Thursday, December 29, 2016

Unconstitutional government power

Francis Menton writes in Manhattan Contrarian,
Probably, somewhere in high school or even junior high school, you learned about the "separation of powers" in the U.S. Constitution. There are legislative, executive and judicial powers, each assigned to a separate branch of the government. There are "checks and balances" between and among the branches. Thus, our freedoms are preserved. Or so we are taught.

But if you study the U.S. government today, you quickly learn about vast areas of the government that have somehow broken free of the separation of powers. I'm talking about the so-called "independent" agencies, like the FTC, FCC, SEC, CFPB, CFTC, CPSC, PCAOB and others. These agencies are not explicitly part of any of the three branches, yet they promulgate thousands of pages of regulations (legislative power?), and then prosecute people and companies for violating the regulations (executive power?) before administrative judges (judicial power?) who are part of the agency rather than part of the court system. Where is this provided for in the Constitution?

The answer is that all of this is entirely unconstitutional. The Constitution provides for exclusive grants of the three types of power to the three branches of the government, and to no one outside that structure.
Read more here.

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