The mainstream media has railed about the dangers of consolidating executive power ever since the Nixon “imperial presidency” meme. But now they seem to relish the idea. Suddenly, the ONLY way to get things done in Washington (and in Raleigh) to put additional power into the hands of the executive.
The News & Observer this morning blithely endorsed Gov. Beverly Perdue’s power grab over education, urging that a constitutional officer, elected by all the people of the state, be turned into a potted plant:
Recognizing that the current lines of authority are a tangled mess, Perdue has taken charge of public education, and indeed it makes sense for the governor to be sitting behind the desk where the buck stops.
I’m sure they’d have felt the same way had the new governor been Pat McCrory.
Nationally, the news that President Obama has pulled the U.S. Census Bureau under the White House wing, is raising nary an editorial hair. The U.S. Census Bureau was already a pretty politicized lash up to begin with, but taking its administration away from the Commerce Secretary and pulling it into the boiler rooms of the Old Executive Office Building is a travesty.
If you think the shameless gerrymandering by members of Congress every 10 years has been shameful, just wait until the political hacks in the White House decide whom to count and whom not to count in the next census. I shudder.
No one doubts the left-wing bias of the media anymore, but the tacit backing by media of executive consolidation just because it’s Democrats doing it will be something we will all rue one day soon.
UPDATE: B.S. from the White House about the census takeover:
A White House spokesman last evening said, “From the first days of the transition the census has been a priority for the president, and a process he wanted to reevaluate. There is historic precedent for the director of the census, who works for the Commerce Secretary and the president, to work closely with White House senior management — given the number of decisions that will have to be put before the president. We plan to return to that model in this administration.â€
Blogger Moe Lane points out the mendacity in the above:
I get that they’ve changed things around now, although you’d think that if this was such a priority they would have at least actually chosen a director of the census by now.
UPDATE: Not only are the MSM not criticizing the census power grab, they’re running interference for Obama. Check out the great quote from a “senior Republican Senate aide:
“With all of its political implications, hijacking the Census from the Commerce Dept. and letting it be run out of Rahm’s office is like putting PETA in charge of issuing hunting permits.”