United Liberty
Who had more czars, Bush or Obama?
Tue, 10/06/2009 - 5:19pm | posted by Jason Pye
One of the more recent complaints about Barack Obama, mostly pushed by Glenn Beck, is the number of “czars” in the administration. Some of these are confirmed by the Senate, most aren’t. The knock is that Obama has appointed more czars (Beck says 32 total) than any other president.
Well, Beck is wrong:
[T]he Bush administration had even more appointed or nominated positions whose holders were called “czars” by the media. The DNC has released a Web video claiming that there were 47, but it’s counting multiple holders of the same position. We checked the DNC’s list against Nexis and other news records, and found a total of 35 Bush administration positions that were referred to as “czars” in the news media. (Our list of confirmed “czars,” with news media sources cited, is here.) Again, many of these advisory positions were not new – what was new was the “czar” shorthand. Like the Obama czars, the Bush czars held entirely prosaic administrative positions: special envoys, advisers, office heads, directors, secretaries. The preponderance of czars earned both ridicule and concern in editorials and in media, but no objections from Congress.
You can see the full list here.
I’m not defending the Obama Administration, I’m just saying that there was no criticism or concern for the Constitution during the Bush Administration over czars. Once again, it’s a matter of inconsistency on the part of Republicans.
Does it matter?!?!?! Czars are wrong, under Bush or Obama. Why are you using the labels republicans? Who cares? PLEASE STOP WITH THE LEFT-RIGHT. If someone says “Obama is doing something wrong” your response is “Bush did something wrong too!”. WE KNOW! You’re not doing freedom any favor by trying to label ALL republicans that way. Ron Paul is included in that word “Republicans” you use. As are many libertarians.
Unite against the elite, or fall. It’s not left vs right. It’s liberty vs collectivism. Here the government hands a trillion dollars to banks (so they can LOAN it to you at interest, enslaving you) no strings attached and you all sit back and do nothing.
The founders took what would now be labeled “terrorist” actions against AN ELECTED PARLIAMENT (the british parliament) that taxed them without fair representation not against a Monarchy. In 1800, there was one representative per 30,000 people. Today there is one per 700,000 people. One man cannot possibly represent 700,000 people effectively.
You are not represented anymore. You are taxed heavily. You are enslaved via the federal reserve handing loans to commercial banks who loan it to you (this is why the fed can control interest rates in a “capitalist” society). What are you going to do about it?
Nothing. Of course. I’m glad I never believed in Democracy or Republicanism in the first place, if today’s American is the supposed “defender of liberty”.
Republicanism and Democracy = May the best liar win.
You’d be better off with no legislative branch, and just a King (politicians are 99% guaranteed to be evil) and a judiciary that interprets a extremely long and elaborated “bill of rights”. The constitution is a piece of garbage. When asked what’s so good about it, people ALWAYS cite the “Bill of Rights” (ten amendments), which was added AGAINST the objection of the writers of the constitution who claimed it was un-necessary. The anti-federalists have proven right, had they listened to the writers of the constitution, there would be no “ten amendments”, no “second amendment” preventing disarmament, etc.
We lost the battle for “liberty” within two decades of independence when they signed that damned constitution to create a “stronger national government”. Within a century it would build a tyranny that would use it’s powers to declare a total war on itself even daring to employ scorched earth tactics on it’s own land, and the leader of that war of aggression said himself it was merely “to preserve the union” of the constitution, with no other moral reason (though others have tried in vain to attribute some good motive to him).
Thomas Paine for example, a big pusher of the constitution, was for a minimum wage, abolishing private ownership of land, etc. Paine was the Karl Marx before Karl Marx. He “inspired” our revolution only to go onto France and start theirs too (and we all know how it ended: in a reign of terror).
The only thing *all* of them agreed on, and had right was: to only use gold and silver as tender (I say silver only, gold prices are too easily manipulated), and to fight try and prevent bankers from controlling your currency. We finally lost that fight for the *final* time in 1913.
“Czars are wrong, under Bush or Obama.”
That went without saying. However, pointing out the inconsistencies of Republicans is well within bounds.
As I’ve said here several times before, as libertarians, we do not think in terms of left and right, but I’m going to call hypocrisy when I see it.
You guys need to do a better job of doing your homework.
On cursory look strangely Democrats are counting the individual people, not the positions.
For positions looks like they have 27 actual positions listed, as opposed to Obama’s 45+.
Some of those positions were temporary positions (Gulf Coast Reconstruction Czar) only existing for a short amount of time, as opposed to Obama’s 45+ permanent positions.
This count is over Bush’s ENTIRE 8 years, as opposed to Obama’s entire 8 months.
Finally to get to 47 the DNC must count every person that filled the czar position. For example there were 5 “AIDS Czars” over Bush’s eight years. Instead of counting the position once, the DNC is counting it FIVE times.
Don’t believe the numbers, it’s disinformation (as usual).
The information provided above is from FactCheck.org. I don’t necessarily agree with everything they put out, but this seemed reasonable.
The number of Bush czars is 35, as FactCheck.org points out.