you by argument.

"NO. A corporation is formed specifically so that individuals can avoid "owning" the farm. It shields them from liability among other things."

Ah yes thanks for the clarification, Jeff.

"From the clarification is appears that LLCs are exempt if "operated soley" by parents. I don't know what "operated by" is supposed to mean: Must both parents be partners, for example?"

This is something that I'd want to see clarified more. If the idea of the bill is to protect kids working as an employees, in a farm outside of their parents supervision (which seems reasonable imho, regardless of this bill). Then the bill ought to hold exemptions when the kid is basically just doing chores, helping and learning from their parents. If the proposal puts undue restrictions on their ability to do that, then yeah I'm with you that the bill is bad. I wouldn't support it, if I were a US citizen, until I knew that the lay of that. You're free to assume the worst, I haven't made any bets on it so far.

Lydia, you wrote a an opinion piece about something I hadn't heard before and I read the relevant link. The way the story was told made me skeptical, and I wanted to inquire about it. I don't have access to 'the young man' or 'The American Farm Bureau'. There was a comment field in your article and aired my thoughts, wanting feedback. Now I'm suddenly a raging Obamanite, just because I expressed skepticism? How should I have acted?

I found the rest of the journalist article. I had only read the first part, shame on me. What the reporter says 'The Farm Bureau and one other national agricultural group told TheDC that it would only apply to parents who “wholly own” their own farms.' seems to be factually wrong, if he means that only families who 'wholly own' the farm are exempt. The clarification stated that the exemption law was for the "owner or operator of a farm", which is somewhat broader though terribly vague. And really, this is a journalists report, of what the farm bureau told him, of what they had heard that the draft was about. Whereas the clarification is more or less first hand. At least as close to first hand as I've gotten without actually holding the draft.

I've seen journalists muck up science news stories, even having an interview with the scientists themselves. I don't think legal cases are much different.

Whereas the clarification is more or less first hand.

I disagree. Definitely. That assumption right there seems to me part of the problem. I can't help thinking that you don't know how at least U.S. politics works, though I'd be surprised if it were different elsewhere.

Those of us who have read news stories over a period of years, analyses by opposition groups, administration claims, and the whole back-and-forth know that opposition groups' analyses are often more accurate in the final call than the administrations' own talking points, which are themselves political in nature rather than per se informative. The two can act as correctives of each other, but more often the opposition groups' analysis is either a) simply correct or b) correct concerning the original purport of the regulations, and their sounding the alarm is what _causes_ the administration to back off or soften the meaning through subsequent so-called "interpretations" or "clarifications."

I don't know why you assume that the Farm Bureau has no access to the proposed new regulations. You do understand that this new regulation has been through a lengthy public comment process, don't you? The whole point of that is that the relevant information is made available for commentary. The Farm Bureau didn't just "hear that the draft was about" something. And as an interest and lobbying group representing farmers, it's their job to know the likely and/or plausible impact of new regulation on farmers and to comment on that. Believe me, they have plenty of people working on what the regulations say and what this will mean. They didn't just "hear something" and spout off to a reporter.

Again, I'm sorry, but it just seems that you don't really understand what is going on here.

It might be helpful to note the following:

UPDATE, April 26, 7:55 p.m.: The Daily Caller has learned that the Department of Labor has withdrawn the controversial rulemaking proposal described in this article.

In the year 2000, the EEOC ruled that excluding birth control from insurance coverage was discriminatory.

In 2012, the HHS mandate this coverage.

So how long until we see "sex change" coverage mandated by federal law?

I do think there is good ground for criticism of Republicans on the EEOC decision. First, this decision was unanimous and bipartisan, meaning some Republican appointees went along with it.

Second, the GOP put up little resistance to Chai Feldblum's appointment.

I think social conservative leadership might deserve more blame. We couldn't even get our people on the FCC under Bush, could we? How can we expect to forestall these decisions by the EEOC, one of the most all-controlling commissions in the country?

Why don't we have a nice blueprint for desired posts and then demand our people be appointed for them?

Thanks, Alphonsus! Great news. I shall update the post.

Ha! Just occasionally, just occasionally, a little sunlight treatment from the press and public outcry actually works.

Leonhard, so far from the initial rule's being so very reasonable and the DC having misrepresented it, what you see here is that it was indeed unreasonable, when the American people heard about it, they (and a non-partisan lobbying group representing farmers) made an appropriate stink, and in an election year, it was withdrawn.

This is just one reason among so many why it is important that political speech not be restricted.

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

Lydia, the agriculture lobby has a nose-bleed high batting average when it comes to getting what it wants. Maybe an ankle got twisted by stepping on very big toes?

the agriculture lobby has a nose-bleed high batting average when it comes to getting what it wants.

Well, in this case, good for them. Three hearty cheers. I was actually thinking of saying something earlier to the effect that for the agriculture lobby to oppose this and to say it is unreasonable and would, in fact, have prohibited kids from working in normal ways on their parents' farms is not at all like having a conservative group say something negative about a proposed rule by a Democrat administration. To be honest, I would also be inclined to believe the latter. But actually the Farm Bureau isn't anything like a right-wing lobby group. It's a lobby group, to be sure, and as you say a powerful one. But not right-wing, per se.

Kevin, I agree with this:

Why don't we have a nice blueprint for desired posts and then demand our people be appointed for them?

In fact, I've said for a long time that if elected President (which God forbid) the first thing I would do would be to call in my closest, smartest advisors and say, "Okay, boys, what things did my predecessor do that I have the power _right now_ to change back?" Bureaucratic appointments would seem to fall under the spirit of the same rule. It often seems that Republican administrations don't, as the jargon goes, live intensionally enough.

That being said, I reiterate what I said in the main post:

Five years ago we did not have in power a politically ruthless administration determined to make political war on the American people and the American way of life.

Lydia, a commonality in many of the objectionable rulings by the Obama administration is they have the apparent intent of advancing the public health, from Obamacare to even this failed attempt by Labor. I do not believe this is a coincidence.

It is worthwhile to study the history of public health in the US. It is glorious in its achievements, to be sure. But it also was made possible by a) governmental access to large tax revues and b) government endowing itself with new powers. I believe this is correct: the only circumstance when the government can suspend any/all constitutional rights is during a public health emergency.

My point? If you want to reconfigure American society along any lines, you could not do it much better than by making the reconfiguration an issue of public health, or some adventitious root of it. There is a deep well of unopposable administrative power to be tapped there. I believe this is what we are seeing, at least in part, coming out of the Obama administration.

Not said well, but I hope you get the gist.

I believe this is correct: the only circumstance when the government can suspend any/all constitutional rights is during a public health emergency.

This isn't even remotely correct, as a cursory reading of the US Constitution would show you. There is only one right, mentioned by name, which can be suspended. It's the Writ of Habeus Corpus. It can only be suspended in times of invasion or insurrection.

Spend a little more time with the statutes, Mike T, and the emergency powers conferred on the state during significant public health events. The devil is in the details.

Alphonsus,
It doesn't have to be a public health emergency. Farmers shouldn't be so complacent about safety that these sorts of accidents are still happening:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-03-08/news/ct-met-grain-bins-20110309_1_grain-bin-grain-handling-illinois-grain
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45105465/ns/us_news-life/t/more-bodies-recovered-after-grain-elevator-blast/#.T5s6OXrYH91

Spend a little more time with the statutes, Mike T, and the emergency powers conferred on the state during significant public health events. The devil is in the details.

Alphonsus, the Constitution trumps statutes. The government may follow the statutes, but then it is operating without constitutional authority. The Supreme Court has ruled that unconstitutional laws confer neither authority on government agents nor a duty to obedience on the citizenry. You are flat out wrong in your views on this.

Mike T, I don't think Alphonsus is making any statements about what is constitutional or should be the case. He's talking practical politics. I would imagine he's on your side on these things. He's just pointing out where tyranny can come in.

He's talking practical politics.

Well then, practically speaking, if the executive won't obey the law of the land then the federal case law is clear that he is in open, armed rebellion against lawful authority. Hopefully, either the military or FBI would move on the White House and place his seditious ass under arrest for the charge of Attempting to Overthrow the United States Government before his actions could provoke the citizenry into rebellion.

Hmm, I wonder who it was that warned you that the Unitary Executive Theory was essentially a mask for tyranny, and that it would be open to Democratic abuse once they obtained power? Oh yeah, some evil libtard troll going by the name of Step2.

Anyway, your earlier gripe about liberals being prone to violent coercion rings sort of hollow now. There is still a legal process called impeachment to deal with illegal Presidential behavior.

Who disagreed with that?

Hey, Step, if you want to make a case for impeaching President Obama, I'll at least listen. :-)

Also, if you want to roundly condemn both of the things I describe in my main post, please go right ahead.

And when was the last time I called you a troll? You've mellowed with age, ol' buddy.

Obama is only slightly better than Bush when it comes to foreign intervention and worse when it comes to government secrecy. The problem is that there are only a few Republicans who consider these actions to be crimes and the Democrats are, as usual, spineless and corrupt.
http://my.firedoglake.com/davidswanson/2012/02/02/27-of-35-bush-articles-of-impeachment-fit-obama/

Also, if you want to roundly condemn both of the things I describe in my main post, please go right ahead.

You know I prefer a more "discriminatory" approach :) Mandatory safety training for teenage workers, along with restrictions on working in dangerous conditions or handling toxic chemicals is good policy as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure what the safety issue is with handling livestock, so that might be unnecessarily restrictive. As long as the training is mandatory, it shouldn't matter whether it is 4-H or OSHA providing the training.

As for the transgender rules, I wouldn't grant them the full set of legal protections I would other groups, but I think they should have some access to jobs and places to live. I've only met one transgender person in my life, and he basically segregated himself away from everyone else except one female. So I don't have much to go on, but they don't seem to be as "out and proud" as the much more vocal gay community.

In that case, Step2, especially as regards your apparently blase attitude toward the EEOC's use of fiat power to cover transgenders under a federal law that obviously wasn't intended to include them, and also the fact that you seem to be applying your "mandatory training and restrictions" even to kids working on their own parents' farms, I'm not going to be able in honesty to say that you anticipated me when it came to calling out the tyrannical use of executive power. You don't seem nearly bothered enough by the examples I'm wanting to talk about of the tyrannical use of executive power.